This is Xan, she is an exchange student from South Africa. She and her boyfriend live one floor above us in our apartment building! It has been snowing steadily today which made for a nice photo-outing (and it's also quite warm compared to previous days).

"we will live off of mangoes and love"

our basil plant could not survive the walk home in -5 degree weather

i wish that we lived in this house.

The past few days have been extremely cold, staying around -4 to -5 degrees Fahrenheit. Yesterday we took a long walk through the woods and around a little lake.

Today is the 'ultimate sauna experience'. We are going at 5:30 tonight to get naked around a bunch of strangers and jump into a frozen lake. Sounds fun? When in Rome.. .

It seems that we're starting to get the hang of our Finnish life. .

The other night, we went to our nearby ice rink, and it was really nice to skate in the evening. We had to share the space with three somewhat aggressive young boys who were playing hockey. They were also intent on showing us how much more proficient their skating was than ours (well, mine in particular). (For whatever reason I just can't skate backwards, even though I feel comfortable skating fast and even turning sharply.) They skated backwards in circles around us just to rub it in.. ..and oh yeah, I forgot to mention that one of them was maybe 6 years old.

Yesterday, Kate started her Finnish language course and we're both starting to practice our basic conversational Finnish. Its still impossible to understand the locals because they speak so rapidly and their words and sentences just seem so long! But we can embarrass ourselves by forcing them to slow down and by communicating with them about prices and other simple things. According to the university orientation, Finnish people are impressed when a foreigner takes the time to at least attempt their language.. I don't know how literally they meant that.

More importantly we also had our first private sauna break yesterday.. and it really is... something. We were using the sauna during a public hour. So naturally we locked the door and hoped no one would come knocking. It seems bizarre to imagine sharing such an unusual experience with strangers.. ..especially nude. It was truly a refreshing (I don't know if that's really a reasonable word for it..) experience after spending hours in the cold.

We also had our first homemade Salmon dinner, which was a little too fish-y for Kate's tastes. We'll get more ingredients for a marinade next time. I personally thought it was great, and ate probably two or three servings of fish and risotto.

So, as you can see, we're acclimating!

We're taking a Ryanair flight to Riga, Latvia in a little over a week! It's exciting that there is so much history, culture, and awesome architecture around us.


This is one of the nearby skating rinks.. we walk past this every single day here.

This is the path to our (less popular and more private) rink.

Yeah, this is the one:
This is a picture of me in the sauna (Kate insisted that I upload it..)!

..and just down at the end of our street is our local secret military UFO storage hanger.
(Well, we can't think of anything else it could be.)


Hyvää Yötä!
Nähdään!

I have finally finished signing up for classes! Robert is just beginning the process, he is excited because all classes in Finland are free. FREE!

My classes are:
-Culture and Aesthetics
-Heritage and Philosophy of Antiquity
-Reading Group of Finnish Literature
-Women and Culture
-Finnish 1
-Alfred Hitchcock (Art History film course) !!!

I hope that all of you (in college) have signed up for courses that you will like and that you are enjoying your first days of the new semester!

My first class started today- Women and Culture. We just had an introduction, nothing too exciting.

What is exciting is that we had potato pancakes for dinner!

Robert and I tested our new ice skates yesterday afternoon.. and there was only one (unintentional) fall. We did race across the outdoor rink as fast as we could, exploding into a giant pile of soft snow on the other side.

The rink by our house has outdoor lights that shine all night long- I would like to go again tonight..

..after I read the required text for Women and Culture.

Speaking of Finland and free-

College is free for anyone that comes to Finland.
Birth Control is free for everyone
Health care (dental and all) is free for students in Finland
Transportation is 50% off for all students in Finland (in all EU and Nordic Countries)!

They also have a very large dumpster diving community, (Eric), and we have met a guy that was able to hitchhike from one end of Finland to the next in four days! He said that he never had to wait more than 20 minutes in most places.

Tampere

Hello Everyone (anyone?)!

Robert and I just got back from a weekend trip to Tampere, one of the most beautiful cities (if not the most) that I've ever seen.

Considering my last post, I will make this one pretty concise.. .

The city has wide, open streets and there are trees between all of the buildings; it's so nice to have the advantages of a city while being able to admire the beauty of the regional plants.

Unlike Jyväskylä, there are no Fir trees. All of the trees are bare with long pointy limbs, and they are completely frozen! It's unlike anything I've ever seen.. and incredibly beautiful. I kept wishing that I could take a photograph that would convey how breathtaking it is.

There is a lot of traditional Finnish architecture with little splashes of Russian and Swedish influence.

Using couchsurfing, we made three wonderful new friends.. Heikki, Jonna and Mario. Heikki gave us a place to sleep for two nights and invited us to meet his friends, eat his delicious food and explore his home city. We spent a long first night talking and eating his homemade Finnish cake. We helped his girlfriend, Jonna, move into a new place, ate (and drank) at their favorite brewery and spent an entire day thrifting at the dozens of second-hand stores throughout the city.. it was the most at home we've been since arriving in Finland.

We both got iceskates!

We went to the Lenin Museum! It was extremely informative and very interesting. We will talk about that later..

and no, we have not become socialists (or communists)!

If anyone was to visit us here in Finland,

we would take the to Tampere.


We will leave you with a few pictures, Comrades.

-Kate and Robert

p.s while thrifting we found a Children's Illustrated version of 'Mein Kampf'.. uh huh?

ice trees!

our growing collection of postcards/posters on the kitchen wall

sleepy-head on the train ride home

our temporary home for two nights

Heikki and Jonna

beautiful architecture

ice trees, part 2

a man feeding the birds in their small iceless sanctuary

i was more excited than i seemed!

a canal that runs between the factories

ice-tree path!

Mom, I took this for you.. they had the most amazing library!

Lenin's desk and chair

pretty self explanatory

notice that his beard isn't frozen! we had 25 degree weather this weekend!

church-y, snow-y stuff

the first day was extremely foggy!

Some pictures, too!