Stammtisch pictures...better late than never!

Ok so I forgot to post about the Stammtisch (it was last Thursday)! It was definitely a good time and I tried my hardest to not drink quite as much as Tuesday night last week at the back to school party....and I (barely) succeeded!  Many peeps came out dressed in their finest summer garb, but I was lame and did not participate due to a lack of available summer clothing. We played all night long and jammed to some tunes...I might have even found a dance partner or two.  I won't bore you guys with details and stories...just check out los fotografos.

Martin and I with his festive "summer" pants rolled up...

Some of the crew!

Muh girl Alex and I..

Taa dah! 

Martin the friendly Czech giant...

The stache has gone international!

sobz...

Me, Alex, and Cass!

Poor Pascal didn't quite make it in...

I love Pascal!

Get it! Dancing? I'm not sure

The chicken reappears....

I'm still SO confused!

Martin, breaking it down...

Martin makes me feel short and Alex is a thief..(the hat she is so proudly parading around with..not hers)

Last night I went to the meeting to plan the next Stammtisch...it was up to us English speaking countries to pick a theme! There were many good ideas, but I mentioned an American classic that stole the vote.....ABC-Anything But Clothes! The idea of the theme is to be as creative as possible making an outfit from materials not usually worn as clothing, such as garbage bags. We will also be hosting a fashion show for the top 5 or so costumes as there is a 300euro prize up for grabs...a free trip to Lapland! I need some ideas of what to make my costume out of so if you think of anything brilliant, send it my way!

I've been trying to upload pictures on here for a few days, but blogspot has been kind of a bitch. or maybe its my internet?...its probably my internet.

Hasta la vista!

Low key weekend...

Not a whole lot to report for the last few days...I went sledding yesterday though! It was cold as nuetzzzz (-teens during the day and I'm pretty sure it hit -30 as night fell) so moving around outside was good but being outside at night was not. Although we did have the most sun I've seen since being here! Goodness gracious great ballz of fire I miss the sun. I have taken sunny days for granted my entire life. I love it, I wanna be in it forever, and I never want to leave it again. This is most definitely a good experience and I am and will continue to enjoy my time while I am here but it just makes me realize that I am made for sunshine, heat, sand, and all things warm and tropical :-)!!!!! You can take the girl out of the beach, but you can't take the beach out of the girl! Last night I met a group of friends downtown in the city center at the Kebab House for dinner...by the way, the kebabs here are out of this world. Roasted meaty goodness wrapped in flour tortilla brilliance, smothered in yum delicious sauce with crispy, crunchy lettuce....I could eat them errrrryday! Today, it was also very cold so Alex and I drank beer for the better part of the day in my luxurious bedroom and just hung out. Oh, I did some laundry too! Although I've been working on it, I still don't have enough credit hours here to be considered full time back at good old NC State so I have a meeting about all that bullshiz tomorrow. And my BFFerz Amz is finally on my side of the world, which is definitely good news. Hopefully I'll be taking a little trip to Copenhagen to visit her for my 21st! I miss all my other peeps back home...and as strange as it sounds I wish my parents were coming for a visit sooner than they are planning! I may or may not miss Mike a little bit as well :-)

Here are some pictchaaaas from our sledding adventure....

I love this picture because it is so sunny out I have to squint!!!!!

Trekking to the hill for sledding!

So cold! I know you can't tell how cold I am, but I am..trust me. Just pretend!

SUNSHINE. enough said!

Mas sol! yay yay yay!

Our little buttcheek sleds...they were free, I'm not complaining AND they kicked ass!

Getting ready to shred...

Sledding with the rest of the children

Lo siento for the boring blog today. (Throwing in some Spanish since I apparently am not able to take a Finnish courses while here and that is about all the foreign language you're going to get.)

Moi moi! (bye bye in Finnish!)

PS- just realized I never blogged about the Stammtisch....more on that later ;-)

Jyväskylän Crunkness

The ESN (Erasmus Student Network) does a fantastic job planning all sorts of trips, parties, and get-togethers for all us international kids...and Tuesday night was no exception. We had the back to school party at Bra...the same bar where I saw Haddaway perform in all his glory. (I realize I have forgotten to post pictures of that, so a few of those will accompany the pictures I deem appropriate to post on here from Tuesday night's shindig as well.) After Danny made a wonderful stirfry for us for dinner, a group of us pregamed together before heading downtown. A few of my French friends taught us a drinking card game that got us good and drunklez. The party at Bra was pretty cray-cray...as was my headache the next day. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves...(keep in mind that I am not a very good photographer or photographee...)

Alex, Kyla and I in the city center on the way to Haddaway!

What is love?

Baby don't hurt me...

Don't hurt me, no more..yeahhh whoaoaoaoaa

Danny's stirfry 

Danny, Pascal, Alex, Martin and myself posing next to such a wonderful little gem we found on our walk...

Yes, that is a chicken. I'm still confused...

Alex, Pascal, Cassandre, and myself living life

The awesome DJ spinning reggae...

completely sober!

Busti (I am not entirely sure how to spell it) and me!

Overall, I am having a blast in Finland. I am still struggling trying to get classes that aren't a waste of credits but it looks like I might just have to suck it up and take whatever I can get. It looks like it is already going to take me 5 years to graduate instead of 4...whats one more semester? I still do not understand, nor do I ever plan to accept, why the hell I am always being stared at. Alex and I had a creeper following us into town this morning...he was walking as close behind us as humanly possible and when we stepped aside to force him to pass us (I say force because he literally wouldn't..if we slowed down, so did he. The sidewalk was clear and he could have easily passed us blocks earlier) and it was very much unappreciated so I may or may not have lost my cool with him because once in front of us, he kept turning around to stare. Face the wrath bitchez! I just don't understand, everywhere we go people gawk!! I guess I just don't look Finnish enough, but its not like I'm from Mars. Put me in the right outfit and I look like everyone else.

I finally got a hairdryer (so I won't blow my fuse again-yay!) and a super cute bag (double yay!) but no boots or cute, fluffy jacket yet. A shopping trip to Tampere may be in order soon....(take note Mom and Dad)

Tonight is another party called a Stammtisch. They have them every other Thursday at a bar in my apartment complex which is awesome because then I don't have to walk very far. (I'm the first person to admit I'm lazy and all this trekking through snow is really kicking my ass. The cold really irritates any bone/joint injury I've had...which is a lot because I am an uber-clutz.) Each stammtisch has a theme, and tonight's is mid-summer but its kind of lame because hello! I am not prepared with any summer clothing here....newsflash: I'm in Finland. In winter. I shall post some pictures of that tomorrow!

Before the stammtisch a couple of us are going to a basketball game for a bit...the team in Jyvaskyla is apparently the best in the league. I think its a professional league? Not really sure. We met this guy named Mike the other night and he plays for them so he left us a couple of free tickets at willcall for us to pick up later! Should be funzies!

Also, yesterday I signed up for the trip to Lapland!!! It is Feb 15-20 and it will be awesome! I am super stoked...we are all riding a bus up to Inari (I think) which is wayyy far up there in the Arctic Circle. We are going to meet Santa Clause and feed some reindeer and build igloos and go ice fishing and then there were some additional optional add-on activities and I chose to go to the Arctic Ocean in Norway so I can swim in it, go on a husky safari (be jealous!), and ride ice karts which I guess is like go karts but on ice and snow so I just could not pass that up. Maybe I will kidnap an elf and bring it back as a temporary Riley replacement because I miss my sweet Riley so much!

I am off to make some "coffee" (cappuccino powder=not the same thing, but apparently coffee just isn't a big deal here so I'll make do) and eat some cookies. I've been quite the cookie monster since my arrival! I guess I'm working on my extra winter layer :-)

Bye bye butterflies!

Ultimate Sauna Experience!

On Saturday night we all hiked up to a sauna in the woods on the edge of Lake Jyväsjärvi to check out a true Finnish sauna. The girls and guys each have their own sauna, much to Mike's satisfaction. (Shoutout!!!) Before you enter a sauna you have to shower and they had these little paper toweley things for us to sit on inside the sauna so your sweat (and holy shit, do you sweat) doesn't get all over the place. I've never been in a sauna before, but I knew they were hot. I was expecting hot. I was expecting to sweat my nuets off and die of thirst and all that jazz. What I was not expecting was for my body to feel like it had immediately burst into flames and perspire like I would never imagine possible! The air in that sauna was so hot and dry my throat felt hot when I inhaled. I attempted to breathe through my nose but my nostrils couldn't take it! The chain of my beautiful necklace from my thweets was burning my skin but I didn't want to take it off for fear of losing it so I just held it up up away from my neck. (something to ponder: It burned my neck but not my hands....?) There were these big   containers/heaters (I assume) of rocks and boy can those puppies heat! The thermometer read 112 degrees Celsius. After a few minutes and we all felt like raisins, we ran outside to the lake! Our Finnish tutors recommended we rub snow on our mostly naked bodies (we wore bikinis but traditionally you go into saunas naked), and we did it and it felt awesome. We stood outside for a minute until our toezies hurt and then we ran back into the shower and the sauna. The second time didn't seem quite as hot, but I think it was more that I knew what to expect more than anything. When my body had squeezed out as much sweet as possible, I ran back outside and jumped into the frozen lake! (Ok, so I didn't jump, I walked down the stairs into the hole cut into the lake but still. Come talk to me when you go into a frozen lake.) Once more, Alex and I ran back inside into the sauna to melt. By the way, girls really are tougher than boys. Most of them didn't even touch the water, let alone get in it. A few got in but the rest were too weeny to walk down the slippery ice slope barefoot and submerge their manhoodliness in the icy depths of Lake Jyväsjärvi. There was another sauna at this place too...a more traditional, old school style one called a smoke sauna. Me no likey smoke saunas. It is literally a hot ass room filled with smokey smoke. As soon as I walked in my nostrils burned and my mouth tasted like an ashtray so I left. I'm all for traditional things, but not that one. After showers and whatnot the ESN (Erasmus Student Network...they plan all our parties and get togethers and trips. They're pretty awesome!) had lots of little nibblies and drinks for us and a fire to relax by...and HOTDOGS to cook over the fire. I liked the sauna much better than I thought and going into the lake wasn't nearly as bad as I had imagined because you get your body SO hot before you get in. After we did it I found out that many of the Finnish people there had never even gotten into the lake sooooo booyah!

Alex and I on our walk to the sauna!

The sauna building...

The hotdog fire! nom nom nom

These dawgs were huge and if you haven't noticed, Finland is not kind to my appearance. 

The walkway down to the ice hole...no pictures from when I got in though :-( 

A little bit of snow on the walk home...

My roommate finally arrived last night. She is Finnish and goes to the same university here and she was back home in Oulu for winter break. I felt bad because she walked in and I had like 8 people crammed in here playing cards so that was probably a little overwhelming for her. Whoops! She seems really nice but I haven't seen her today so we shall see how that goes. Tonight is the first ESN meeting where we can get some information about the trips to Lapland and Russia so that should be good although I've already walked to campus once today and I'm lazy so that sucks. Walking in the snow is so much effort....and I'm lazy. I had a meeting with my coordinator this morning and so I have finally registered for some courses..including Finnish 1! Holla! (I wonder if that translates?) The rest of my classes seem kind of lame but school isn't really my main concern anyways..I'm abroad! (Not that its my main concern in Raleigh either :-))

Alright, enough for today. I'm FINNished.

See ya on the flip side!

Jyvaskyla!

Now that I finally have a day to myself, I actually have time to update everyone on what I've been doing this week! I arrived here Monday afternoon and was exhausted, but I hunted down Alex (a girl also from NC who I had been emailing before arriving) and she showed me where the nearest grocery store was so I could eat before I passed out around 6pm. Trying to adjust to 7 hours ahead will kick your ass!

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday were spent in the exchange student orientation (Thursday was epiphany so it was a national holiday and most things were closed.) Orientation was pretty boring and filled with a lot of information read sUpEr EnThUsIaStIcAlLy (that is super sarcasm, by the way) by our Finnish hosts. The food in the campus cafeterias is pretty delicious...so far this week I have had salmon stew (YUMM!), swedish-like meatballs (but that is not what they were called, I don't think the Finnish want to give them credit for such a delicious little meatball), and yesterday I had potato and game casserole. What kind of game you ask? REINDEER AND MOOSE! yupperz, and it was muy delicioso! I keep throwing some random spanish out every once in a while because I feel ridiculous only being able to speak English while all the other international kids speak multiple languages.

On Tuesday morning the very first thing I did was blow the fuse in my room when I plugged in my hairdryer (or maybe I didn't blow a fuse, I don't know anything about this sort of stuff) and maintenance STILL hasn't come to fix it. Apparently they are on call 24/7 but maybe 24/7 doesn't mean 24/7 in Finland? So the light and sockets in my room do not work, but light is pretty crucial in a place where night falls at 3pm. My roommate (who I assume is Finnish and is away on break because when I arrived there were a ton of things in the apartment) hasn't shown up yet, so I have just been leaving my door open and letting the light from the hallway stream into my room so I can at least see a little. Even during the day the "sunlight" isn't much help...its more of a grayish back light and the sky kind of just glows.

I have been into the city center a few times to go shopping and pick up necessities, and that is a pretty neat little part of town. I've seen a few unexpected bar names such as Memphis, Hemingway's Cafe, and Parnell's (an Irish pub). There is a bar called City Bar that is very close to my apartment, and I have been there everyday for a drink or two with friends. The food there is very good and pretty inexpensive, and it has really big portions which means leftovers and I am a huge fan of getting multiple meals out of one!

Also at the City Bar is a man named Ena. When I first met Ena I thought he was just a normal dude, but I was very mistaken. After talking with him for a few minutes he told me that if I should ever marry, I should pick him. This guy is mid 40s I'm guessing, so I told him I was much too young for both marriage and him. He then tells me I have beautiful eyes, which is a compliment I can handle. Then he tells me I have beautiful ears, and he reaches out and touched one of them with the creepiest look on his face! He was enjoying the thought of my ears entirely too much. Thank goodness my friend Alex swooped in and ushered me to the bathroom with her where I was half tempted to wash my ears. (Those of you who know me well also know that I hate hate hate my ears, as one sticks out much further from my head than the other. So being told they were beautiful and then having them caressed was just tooo much for me.) We have become good friends with a few of the guys here that are also on exchange, so we have employed them as our protectors against the drunken Finns who are way more open once intoxicated.

The Haddaway concert I mentioned in my last blog was pretty awesome. Such a random person to be here performing, but such a classic song to hear live! A whole group of us went and I met some more of the exchange students and have been making new friends everyday. Everyone is so nice and outgoing and excited to be here with this incredible opportunity to live in a new environment!

I am struggling a bit with the way some things are done here. Before I came, everyone told me that the Finnish are super efficient and technologically advanced. Thus far, I have found it to be nothing but the opposite. I am currently plugged into the wall via an Ethernet cable for internet that goes in and out of service and I have a daily limit of information I can process. I don't really understand all that mumbo jumbo but Skype, Facebook, and probably this blog apparently use a lot of my bites of whatever it is so my internet is pretty shitty. That, in my opinion, is not technologically advanced. As for the efficient part....well, they have some proving to do for me. I have not seen efficiency as a strong point. I know I will get used to the way things are done here but there are definitely some things I could teach them if they want to get things done a little more simply. I am not talking shit, I am just calling it how I see it! Maybe a surprise is around the corner.

I have a bit of a headache from last night hehe and should probably start making some moves towards my day but I will try to blog more regularly so that I won't have to combine 5 days into one blog. Oh and a few people have been asking for my address so email me at carter054@yahoo.com or contact my parents who will send it to you also. I'd post it on here but what if Ena somehow stumbles across my blog! Kidding, but there are creepy people in the world and I'd rather not have one at muh door, waiting to fondle my ear. (or should I say FINNdle my ear?) har har har.

Over and out, players!

Haddaway!

I know I haven't blogged at all yet, but I only just got internet hooked up in my room today! I will write more tomorrow but I am going to see HADDAWAY tonight!

In case you've forgotten who Haddaway is..or you think you don't know who he is (I say think because everyone knows this song), here is a link!
Haddaway-What is Love

I am very excited and a group of us exchange students are all going out together. Tomorrow I shall post pics and update more on life among the Finns!

Finland

The excitement about Sweden was left to stew in my brain for about a month. After beginning to scheme tentative trips and weekend adventures to frolick around Lund, I was notified that I'd be going to Finalnd instead.

Within 24 hours, my placement was changed THREE times. Lund, Oulu, and finally Jyvaskyla. 

Sweet? We shall see. I will now be in a city called Jyvaskyla (two funny little dots over each of the A's but I have NO idea how to type Finnish characters) and it is right in the middle of Finland. Doesn't look like there is an awful lot to do there except freeze my ass off, but thats probably because most Finnish website don't translate to English so I'm having trouble finding GOOD information about it. I'm still bummed, but I'm sure it will be fun. Still hate the cold aspect of living in the smack dab middle of Scandinavia in the dead of winter..guess I'll just have to amp up my alcohol consumption to keep myself warm :-) Apparently Finlandians party pretty hard, and I have a coffee date with a Finnish boy from Jyvaskyla (who is currently studying at NCSU this semster in an exchange) next week so I shall harass him with many obnoxious questions and force my friendship on him so I have a comrade upon my arrival in Finland. I'm off to work on residency permits, housing arrangements, and online shopping for real winter clothes (I've never experienced a true winter and am bravely thrusting myself into one).

Hopefully I'll Finnish my work soon ;-)