I created it because I figured out it would be the easiest way to inform all my friends and relatives about how I am getting along and also provide you with some pictures - of course it should not stop us from additionaly having a chat occasionally.
As you might already have noticed I will be writing in english... please do not complain to me about it, but rather take it as an opportunity to recover some of your language skills (or give google translator a try, haha)... oh, and blame globalization of course.
I admit german is more beautiful of a language, but I will not miss it here because almost everybody speaks it since 42 out of 157 of the new ERASMUS students are german (plus some from switzerland and austria). That includes my flatmate, a nice fellow from Saarland.
But maybe I should start with uhm... the beginning, which is the departure.
That was a mess. After an evening with some nice beer (I already miss it) and some even nicer people (I already miss you) I decided to fall asleep immediately and a few hours later decided to oversleep badly. Unfortunately when I finally woke up I realized nobody had packed all my stuff over night.
That done we left - late of course - just to exactly miss the flight in Hanover and from there continued towards Hamburg, where after several hours of traffic jams and diversions, I missed another flight.
SAAB 2000 - turbogeil! (sorry, there is no other word for it)
When I made it to Turku in the end it was already around 10 p.m. - too late to pick up the keys for my apartment - so to round off this wonderfully stressful day I stayed at the airport for the night, looking forward to being completely ruined the next first day of my orientation course.
Well at least on my flight via Copenhagen and Stockholm I had an only slightly clouded view over small but tremendous bits of Sweden and Finland. I am sorry I did not take any pictures of that, come and see yourself!
That orientation courses first day was not too interesting. The "highligt" was a guided bus(!) tour (how lame is that?) of two hours through Turku. Unfortunately I only managed to sleep half of that time, so now I lost all sense of orientation from driving around in circles and also have the impression that a couple of hundred years of finnish independency can be just as boring as a couple of hundred years of american independency... but I also learned from that guide that I should not compare the history of finland with others countries history - funny to tell exactly exchange students so.
Later that day I met Nanna, who happened to spent her holiday in Finland, and we scouted the town, the supermarkets and my flat.
view from my balcony - good thing I do not have to see the house
The supermarkets were a funny experience, I feel like we spent hours discussing and comparing the products (unsurprisingly mainly my fault), even some woman joined in to excessively inform us about the varios kinds of butter (in german!).
Weird things continued at home when my flatmate presented me The Book of Mormon someone had left behind here (in german - again). I do not intend to hurt the feelings of any Romney fan (well maybe I do), but it is just hilarious:
The Book of Mormon - some miraculous power made us find it
Mosia 7:25-26
"Denn wenn dieses Volk nicht in Übertretung verfallen wäre, hätte der Herr nicht zugelassen, daß dieses große Übel über sie komme. Aber siehe, sie wollten nicht auf seine Worte hören; sondern es kamen Streitigkeiten unter ihnen auf, ja, so sehr, daß sie untereinander Blut vergossen.
Und einen Propheten des Herrn haben sie getötet, ja, einen auserwählten Mann Gottes, der ihnen ihre Schlechtigkeit und Greuel vorgehalten und vieles prophezeit hat, was kommen wird, ja, sogar das Kommen Christi."
or
Mosia 9:3,5
"Und es begab sich: Wir hatten das Land unserer Väter für viele Jahre als Erbteil, ja, für den Zeitraum von zweiundzwanzig Jahren.
Und Ich ließ die Frauen spinnen und arbeiten und sich mühen und allerlei feines Leinen herstellen, ja, und Tuch jeder Art, damit wir unsere Nacktheit bekleiden konnten; [...]"
or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG7IGiBJU4c
You could say it is most suitable for my german audience... but actually it does not make sense in any language.
These first impressions are getting kind of long considering they only cover a couple of days, so let me finish by letting you know that my orientation courses are over by now. They were not all too useful except for hindering me from picking up my keys and satrting package and meeting my tutor and getting to know some co-students, which is something at least.
presentation on the wonderful finnish way of life - I am convinced!
The actual courses will start on Thursday: "finnish language" is first. Nice!
So enough for now, look forward to hear some more from me sometime - as soon as I will have acquired a bike there are going to be more pictures, including the most striking places of Turku.
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