Lots of little things

The most exciting things in the last week have had to do with school. I guess this makes sense since that's why I am here. Needless to say, this post will be heavily loaded with photos of school adventures. First is my student ID card, which is actually a decent photo of myself, for once. And then there is my new Finnish ID card, it serves as my main source of identification these days.

I need to start learning Finnish to decipher some of these phrases.

This photo, however, I hate. 

My bicycle ride to school takes maybe around 7 minutes and it's downhill along the lake. It is a great way to start out my mornings, especially while it is still lined by trees with beautiful leaves. 

This is my bicycle, sorry for the terrible photo. It's honestly a piece of crap, but it was cheap, so it'll do.

This is the view from my balcony! I head down that little trail and turn right! :)

Pretty trees!

Looking back towards my flat.

One of the courses I am taking right now is titled Environmental Management & Economics. One day during the course, we got to go on a field trip to a local furniture manufacturer ISKU. We got to hear about ISKU's environmental management approaches, only after the complimentary breakfast they provided for us! They are a very eco-friendly manufacturer, and it was very interesting touring their facilities. 

This machine was testing how many times the chair could be sat on before it broke.

This machine was testing how far the chair can be bent before it snaps.

 Another course I am taking is titled Urban Water Protection. We got to take a field trip in this course as well to the local wastewater treatment plant. It may sound like a disgusting tour, but I found it really interesting! I have always wanted to go on one of these tours, and I finally got the opportunity. This is one of multiple wastewater treatment plants that services Lahti, and it is in a cave! I thought it was brilliant when I learned that the plant is in a cave; it's a genius way of solving the problem of the smell permeating the nearby neighborhood. This facility is taking most of their sludge that results and burning it to harness energy, it's awesome!

I was really hopeful I'd see Batman. 

It was shockingly not as smelly as I thought it might be; they flush clean air into the cave once an hour.

There were many processes happening that I won't bother boring anyone with.

 In other school related news, Valeria and I have gotten the opportunity to involve ourselves in a green roof project that one of our professors is working on. We have the very important task of going up to the roof after every rain event and emptying the canisters that are attached to the green roofs. There are 8 green roof blocks, separated into 4 segments each, resulting in a total of 32 jugs to be emptied. Prior to emptying the jugs we measure the amount of water that passed through the green roofs. Additionally, we are measuring the electroconductivity of the water. We are measuring the quantity of water in order to determine how effective the roofs were in retaining the rain water, and we are measuring the electroconductivity of the water in order to see how many nutrients passed through the green roofs. The general idea is that effective green roofs, ideally, should retain a significant portion of the rain water, and they should also retain a lot of the nutrients that the rain water has, in a sense purifying the water that passes through. A large problem with stormwater is the amount of nutrients it contains and then passes to the waterbodies, potentially overloading them resulting in eutrophication. 

The green roofs!

I  was in charge of measuring this particular day.

And then I would read my result to Valeria, the recorder!

It's pretty exciting stuff, as you can see!

Other than these exciting stories, everything else school related is rather ordinary. I have my first exam this week, I am a little nervous, but more excited to get the ball rolling! I have been studying a lot, or at least it feels like it! 

It's difficult to focus when the sun is shining, but I remain diligent.

And my last bit of school news is that I was awarded a 1600 € grant!!!!!!! All International Masters Students were eligible to apply for a chance at one of the 50 startup grants that our University was offering. The only basis for this grant was our letter of motivation that we wrote for our application to the University, so it was out of my hands a long time ago, before I even knew that this letter would also be used for receiving possible grant money. I learned that there are 25 International Masters Programs at the University of Helsinki, and therefore 2 students from each program received such grants. I received the email on Thursday right before touring the wastewater treatment plant! I was so excited! This money will really help me out a lot, especially since I still haven't been able to find a job. The other person from my program that received a grant is Steve. We will go to Helsinki on November 1 for an International Student Grant celebration, and it said there will even be free food! Haha, it's the little things sometimes! 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My weekend is now drawing to a close, and it was a sunny weekend, which equals a good weekend in Finland! I am in a good mood whenever the sun shines and am trying to be very positive about the weather, regardless of the cold, as long as the sun shines! On Saturday we went and picked more apples from someone's tree! We got three baskets worth, they're so delicious! I have even attempted to make apple cookies out of the plethora of apples, they were kind of flaky, go figure. 

I'm a real Johnny Appleseed.

I ate four apples in one day; no doctor visits for me.

Gluten free baking is kind of whack.

At least I didn't burn them.

Last exciting story, I have been running a lot lately. I figure with so much time on my hands I really have no excuses to not be running. It also helps that Valeria likes to run, so we have been running together a lot. Aaaand not to mention, it is still not a frozen tundra outside, so I am taking advantage of the opportunity to run outside while I still can. Today as we finished our run the sun was setting over the lake and it was beautiful! We stayed outside for a bit and watched the ducks and the sunset, it was great.

It truly looks as if the sun is rising when it is really setting here, it's incredible.

Free Food And Other Stories

 Finding work is proving to be very difficult in Finland, but alas this is resulting in creativity. 

Valeria, my roommate, grew up in Russia and apparently it is very common for Russians to go mushroom hunting/picking. She has told me that most all Russians go mushroom hunting with their grandparents, and it's uncommon to find a Russian that doesn't know edible mushrooms from non-edible ones. Valeria has gone mushroom picking a lot since we have gotten here and she's made some amazing concoctions! There has been ample mushroom soup, mushroom salad, mushroom steaks, pickled mushrooms, and most recently mushroom quiche. Thankfully I love mushrooms and don't mind the extra that she is always offering me! :) 

Last Sunday four of the people that live in our building asked Valeria if she would take them mushroom hunting because they'd been learning about it in school, but before they tested out their newly acquired knowledge solo they wanted some support. I figured I'd join in the learning expedition and so Valeria, Laurenz, Daan, Uri, Amber and myself all got in Laurenz's van and we headed out to the forest on the opposite side of town. 

I was mostly interested in seeing the beautiful forest landscape that I am constantly surrounded by, but hadn't really gotten to explore prior. It was a perfect day for exploring, there was no rain and the sun was intermittently shining through the scattered clouds. I was enthralled by the amount of moss that covered everything. It felt like I was back in Portland; it was very nostalgic. Valeria instructed us that the most prevalent mushrooms this time of year would be chanterelles, trumpet chanterelles, and mushroom steaks (she isn't sure of their English name). I paid attention to the lesson that we got and then we all wandered off on our own to forage for mushrooms. I mostly lusted over the moss and trees, but occasionally I stumbled upon some mushrooms and I picked those. There were plenty of patches that had been picked over, but Valeria shared with us her grandfather's words of wisdom: "Our mushrooms will always be there, because they're ours." I really liked these words of encouragement. After enjoying the forest for about 2 hours we decided to head home. I have made mushroom steaks a couple of times and I have also added mushrooms to my egg sandwiches for breakfast! Yay for foraging my own meals! 

Valeria's jacket popped in the forest!

The most practical lesson I've learned since I've been here.

I never wanted to leave.

I was so pleased with myself for finding chanterelles.

Gahhh.. so pretty!

Valeria and Uri trimming the mushroom steaks.

The forest we went to was adjacent to the ski jump and as we were leaving we got to watch a little boy practicing his skills. These ski jumpers are insane.

This is my mushroom steak dinner. I sautéed the mushrooms and then seasoned them with salt and pepper, and then topped them with some gouda and avocado! They were delicious!

This egg sandwich was amazing! One egg, mushroom, gouda, and sriracha smashed between bread!

This is from a different day that Valeria went picking by herself, but this just goes to show how much you can get going out only once. 

 Everyone also has a surplus of apples here, and we have been informed that people are more than happy to have you take the apples from their tree. Valeria has been knocking on people's doors asking if we can have their apples periodically, needless to say we haven't been buying much fruit. She has also been gathering berries to make jam, it's delicious. And she's been harvesting rose hips to make tea, it's brilliant. 

On the theme of free, we are also reusing my coffee grounds as an exfoliant. I learned that this is apparently common knowledge, the exfoliating properties of coffee grounds, but better learned late than never? Since we are going to sauna at least once a week, it is a perfect opportunity to cleanse our skin. The sauna is in the basement of our building, and it is free for tenants to use. We are allowed one hour of sauna per week, per tenant, and we pre-book the sauna online. We try to book sauna on Thursday nights to celebrate the beginning of the weekend, it's a great free way to entertain/relax ourselves. This past weekend we booked sauna on Saturday night for two hours (Steve and Magdalena booked their time slots back to back) and so we finally decided to try using the coffee ground exfoliant. It worked wonders! After rejuvenating our skin, we then had another bonfire to round out the night of free entertainment! Being on a tight budget has resulted in plenty of lovely evenings. 

Here's to good skin and sweating out all the toxins.

Teemu and Emi (Valeria's boyfriend)

The last free food story I will share with you is the fishing expedition that we went on this past Wednesday. I HATE fishing, but I love being outside, so when Valeria, Uri, and Laurenz said they were going fishing I figured I'd go as an excuse to take a break from studying. The fall colors are really starting to show here, and it's beautiful. No matter where you turn you can see an amazing mixture of colors, green from the pine trees, and yellows and reds from the deciduous trees everywhere! I was grateful explore the harbor some more, and thankfully no fish were harmed in the making of these photos. 

Laurenz and Uri share a bike, it's hilarious.

Valeria attempting to rally the fish.

Fishermen.

I fished for daisies instead and got these guys, they now sit in my kitchen.

Beautiful fall colors, everywhere!

All in all, I'd say fall is shaping up nicely, despite my lack of job and subsequent income. 

Back to School

Tomorrow it will be 5 weeks that I have been in Finland. I really hate the cheesiness of saying time flies, but damn.

So far, what I can say for myself is that school has really taken the energy out of me. I know it has only been 3 years since I was in school, but that is 3 years of developing different habits than those needed of a student. Needless to say, I haven't been exploring that much because I just haven't found the time yet. I am working on prioritizing my life better so that I have time for things other than studying, but it's proving to be a slow process. The self-discipline that is needed of you as a student is hard to implement into your life, I've been reminded. This all being said, I love my courses so far! The following are some pictures of my school, but the photo credit is due to my roommate Valeria. 

Walking to school on the first day. This is Steve and me.

This is our campus, but really it is a science and business park that has a couple of classrooms and offices for our university.

We are surrounded by a bunch of science geeks.

More exciting than my school are the couple of adventures that I have gotten to go on. When we first got here our school organized a boat trip for us on the lake that my apartment is beside. They took us on a 3 hour boat cruise, this lake is huge! The trip was beautiful and thankfully we had sunshine for it. Photo credit is still due to Valeria. 

This is the boat we took!

Fishermen!

Magdalena, me, Steve, and Joe

That awkwardly tall thing in the distance is the ski jump where the ski jumpers go practice!

This is Lahti.

I can actually take credit for this photo, this is the view from the cruise!

I can also take photo credit for this one! This is the photo I took of the harbor :)

Finland is known as the land of a thousand lakes, and they're not kidding! There is water everywhere here, it's amazing! Finns are also obsessed with trampolines, it's weird. Apparently it is common practice when showing someone your backyard and garden area to also show them your trampoline, and possibly even invite you for a jump. I think I might be in love with this custom, needless to say we have been jumping on the trampoline they have outside of our building by the lake! Photo credit goes to Valeria! 

It would appear that I've learned how to levitate.

I'm the one on the left!

This photo I can take credit for! :) This is the view of the lake from behind our building; I was standing right next to the trampoline.

I will write about a few more adventures, and then I'll save the rest for another time! On my second weekend in town Steve and I stumbled upon a bonfire that some Finns were having in the campgrounds behind our building and they invited us to join them! We made friends with them and one of them even lives in Lahti, his name is Teemu, and we have hung out with Teemu a couple other times now. It is nice to have a Finnish friend already. 

Bonfire with new friends.

Our school took us on a trip to Helsinki to see the main campus of our university, but Valeria and I decided to stay in Helsinki after the tour and explore the city! It was amazing to see the Baltic Sea for the first time! It was also refreshing to see some beautiful architecture, because admittedly Lahti is pretty ugly when it comes to architecture. I am hopeful to move to Helsinki in January and at the latest in May. 

This is the capital building.

Beautiful church.

There is a lot of Russian influenced architecture in Helsinki.

I wouldn't mind living in one of these colorful houses.

The Baltic Sea!

The last thing that I will leave you with is a photo of my first time ever rolling my own sushi! It was Magdalena's birthday on September 20th and she wanted sushi for dinner. First we all went to sauna for 2 hours, which was grand, and then we rolled the sushi. I was intimidated by the idea of rolling my own sushi, but it's also something I've always wanted to try. Now I am really excited at the thought of doing it again because it was a success!

I roll my own sushi, no big deal.

The birthday girl displaying our beautiful, handcrafted rolls.