Hey there!

I usually write my blog late in the evening which is not a good idea: afterwards as I read the posts I find it funny how my brain doesn't work in the evenings, the texts miss a so called storyline and I write like Yoda (like my German flatmates used to call me as I wrote German since my word order was funny :D). Anyway I'll try writing before noon as my brain is still at its best ;)

I have been very busy lately: meeting up with friends, coaching every now and then and working of course. Last weekend I went to watch a flat water kayaking competition 200km North from Helsinki. It was a perfect way of avoiding law courses...! ;) Meeting up with old friends that I used to train  and spend all summers with, and spending quality time with my relatives. I did not feel like kayaking anymore, I used to compete 10 years and enough is enough but I definitively started missing those good old days when sports and the teammates were the most important thing in the summer! I have taken up some kayaking myself as well, I have been training with the juniors once a week and it has been wonderful! It is such a tough sports since both endurance and power are needed. The weather conditions in Finland are extreme as well, but therefore we used to go down south for 3-4 weeks training camps :)

From our club house: a perfect weather for flat water kayaking - the sea is seldom this calm

Oh, May 30th is worth mentioning: it was the day when all high school students graduated and the small school children had their last day of school before the summer holidays. The date changes from year to year but it's always a Saturday in the end of May or the beginning of June. Since the high school student have the same exams on the same day at the same time they also get graded the same way; the best grade is given to the best 5% of all Finns, the second best grade to the next 10% etc. I think it's a good system since you "compete" against all Finland so you see your own level compared to the other Finns. Anyway the graduation day is an important day here since it's the official date for the summer holidays to begin :) (well, sadly students don't have summer holidays since everyone is working but it's the beginning of summer! :)). I myself was helping out at a friend's cousin's celebration :) Usually the day goes like this: students graduating go to the schools in the morning where they get the graduation hats and they get scholarships etc listen to the teachers' speeches etc. Then they go home where they have invited guests (at around 1/2pm -->) who bring them graduation presents and get food and sparkling in turn :) In the evening the graduates go out to the city centers still wearing the hats and celebrating :) Some poor students still have entrance exams after the graduation day but most of the entrance exams are before the graduation day. I think it's very cruel to have the exams after the graduation day! The poor students have been studying all spring to the matriculation examinations where after they have to study to the entrance exams. It is a very stressful spring for sure! Here are some pics from my graduation day (3 years ago) :)

The hats are waiting on a table: one by one we are given the hats.

My turn to get the hat. I was the second last since they are given in the alphabetic order.

Finally the principal says something like: "now you can put the hat on your heads"

After the graduation day we send thank you -cards to the guests who attended the celebration.

Since this stupid blogger doesn't allow me to add any text after the last pic I have to write it here. Sorry for the mixed outlook. Well, it's not that I have so much more to tell anyway :) This coming weekend I'll meet up with my friends from the university so it's time for some road trippin' again :) The weekend there after is the midsummer weekend, a traditional Finnish summer celebration! I'll tell you more about that later :) Have a great week!

work & what not

Heyy!

Haha, I'm not very active here bit that's not my point either :) The last few weeks I have started working, moved away from Turku back to my parents (so far so good :)) and done school stuff (the Finnish uni is so much more demanding that the German!). Well, I might have underestimated the courses I chose here in Finland as well, I chose "easy" courses like marketing and HRM and, well they were easy but deadlines all the time. Essays and stuff which I am not used to do since my major is economics :D It was a slap in my face :D

My last night in Turku, going to the theater

Ugh...

Wood anemone :) (probably the only plant I know...)

What I then again have been positively surprised of is how good it has been to live here with my parents. No conflicts yet and there's always food! A lot of it! :) (my mom told my sister: "it doesn't matter anymore if there's leftovers, Lotta will eat it all anyway! Well... problem solved I guess.. :D). There's also always a car available since there's the 3 of us sharing 3 cars (I prefers mom's car though, it's small and handy, even I can park it :)) and 4 bikes (which are more or less rusty or dusty :D).
And the best part is the nature of course! It is like living in the country side :)

Woods, for the sauna owen ofc :)

The fish nets

Ahh so calm....

This is where I go running

Probably Finland's best driver! :D

My favourite part on my running route :)

When it comes to my job, I like it :) The work itself is not that special, but my co-workers are really nice as well as the managers and I am satisfied with the wage :) Haha the main thing I do is to tell customers how to pay for their purchase or to talk about expanding the due date. Basically sitting by the laptop and talking on the phone. Oh, and we do not only have overlook to the sea in the actual office, but also in the bathrooms :D

:D

So there's nothing to complain about :) Of course this summer will not be as fun as the previous ones in the US but it's up to the attitude how it will be like! At least I hope I can learn something from my mom about plants... I¨m not really a gardener... :DD

The only green thing I had in my apartment...

vs. some of mom's hundreds of flowers....

First of May aka Vappu!

Hello! Now that I have recovered from the First of May celebrations it's time to write about it :)  We call it vappu and I will stick to that name because First of May is a little misleading since the actual day we celebrate it is the 30th of April (the First of May is a holiday). And to be honest many university students celebrate all week, some celebrate two weeks and in Eastern Finland they celebrate three whole weeks. Especially the students in the technical universities party hardy. I was very sick in the beginning of the week and to be honest I think one day was enough for me anyway!

Vappu has long traditions and it is known all around Europe but it has a special meaning here in Finland. It is not a christian celebration and actually it is know for being a day of Finnish labour. Anyway nowadays it is not a celebration for a specific group of people, it's a celebration for kids, old people, students...everyone! :) We also have some traditional foods and drinks: we eat something that looks like a brain (!!) called tippaleipä, which is like funnel cake, and we drink sima, which is a mild citrus alcohol drink. Sima doesn't contain much alcohol but still you need to be 18 to buy it. The idea with sima is not to get drunk and you wouldn't even get drunk from the sima you can buy in the shops the idea is just to enjoy the taste. Anyway my mom makes the best sima I've ever tried!! :)

Sima

Tippaleipä

Our faculty's "official" vappu is only one week (wine tasting, parties... happenings for every week day) even if there are a lot of happenings all April. The whole Turku is full of students walking around in their overalls 2 weeks before vappu :)








Since the First of May is a holiday people celebrate on the 30th and they walk around wearing the high school graduation hats (it's funny how even retired people walk around in their already yellow-ish hats with a glass of champagne in their hands :)). Even one of the most well known statues in Helsinki gets an own graduation hat and thousands of people gather by the statue to watch her get the hat. Kids then again get big balloons and if the weather is good enough (which you can't be sure about since it's Finland) the parks are full of people having nice picnics on the 1st of May.

Helsinki

Now to my vappu celebrations:

~ 13.00 (1 PM): we went to the river to watch a rowing competition. Haha it wasn't a hc sports event and I do not know weather the audience or the participants were more drunk :D Dresscode was the overall :)

The sun was shining and  burned my face!

The eventful competition :DD

Balloons everywhere!

Every student walks around wearing the overalls :)

~14.30 I went home to prepare food and myself for the evening. Dresscode: something fancier, usually girls wear dresses and heels :)

Ready for the evening :)

~ 18.00 everyone (from kids to grammas!) gathered in a park, the Finnish speaking on the other side of the river and the Swedish speaking on the other side :D Then we were "officially" allowed to place the graduation hats on our heads and walk around the next 24 hours wearing the hat :D

The "official" part of the event

The park was full of people!

Hats & sparkling :)

~ 19.00 Vappu dinner at a friend's. Everyone had brought food and snacks and oh, how we ate (and drank ;))

~ 23.00 we went to our uni with hundreds of others to celebrate! (Still wearing the hats!). The good (or the bad :D) thing about celebrating at the uni is that we can stay there as long as we want so often the night turns into morning before the last ones leave... :D

The night turns into morning. I love the Finnish spring/summer nights!
So light after 6 months of complete darkness :)

The next day we, like everyone else, went on a picnic to a park. Dress code: the graduation hat, overalls and make up from the last night :D It was a great, sunny day but oh lord I was tired! At around 16 o'clock people started to walk home/somewhere where they could watch the ice hockey world champs: Finland vs USA. Unfortunately we lost. BIG time... Anyway the next 2 games were a lot better ;)

Picnic: Doughnuts, banana bread, meat balls, candy, grapes, chips, cookies.... ;P

Since the ice hockey world champs are on I'll try to watch as many games as possible and cheer Finland towards the gold medals! ;)

My summer plans

Hello!

Finally I have some time to sit down and write about how I am doing. Haha and I was so concerned about being bored in the spring since I do not have many courses and most of my friends are writing their bachelor's so they basically live in the library with their laptops. How wrong was I! I do not have more than 3 lectures per week to attend to but I do have a deadline in each course weekly (it takes hours writing one essay etc, god I miss Germany where we didn't have any deadlines, only the exam in the end of the course!!). I have also been working 3 days a week (no weekends), I have started to do some sports (finally I have been able to go running, oh how I love being outdoors!) and every weekend I have been travelling (only in Finland though). In the mornings I go running/for a walk, then to the lecture and lunch and then work and boom it's evening and I go to sleep! No time for boredom! :)

This weekend I didn't go anywhere but a friend of mine visited me :) We had a girls night, reunion of former kayakers! It was an awesome weekend with the best company, plenty of food and delicious drinks :) I am glad I got to know these girls while kayaking and I am excited to return back to the kayaking life; I got a summer job in a big shipping company's office in Helsinki so I'll stay in my parents house where I grew up (22km away from Helsinki city center), train the junior kayakers and possibly participate in some kayaking competitions in relay etc this summer! :) The week in pics below:

Haven't been much home... :D

Going for a run :)

This is where I run :)

Unfortunately I got a flue so my much waited training period ended up being very short. Well, now I'll rest and hope I'll be fit for VAPPU! Vappu is a traditional Finnish celebration, the best one if you ask me! I'll tell you more about it in the next post since it's a huge thing here and it definitively deserves an own post :) What I can tell you now is that we walk around on the streets wearing the high school graduation hats and enjoy the coming summer :) Unfortunately I forgot mine in Espoo at my parents' house but my mom kindly sent it so my vappu is saved!! :) There is no vappu without the hat!

The graduation hat! Still so white; the rule is that it can't be washed so you can imagine how the old people's hats look like since we party (hardy ;)) wearing those hats!:)

This is how the Finnish speaking Finns' hat looks like from the inside.
The Swedish speaking Finns have different colours in the inside.

 Oh, and I have enjoyed the company of my childhood friend (it wasn't unproblematic though since she didn't have a bottle opener so we had to watch a couple of youtube-videos of how to open a wine bottle without a bottle opener... (ei mennyt niin kuin Strömsössä ;)) and Finnish smoked salmon from the market :) Oh and we had a company excursion to PricewiterhouseCoopers which was interesting but the best part was definitively to meet friends whom I hadn't seen for a loooong time! :)

Oh so delicious fish!

Well the cork didn't come out and the wall got black....

Didn't help much...

I do not have much time left here in Turku and soon I'll start working full time (only for the summer). Now as I think of it I feel sad for not returning to the US.. But then again I won't have much spare time to think of what I am missing out of since I'll work, be a coach as a side of working, visit my my grandparents, stay in our summer cottage, go to a big concert and meet up with friends! :)
So all in all life is good and I'll have a great summer ahead - it's all about the attitude!! :)

Have a great becoming week dear friends and family! :*

Espoo and Helsinki

 Hello dear friends and family!

Last week I spent 5 days in Espoo/Helsinki and only 2 here in Turku :) I don't usually visit my family that often but now I had 2 job interviews and I had promised my sister to go and look for a wedding gown for her (or maybe she had promised me not to go with someone else; I am so fond of weddings that someone might think I am the one getting married :D).

Since there's so much to tell and a pic tells more than a thousand words instead of text I will only post pics from Espoo and Helsinki :)

My hoods :)

 

So pretty (and windy :D) up here!

A great combo: forest and the sea

This is where I always go running: the sea on the left and the forest on the right :)

Probably my favorite place on earth! So lucky I grew up by the sea

So relaxed

Judging by the pics you wouldn't believe Espoo is the second biggest city of Finland, would you? :)

My dad made soup from moose meat :)

Cinnamon roll, a traditional Finnish dessert :P

Unfortunately I do not have that many pics from Helsinki but here are some from the central parts. We have two harbors right by the city center (less than 2 km from the main street) and a couple of others a bit further away - the sea is really important here :)

A big cruise ship back there :)

A tourist in Helsinki ;D

The city hall is the light blue building behind the boat

Helsinki is on the opposite side of Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia. They are only 80km apart and Helsinki is pretty much straight above Tallinn. Actually it was built as a competitor for the Hansa city Tallinn. The sea is very important for us Finns and it makes a dominant part of the cityscape of Helsinki.

That was it for today, have a nice week! :)

Lotta :*