Short update: Oulu

I didn't get much of a chance to create any photographic evidence of my visit to Oulu, as I was only there for a short time, and it was mostly dark during my visit. This isn't that the sun is setting drastically earlier, just that the timing was a bit off. It was a small city, but I thought it was rather nice. I'm glad to finally get a little travel done in Finland, because I've been wanting to see more of it. Until last weekend, the farthest north I'd been was the Helsinki-Vantaa Airport.

It also gave me a chance to use Finnish, and so I didn't speak English the whole weekend, which managed to drastically improve my comprehension, at least. Or so I feel. The whole purpose of this little jaunt to Oulu was that a few friends of mine were going to someone's housewarming party, who had just moved from Helsinki to Oulu. While at the housewarming party, I horribly shocked this girl I met, in the usual manner. She'd been listening to me telling someone about learning Russian (or something like that), and interrupted asking how long I'd been in Finland. No one here believes its possible to learn Finnish outside of the country, which is almost true, and so when I told her that I'd been here two months, her jaw dropped. Naturally, this meant everyone listening in had to ask why and how I'd been studying Finnish, and the truth came out.

I really really enjoy this. Normally, when people hear me speaking English, they assume that I can't possibly speak any other language, and are horribly shocked when exegencies lead to the conversation turning to Finnish. This isn't to say I always sound amazing in Finnish, because I don't, but it's just absolutely fun to use, because its such a basic element of being human that its impossible for someone not to notice that you've been learning Finnish and must not be too dim of a bulb.

So, Oulu was nice.
Classes have started up again, and I'm really really enjoying the Russian history course. Otherwise, I've been reading a bit of Mari grammar on the side, which keeps me entertained. The Mari people live around the volga, and there's a surprisingly large amount of them, and more of them than there are Icelanders. The language otherwise has my favourite vowel, which is also found in Russian: i. Or, at least that's the phonetic transcription for it. I'm too lazy to characterize it, but you can learn all about it here. I think there's even a sound clip.

Time to run though. Just felt like saying I'm alive for anyone in the U.S. who might have been wondering.