60°North

Norway

2009-07-20T23:22:00.004+03:00

Well, once again I will be back above 60°N, but this time I'm going to Tromsø to continue my studies in linguistics. You may hear more from me here soon, or maybe I will move elsewhere, but I will be posting photos on Flickr, and if anyone is still keeping up with this blog, you can be sure I'll update where I'm moving my travel blogging to. :)

It looks like Google has taken over...

2007-02-20T05:18:00.000+02:00

Well, I commented on someone's blog, and found out that in fact, Google has taken over another part of the world I inhabit online. I guess I can't complain about this, because it works out in my favor. Flickr, however, is not working out that way, and I apparently need to register a Yahoo account if I'd like to continue using it after March 15th. I'll probably register, but I just feel conflicted. I guess there's more use to it than other things, but it's just irritating to have to create a new account all the time for everything. But I digress.

Y'all are probably wondering what's been happening with me since I returned to the U.S.. Classes are going well, and I'm about to graduate, and what then? Well, perhaps more inhabiting the northern regions, but we'll see about that.

Since returning, I've adjusted to yankee life again. It's weird now that people notice when you get haircuts, or say "hi" to you on the street if they catch you looking, or comment about your socks, even if they don't know you. Bizarre! But, that's life, I guess.

The transit system here sucks to some extents, and I'd forgotten about that. It's inspiring me to maybe work on helping the situation, but in the mean time, here is a list of my woes, as this seems to be the proper outlet (so far):

No one seems to understand that the back door is for exiting, and the front door is for boarding, and will go at great lengths to get out of the busses via the front door, even if they were just sitting in the back of the bus, and were already doing a little backtracking and going back in the direction the bus came
MetroTransit uses up advertising space on promoting themselves (at train stations, say) that they could otherwise use for route maps, and useful bus-announcements
There are bus stops at every frickin' corner
Busses have little prestige, and people are afraid to ride them
It is not cheaper to use the bus if you use it more, unless you are one of those lucky University of Minnesota students
There are not enough express busses that run during the day, and outside of rush hour, so you instead get stuck on a bus that stops every block and anyone who wants to transfer to the next bus on time can forget about it.

Particularly an issue when cold. People generally hate walking two blocks, and instead take the bus

No one seems to understand that you are riding the bus, not looking to talk with fellow riders about what you're currently reading

That having been said, I am glad that there is a transit system. I do not grieve that there are no street cars here, because that would make me an elitist bastard (as if the above grievances did not do so already). In reality, I should just break down and pay for driving, and get my liscense, but with gas prices always on the increase (and in fact less in the U.S. than they really truly should be), it seems impractical. So, what to do? Well... That takes time.

Or I could just go back to Finland. I have to say, I like that option, but is it possible? Is it even what I want to do? Will I instead go to Northern Norway? Stay tuned. ... Don't get your hopes up. This is more of a travel blog, and well, travel is a ways off. ;)

Anyway, I am pretty positive about being back though-- I just needed to get that off my chest in this place, because I haven't complained about it here yet. Elsewhere, yes. Life is good, and I'm enjoying myself. Soon I escape my undergraduate experience, and whither then, well... Who knows.

Suomea puhuville: onko Overheard in New York-bloggi tuttu? Onko se niin mahtava, että samanlainen pitäisi olla suomeksi? Klikatkaa vaan tästä linkistä, ja nauttikaa. En ole koskaan lukenut niin parhaista juttuja suomeksi, ja se onkin hyvä resurssi jos tuntuu siltä, että kyllä osaa puhua suomea, vaikka lukeminen on ihan eri juttu. Tarvitsee enemmän helsinginpuhekielisiä sivuja, kun reittiopas.fi:n slangiversio ei vaan ole tarpeeksi.

The months have passed

2006-06-29T13:02:00.000+03:00

So, I've been quite lazy at updating here, but for some reason it requires a little extra creativity. This'll be brief, but I just wanted to say that I've been uploading photos at least. My mom visited for about 10 days recently, and so there are a few photos of Hämeenlinna and Porvoo (particularly the church, which recently burned down), and then before that of course, I went to Stockholm and Uppsala. Tomorrow I'm going on a brief trip to Tallinn to see a friend one last time, and also because another friend's residence permit expires and she just needs to stay here another 6-7 days before her plane leaves.

A lot of people I know, and the ones I get along with much better are basically leaving. Another friend is going to New Zealand for a year (which sounds awesome) to study. But, it looks like we'll all be back. I'd done a little ranting before here about wanting to try to stay, but then thinking more clearly about that the most simple solution seems to return and finish my degree (and make paying all that for education there worth it), and then maybe apply here for grad. school. I guess there's just something worth it here, that all the whining on Finnish political blogs seem to miss.

In terms of school, that's pretty much all over. I'd taken a Finnish class for the last month to occupy myself, and re-learned some useful constructions for more literary Finnish. They were really one of the few things I'd had left to learn to a point that I'm confident in them, and now I'm not afraid to use them. They're basically just things to make two clauses ("I know the man who ate the apple") and turn them into one ("I know the apple-eaten man.") Obviously, that's a simplified version of it, and it doesn't really work that way in English, because it sounds like the man has been eaten by apples instead (try "mosquito-bitten" for contrast), but I think it's a really cool aspect of literary-- or at least news-paper Finnish.

Thought I'd share this one. While my mom and I were travelling around the area, we ended up in a restaurant in Hämeenlinna, where I'd confused a waitress due to sometimes sounding fluent in Finnish. When she heard us speaking English she asked us, "Where are you from that you speak such fluent English?" Perhaps I should spend more time out of Helsinki, as the Helsinki-folk are more used to hearing foreigners speaking the language.

On a similar note, I'd been wondering what I've actually learned here in terms of language skill, and finally it hit me when I read a friend's email for a going-away party, filled with lots of bizarre onomatopoetic words, and slang, and realized that in context it was all no problem to understand. It seems that this group of people I've been hanging around has done a good job of indoctrinating me with all sorts of strange and non-standard words. Fortunately, it looks like I'm still understandable.

Anyway, time to get some errands taken care of. Check out the photos; and remember if there isn't a post in two weeks there are likely to at least be photos; sometimes I'm not feeling so wordy. Also, in the light of lack of posts, it's highly possible that I'm gone south for a while, so if I don't update again you can imagine I've probably ended up somewhere where it seems a lot of people from this country have gone before.

Travel!

2006-06-01T12:27:00.000+03:00

And now to Sweden. Be back Monday or Tuesday morning!

Karelian

2006-04-28T11:29:00.000+03:00

I don't know if I've mentioned it much, but Karelian is a language I really enjoy. Perhaps even my favourite. I started studying it about a half a year after I'd stumbled upon Finnish, before I'd started studying Finnish at the university. I guess what I like about it is that it's somewhat Finnish structure, but the sound system is a bit more expansive in ways I enjoy. Perhaps this is all a result of having studied Russian through high school, but who knows.

Basically, Finnish has very few sounds. My native language English, has around 22 consonants (depending on the dialect) while Finnish has 12 (or 13 if you count one that's more of a ghostly phenomenon than anything). As for vowels, well, English again has somewhere around 20 (surprise, not 5) much more than Finnish with 8. Perhaps there's something about the vastly different sound of Finnish that inspired me to learn it. Indeed, I'd also been studying Japanese in high school, which had a nice 18 consonants and 5 vowels.

Anyway, what makes Karelian different is that it has some consonants that Finnish (for the most part) lacks, such as those in chair, share, and beige. Sometimes, it even gains an extra vowel in some dialects. Without going too deep, it also has different rules for the sets of vowels that can be combined, and so it's more likely to find three together than it is in Finnish, in which vowels sometimes assimilate in speech if three should end up near eachother.

So, I managed to find out that there was a short week-long Karelian class being taught at the Finno-Ugrian Department (which the university claims I'm a part of with while I'm here studying abroad). The class was short, but in a way it reawakened what I'd known, and taught me new things so suddenly the Karelian gears in my mind have got to cranking. I also managed to meet someone who speaks Karelian through a photocopying snafu, and so we've been exchanging a few text messages in Karelian (the novelty of which will not ever wear off).

If anyone is curious to hear some Karelian click here to see the text, and then follow the speaker icon to the left of the title to hear it read. If things look funny, you might have to install some fonts to view it properly, so the ß displays as š, and the à as č, and so on. Anyway, the article is about the growing of flax, which as far as I have seen is also grown in Canada. There's more texts and sound clips on the site of poetry and so on, but this seems nice and neutral, and it has some triphthongs. There are some phenomena which the orthography doesn't capture, as well, so anyone listening that deeply can have fun trying to figure out what. Notice the Russian influence? ;)

Anyone else feeling more enterprising might try answering the questions at the bottom of the text:

ezim.: Konža pelvaš zavodiu kukkie? Pelvaš kukkiu heińaigah, a kukat ollah heliezet da sinizet.

Spring: Season of Light and Syntax

2006-04-08T16:01:00.000+03:00

Well, I've heard from some of the readership that I'm being lazy, so I thought I'd at least make a brief update and advertise the existance of yet more photos, which I do actually update with some more startling sort of regularity.

Spring is coming to Finland, though as I keep hearing from some of the locals, it's horrendously late and we're experiencing unseasonably cold temperatures (for more than 40 days, so far). I guess to me this seems warm, but then perhaps my harsh Minnesotan upbringing of camping out on the hot summer nights where the temperature nearly crawls above freezing have affected this.

Implicit in the idea of spring are longer days, which I'm really loving, even though the sun has only come out once in the last two weeks. Now the sun sets around 8:20PM, and a slight glow of twilight can still be detected through the city lights an hour after that. As I mentioned though, I've really only been able to enjoy this once so far, but I expect the next time the sun reveals itself for a whole day it will be lighter for much longer.

Classes are going well, or as well as they can go. I'm taking a Syntax course again, but more or less because it's in Finnish and I'd like that perspective in my understanding of syntax for the purposes of the paper I'm working on writing. Syntax, basically put, is about word order, though it goes a lot deeper than just that. Syntax is necessary for this writing, as a result of the strangely tricky task of trying to figure out what exactly is meant when some word is described as the "subject" of a sentence. It's easy in English, and a number of European languages as a result of linguistic theory having originated within their loving embrace.

Basically, life is continuing as usual in Helsinki, and that's precisely what I want. I'm glad to know that as well-- that I can like just being somewhere even though I'm not doing something amazing all the time. For the most part, I'm doing fine here, and though I do look forward to returning, it's a mixed bag of emotions, as I'd expect it would always be when you're living on two sides of the ocean. So despite this all, I've decided on a departure date, although it might be affected by a music festival going on in July. So, I guess we'll see what happens, but, I will be home in summer for at least a couple years. ;)

Been a while

2006-01-19T14:14:00.000+02:00

I'm quite alive and quite well, which I hope has made the rounds. There's no doubt that I shouldn't be, but not writing in a while, who knows what people might start to think. Basically, I've managed not to avoid feeling inspired to write much about anything, perhaps due to the weather or who knows what. It's not like there's been a complete lack of things to do, anyway, as I've been quite busy.

Lets begin by starting with the trip to Lapland, a few weeks ago, which there is photographic evidence of. The trip was quite lovely, and aside from one sometimes annoyingly chatty dutch girl (is this some sort of American in Europe cliché?), the weekend was much quieter than the city could ever hope to be. I guess what mainly interested me about the whole trip was just how quiet the world can be, and how much that can give you the (perhaps very correct) impression that you're the only person around for miles. Going outside, all you could hear would be yourself. Any vehicles on the road would make a noise for kilometers, giving anyone who wouldn't want to be seen (perhaps reindeer, for instance) pleanty of time to escape. As a strange sidenote, I also found my echolocating skills increaced greatly as a result of this, so I would have to use minimal effort producing a tongue click that could provide the necessary echos for me to hear nearby buildings, whereas in the cities it really is only a novelty item requiring a larger amount of effort to make a horrendously noisy sound.

North of the arctic circle, the sun does not rise. It is not completely dark by any means, but what light there is is quite unique and different. The whole of the region is stuck in a period of twilight, or dawn, or dusk. The word for such a thing is called kaamos. The word itself feels like it crawled out of the peat bogs, and mists of the lappish morning, which begins somewhere around 10:30, and ends thereafter at perhaps 2 in the afternoon (at least where we stayed).

Most of the time I was up there, the sky was enshrouded in clouds, leaving me with boring colours in the photographs I did take. The last day I spent there was an explosion of colour, much like Dorothy reaching Oz, in some way. Previous to this, unless you saw a house or two, the whole world seemed to be black and white. The sky didn't help at all, being gray and mudnane. Either way, this last day the sky was an explosion of colours, pinks and blues and yellows-- I've never seen such a thing (well, at least at noon). What more can one say?

So, while up there we managed to see the prerequisite reindeer and tundras, but unfortunately the biggest tundra was covered too much in artificial snow and clouds to get a clear view of.

On a rather strange note however, I spent part of the following day piecing together something rather saddening that I'd managed to avoid overhearing while on the train ride back. It seems that while the train had stopped in the middle of nowhere waiting for whatever reasons (as trains sometimes do), it had actually stopped as a result of running over two italian tourists and some of their dog team. The incident is supposedly related to a large amount of bad judgement on part of those leading the dog team "safari", as they call them. I guess one of the ironies in this is that the region I was staying in is named Kolari, which as I had heard before leaving, can mean one of the following: someone who shovels snow, or some sort of vehicular accident.

* * *

As some of you may know, José came to visit me for the first two weeks of January. José is a long time friend from junior high to college, who had been thinking of going to Japan, but for whatever reasons, ended up coming to Finland. I unfortunately didn't take too many pictures of the visit in general, rather some vaguely nice night photos of southern Helsinki, and some photos of the sea from a brief side-trip we made to Tallinn, in Estonia. Otherwise, you'll have to take my word for it that José enjoyed his visit. We mostly spent the time wandering around Helsinki, and (gasp) going to various bars, which I've subsequently decided I don't exactly like so much.

I also found that my skills in off the cuff translation from Finnish to English could use some work. While I may perfectly well understand what's going on, it may somehow be rather difficult to rephrase this in words more suitable to English ears. José on the other hand (and this must go down on the records, for history's sake) did manage to serve as my translator once while I was buying pants. The store owner spoke Finnish, and no English, but she also spoke Spanish. Since I couldn't use English to ask her something, José was there. The reason I mention this, is because I'm sure it will be an important point of humour when I am a world renowned linguist, speaking 90% of the worlds 8,000 languages, and so on and so forth. Okay, so humour me.

* * *

Classes have started up again this week, and while I haven't made it through the whole week yet, I've enjoyed what I have taken. More Sámi, which is unsurprisingly enjoyable, and then some Finnish courses on Finnish morphology and phonology, and then another class in Finnish on phonetics and phonology. These topics are rather well known to me, except for a few points (which I did find out on Tuesday), so there is actually a miniscule point for me to take these classes, aside from just learning the vocabulary of the field.

Being in a Phonology class again has been somewhat rejuvinating for my interests in linguistics , which had perhaps surprisingly stagnated for the past month or so. I guess I still don't know what I want to do, but my imagination is active again.

So in complete lack of summation, there are some more pictures posted in various places, so go check them out. Until next time, well, happy winter!

2005-12-31T01:31:00.000+02:00

It's been a while since I've updated, but I am alive, and Lapland didn't quite eat me. I'll write a longer post perhaps after New Years, but I wanted first wanted to call to attention a few new photos I've posted here.

Until then, hyvää uutta vuotta | happy new year | ná alya i vinya loa!

Vacation

2005-12-19T01:53:00.000+02:00

As mentioned in the last post, I'll be spending the next week up north. I have my phone, so I'll naturally be reachable that way. I added a few photos last night from the St. Lucia procession in Helsinki, as well as a few of me testing out a new tripod in preparation for having no city lights to bother me. So, go check out the photos. I'd post a link and thumbnails, but I'm feeling lazy and should definately be sleeping.

Good Yule!

Kävely keskustaan metsän teitse

2005-12-12T22:10:00.000+02:00

I spent my afternoon in the woods, as the sun finally came out. After a week of darkness, it was quite exhilirating, and I was unable to keep a strange sort of grin off my face. Initially, I didn't plan on spending a few hours walking from my hut in the suburbs to the center of town, but it just happened, despite the heavy book bag of stuff.

It's hard to really know what to say about it all, but what really blew my mind was the smell of forest, and the fact that this was in the middle of the city. I didn't really have to leave the forest until I was a kilometer or two from downtown, and spent a good two hours in it. Naturally, there are some pictures of this event. They can all be found here, but here are some teasers:

I'm feeling a bit lazy so there are no links to the larger versions in the usual fashion. Check the set that I linked above. There may be some form of comments on what I saw.

Note: Incase I forget to say anything else, I'll be around Kolari next week (leaving Dec. 19th, returning perhaps the 26th), enjoying winter at it's finest and darkest. Perhaps there will be skiing and other various winter festivities, but no one is really quite sure. I'm going with some friends from the Netherlands, and I will have my phone with me of course. I'd say something more about what's going on, but we're not really sure. It's looking like it may even be an adventure just getting from Kolari to our cabin, which is actually in Kurtakko. More news as things develop.

2005-12-04T13:43:00.000+02:00

Yesterday was one of the more varied days I've had in terms of activities. It involved the realization that I should probably be getting a winter coat very soon (before going to Lapland). This is pretty much where it started.

I attended the Climate March (Ilmastomarssi). The attendees met in one square, near the railway station, and marched down one of the main thoroughfares in terms of commercial business to the square in front of Tuomio Kirkko. This all took place after dark, somewhat not surprisingly, as the sun now sets somewhere around 3:20PM, but there was a lot of light. Alexanterinkatu, the street we marched down, was lit by stores and christmas decorations, and so on. The marchers carried lanterns, and the sheer presence of a lot of people really lightened up the night.

One of the funny things dealing with this march that would probably just get filed down as one of the things you'd only see in Finland is that, in addition to banging on makeshift drums, someone suggested that everyone turn on various cell phone ringtones. The result was, for lack of better words, interesting. I guess I'll keep it in mind next time I'm planning a rally.

After the march, and speeches by various people and political figures, I went to a café to study for a while. I've got an exam coming up for Finnish syntax, and it's really just nice to be able to focus on Finnish again. I reviewed for a while, and re-taught myself some of the participial structures that are used frequently in the newspapers. An example of this with English words, but Finnish word order could be something like: "The coffee-drunk girl moved to Iceland." Finnish basically allows you to take all the content of relative clauses ("This is a man who has seen too much") and pack them in before the noun they describe like they're normal adjectives. Thus, we'd end up with, "This is a seen-too-much man", or something like that.

Studying done, I left to meet up with a friend to go to a 'Space-cleaning'-entitled concert, which was a combonation of two bands: Hidria Spacefolk, and the Cleaning Women (beware, sound on that last link). I'd heard a bit of these two bands before, and particularly like the Hidria Spacefolk; but the Cleaning Women were really something to see in performance. They play on instruments they've made out of various household implements, like a clothes drying rack, all while dressed in a cleaning-women sort of uniform. What's perhaps amusing about that is that the band is all guys.

After the concert, we went to a late night pizzeria that was playing horrendously poppy techno remixes of originally non-techno songs, and called it a night. It never really felt all that late, when I got home at 4:15AM, but at that time, the sun had set 11 hours ago. After a while, you just lose perception of when you are.

Winter

2005-11-28T19:44:00.000+02:00

Winter struck with a fresh blanket of snow, that is now melting away under rain. Fortunately, I took pictures before that happened. Click the images for links to the flickr page; where you can find larger versions. Viewing the following panorama at larger sizes is highly reccommended:

All the introduction these need, I guess, is that this was my trip to the grocery store yesterday.

Short update: Oulu

2005-11-12T14:07:00.000+02:00

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.

Weekend

2005-11-02T10:37:00.000+02:00

I'll be in Oulu this weekend with some friends-- who knows if I'll have access to email, so if I seem mysteriously absent. Well, that's that!

Oil and Pine Needles on Pavement

2005-11-01T02:06:00.000+02:00

You must click it to see it bigger.

Taken on Oct. 21st, mid morning. More here, perhaps a more fitting size if the above link was too large.

The years to come

2005-10-31T13:06:00.000+02:00

Now that the time has changed, the sun sets around 4:30 in the evening, which is pretty much the latest I've ever seen it set in the U.S., where I live. In a way then, if I thought that was depressing in the U.S., you'd think I'd be in for something else, but now it's all new and to me left to be discovered. I think I've made it past October, which for me wasn't entirely entertaining. Now I'm making new friends and acquaintances, and having people to hang out with and speak Finnish (when I can manage).

I've also been putting more thought into staying here an extra year, or who knows, transferring to finish my studies. As I've learned today the entrance exam is only offered in Finnish and Swedish, which at the moment seems like a rather daunting task. On one hand, I've certainly got experience and have been taking classes in Finnish and completing exams and learning through Finnish, but an entrance exam?
I've never taken one in English. Who can be sure. I'm tempted to go for it anyway.

It looks like there are other options, such as applying as a free mover-- perhaps this would make it possible to gain the skills necessary to pass entrance exams. Yet another would be that maybe I should just go home for a year to finish my studies in the U.S., before coming back to apply in Finland, but to me, it seems like moving back and forth might just be too irritating. The reason I'm talking about this now is not just that I've been thinking it over for a while, but it's now on the edge of November, and admissions season is nearly beginning for the university here.

It's an interesting prospect. I guess right now, too, I'm stuck between departments in a sense. I've been taking more classes in the department of Finno-Ugrian Studies as a result of having nearly all of my linguistics training out of the way, and knowing generals of the field to be able to persue higher linguistic entertainment, but it seems like if I were to apply anywhere, it would be to the department of General Linguistics. I guess in that sense, it's time to check out what the department is up to and maybe attempt to get involved.

Like someone in my Sámi class had said, she wasnt too sure what the general linguistics department would have to offer me if I came, and I guess I seemed to have (unfortunately) found that, at least based on class listings, which basically equate to the class listings from home. I guess that's why I'm slowly falling into Finno-Ugrian studies in an official academic sense; it's where my interests lie and what I want to learn more about.

* * *

So, this quarter (which has just begun today), I'm taking some new classes on the history of the study of Finno-Ugristics, and then something on foundations of multidisciplinary research of Sámi. This semester also, I'm taking a course on the History of Russia until 1917, which has so far been very interesting. The instructor is attempting to explain Russia's identity, and so far this all seems very agreeable to me. Russia has always struggled with its own identity, trying to figure out whether or not it is Asian or European, and was clearly (for a time) some sort of imperial power. To me, Russia will always remain Russia, not exactly European and not exactly Asian.

I guess what is most confusing about the whole of Russian identity is that if you go with just the geographical area, Russia is not only an agricultural society, but a nomadic society. Spread all throughout the peripheral areas of Russia, there are (to list a few) the Tuvans, the Sámi, the Tartars, Evenkis, and Aleuts. Some of these people have according to the lecturer, had a large formative role in Russian identity, and to their credit, the Tartars and Mongols did manage to terrorize Russia for quite a long time. So, what is Russia? Guess I'll find out.

Gives me things to think over though. It seems like the lecturer has this sort of hope of infecting us with one of the things he sees as a point of russian identity, and that is sitting around the kitchen table discussing Russian identity. I could see it happening, for sure.

First snow. Vuosttaš muohta. Enžimäne lumi.

2005-10-26T03:36:00.000+03:00

All is well

2005-10-24T18:30:00.000+03:00

Not much has been going on in terms of travel of photography, so I haven't updated in a while. I've been linguistically busy though, and my brain is kind of doing some rehashing of how language works in general. I don't feel like my Finnish has radically improved, but its certainly getting better in some ways. One of the major things is that now I'm just understanding a whole lot more. If anything, my mind is also just adjusting to the idea of bilingualism.

Aside from musing over the aspects of adopting new languages, and musing on my thoughts about various grammatical oddities of the spoken language (I might talk about this in a bit), I've spent some of my free time working on a linguist-oriented Sámi grammar website, in English. Part of this was just me wanting to rework my thoughts on the grammar, and make sure I know what's going on, as well as the fact that there really arent any English language resources online that describe Sámi grammar, and I really feel there should be. If French can have millions of websites, why can't Sámi? Anyway, I'll post the link here at some point if anyone is curious, but since this blog is more public, I don't feel like posting it until I'm ready for it to be perused. I'm happy in a way that its given me something to use my web-design skills on, and to learn more of the programming language I'm writing it in, as well as more about the language I'm writing it on.

On another topic, I'm noticing a few things about what it means to learn another language in terms of style. In linguistics, there is talk about things called stylistic innovations, and how these may be inspired by certain people in the speech community. Style in this case is used to describe some sort of choice in pronunciation difference, or word usage that doesn't exactly affect comprehension, so much as helps to portray something about the speaker's identity, or their value system with regards to language.

One of my professors last year was talking about how there was a girl in his department, who he worked with-- a graduate student, I think-- who had somehow picked up an east coast pronunciation of words like orange and florida, despite that she had never lived there. He was amused to realize that this was because of him, as he grew up there and still maintains these pronunciations. She was picking this stylistic (and regional in this case) change up because he had some sort of high esteem in his speech community in that particular department. As I said, this hints at some sort of system of value-- she regards him highly, and thus affects his speech patterns.

I've noticed this in myself a little back in the U.S., when to my surprise, I picked up a speech mannerism that someone in my own speech community affected from time to time. It took me a little time to figure out who it was from, and when I figured it out I realized that the strangest thing about it was that the person in fact really irritated me. I guess it was humbling in a way to realize that, while being irritated with someone, I could still think highly enough of them to secretly pick up their speech mannerisms. Now that I'm in Finland, and speaking two languages (one of which I have to think about more to use) it's much easier for me to see what mannerisms I pick up, and perhaps who it's from.

Pleanty to think about! I love it.

Suomenlinna

2005-10-10T22:32:00.000+03:00

Okay, so I finally uploaded my photos of Suomenlinna.

Photography wise, the day was partly cloudy, so the light was pretty variable.

Merenranta - seashore - merenranda - mererand

2005-10-08T17:37:00.000+03:00

My Dad and his girlfriend Becky (though now I suppose I could be saying fiancée-- but that just sounds funny to me; she's just Becky now) returned for a brief visit in Helsinki before heading back across the ocean. We went out to dinner one night, and spent the afternoon on Suomenlinna, where they've been staying, on another day.

Suomenlinna is an island that is a short ferry ride from downtown Helsinki, and was an important fortress at various times in Finnish history. It was absolutely beautiful. It was a bit chilly, but there weren't a lot of people around. Aside from the construction it was so quiet. I never really noticed how quiet things can get until I visited Suomenlinna. Helsinki can be quiet in some places, but downtown there is really nowhere you can go for it to be that quiet. I did have one night where I wound up in an extremely quiet neighborhood, where only the sounds of buildings' ventilation systems could be heard, and the noises of the shipping docks in the distance.

I'm beginning to value the quiet that I do get even more, after living in a "big city". This is a funny term to be applying to a city that is half the size of my home cities in population, but there's something else about it, most likely because it's the center of a country. Anyway, I value the quiet I get. While on Suomenlinna I had this feeling that I was making too much noise while walking around on gravel roads. It was just kind of awe-inspiring.

There's something else about general look of Suomenlinna-- Becky noticed this too. Everything has this look of the north shore, in northern Minnesota. I think it has something to do with the fact that important elements of the area (at least along Suomenlinna's coast) are trees, sea, and bedrock. The north shore is naturally much the same. I definately have to go back.

This gave me some time to think about the whole Baltic sea, which is in a way central to my studies, and interests in Balto-Finnic (aha!) languages. Now, maybe I'm just getting emotionally affected off of my caffinated beverage, but there's something about seeing this thing that is in a way central to a number of the cultures you've studied. Maybe its that I finally get an idea what the words I've learned actually mean. It's a simple task, for instance to equate merenranta with seashore, but your dictionary wont tell you exactly what the merenranta is. Is it sand, sky and palm trees? Certainly here it's not; having seen Suomenlinna.

Even within this area, the coastline differs. According to Uldis Balodis, Livonians (a european ethnic minority living along the coast of Latvia) seem to define it as a mix of "pines, seas, and sand" and "memories of great storms and fish, summers and snow". When you think about it, it's amazing that not only may definitions of what things are differ from one coastline to one coastline on one sea, but even from speaker to speaker, even if by result of the addition of one element, or a set of memories.

So on that note, I'd highly suggest reading Uldis Balodis's site, and looking at the pictures in his 'sojourn' section. He has some amazing thoughts and realizations that relate to what exactly it is like to be interested in a culture and people that are in the process of vanishing. Other than his interests though, I have no clue who he is.

I guess I'd say more, but right now all that is on my mind is this. So I'll just say I'm still enjoying myself in Finno-Ugria, or Balto-Fennica, and all is well. I'll post photos of the visit to Suomenlinna sometime later tonight. I feel like writing more however, so maybe another post will appear at some point shortly.

Demonstration Photos

2005-10-06T01:02:00.000+03:00

Brief post, feeling too lazy to type much. I posted a few photos of the demonstration I went to (mentioned in a previous post). Unfortunately for the demonstration, the law passed. Fiddlesticks!

Tallinn

2005-10-02T20:45:00.000+03:00

It's Sunday, and I've pretty much spent a month here now. I was planning on making this post short, but now that I'm in the position that I've written it all and am editing it, I failed at that. Fortunately, this post isn't summarizing a month, because I don't know exactly what I'd say for it, aside from that its amazing, and I am highly considering (even the cons!) of relocating to this country.

Here are the news briefs. This weekend, I went to Tallinn (in Estonia), which was, in its own way, very beautiful. I wish my camera batteries had been in a good enough state to last the whole journey, but I'm thinking it was perhaps best that I was only able to take about 5 or 6 photos of it. Tallinn was quite the mix, from what I saw of it. It had a core of medieval "intrigue", and leftovers from soviet rule. I saw some beautiful sights, and have some memories that I would not exactly say are beautiful, but only served to give me a more complete picture of the country, and even the world.

In some places Tallinn is quite beautiful-- there are old churches, and cobblestone roads. Then there are the counterpoints, one of which was seeing children harass a homeless guy in a dumpster, outside of the old town. Who knows what he was doing in there, and though I couldn't understand what he was shouting in Russian, it was clear what was going on. I've finally, after getting my taste of Russian bureaucracy earlier this week, gotten a taste of what the soviet union's demise meant, exactly. That having been said, there are a few pictures (some very large) of the old town, that can be found here.

I seem to think that dreams are the brain's way for processing the day's events. Last night, I dreamt in Finnish, Estonian, English and Russian. Now, I'm not fluent in all of these languages, but that proves my point. I was working in a restaurant, taking an order in Russian, and discussing things with my coworkers in Finnish/Estonian/English. If you reorganize these thoughts, you end up with part of my day. Aside from talking to my friend, Maaike, in English, all I heard was Russian, Estonian and Finnish. I did hear other English speakers, of the Canadian variety, but its funny how accustomed to expecting to not understand things that even when speaking English with someone, I am slow at picking up that someone else is speaking it in the vicinity.

I got to use a little Estonian (asking the owner of a bookshop a question), and I got to take it in a whole lot. This made me quite happy, because I got to experience more of the sounds that I find to be characteristic of the language: it's unrounded /o/, (the one I said is like grimacing while saying 'oh'), and then its L and S, which are drastically different in some environments, and something I would term as palatized. I don't think I could briefly describe these without linguistics jargon, but lets just say that you try to say them while at the same time producing a Y (as in yes). The day left me linguistically satiated, and so now I have a new book to read: Eesti murded ja kirjakeel 'Estonian Dialects and Literary Language'. It's in Estonian, and I've decided I'll just try to learn to speak some of it from reading it, and attempting to speak it with a friend of mine who is Estonian. I have studied a little of it before, and picked some up on other occasions, so it's not like I'm that gifted.

Linguistics rants aside, I'm enjoying myself. I've also found, and re-stumbled upon some blogs of other people who have moved to Finland, giving me more fire to the ideas of doing the same. So, as a result of my internet travels today, I'll be going to a political rally for a little bit after class on Tuesday. The rally, basically, is in opposition to a law that is working its way through the Finnish parliament that is restricting of rights that Finnish law, in a way, already strives to protect. In part, it's about freedom of speech, but it deals more with freedom of information. Since I'm too lazy to explain it, there's more information available here. Though I am not a citizen, I feel that I should take some "ownership", or perhaps responsibility, for a country that I would like to live in.

It's funny how life works. One of the weirdest things that happened (Maaike shared this thought), is what it felt like to be coming back to Helsinki. It really hit me once I had taken the bus home. I read the whole way; I know where I should get off without looking. In this country things are where I know them to be. Though things are different, they are now familiar. I know where to drop my shoes, hearing Finnish when I arrived in Helsinki even sounded different-- the people were relaxed, not asking each other if they knew where they were. So, as we say, I came home, and relaxed. I guess that was the most shocking of all. Home. Heck, I know the word in Estonian: kodu. It's so basic, it's one of the first words I learn when I learn a language.

After studying a lot of languages, I've learned that we speakers of languages like to be as precise as possible, aside from when we are being deceptive and trying to soften the damage that our words may cause, or get the right reaction out of what we are saying (all of which I may have done in this account of my weekend). I was in the end able to center on one rather deictic word that's had a profound affect on me these past few weeks, so I guess the fact that it took this long to describe explains somewhat of what is on my mind. What does home refer to now?

I guess there really is no solid way to conclude this because, well, my mind is everywhere. Fortunately, I enjoy it.

2005-09-30T13:38:00.000+03:00

If anyone had the curiosity to know, I last heard Mark and Becky are in Narvik. They seem to be bubbly and happy, and enjoying their tour around Norway. I'm looking forward to many stories, as they plan to arrive in Helsinki some time Monday morning. I guess they leave sometime on Thursday or Friday, to head back to the states.

On the other hand, I'm nearing a month being here, and I'm loving it. As mentioned before, this Saturday I'll be wandering around Tallinn, in Estonia, and I'm looking in to going to Russia within the following weeks, hopefully to visit a friend from high school in St. Petersburg. I got a little taste of Russian bureaucracy today, when I went to the Russian Consulate of Helsinki, to check out the visa situation. I did find things out, and that's that I'll just need to try to go through a travel agency, but this was mostly as a result of calling my friend in Russia.

The experience with the consulate pretty much involved waiting around for an hour outside, with a bunch of Russians who were also trying to get in. The consulate is only open for 3 hours a day, and they only admit people who need to be in there for only the time they need to be in. I can understand the security worries, but it just made things seem more futile from our perspective, when, 20 minutes from closing, people would come out for smoking breaks.

Though I studied Russian for four years, a lot of what was going on was over my head, mostly because I've forgotten what I had learned. I did managed to gain some sort of knowledge of the situation through a woman standing in line with me. We spoke what I would call finglissian, perhaps? Russian+Finnish+English. She said that basically you need an invitation to visit the country, and we mourned the situation of standing in the queue: "20 minutes left, and 200 people", she joked.

I left a few minutes before the consulate closed, mainly because I didn't see getting in, even after waiting an hour for just that. Two of the girls who had been standing in front of me walked off in a huff, shouting "fascists" in Russian, at the security guard who came out to admit someone. Among the other comments I was happy to realize I understood were polite insults such as: "Not a gentleman!" When a man who had basically forced himself into the embassy, came out, and didn't stop to explain what he had found out therein. "Нет джентлмень!" Okay, so maybe they borrowed the word for gentleman.

So, another strange day. They're what I look forward to, fortunately.

Changes

2005-09-24T13:50:00.000+03:00

I just made a few brief changes to the commenting scheme, so now you don't need to have an account with Blogger to comment. However, since I've been getting a few comments that are spam (I delete them), you'll have to verify the word that you see to post a comment. So, free reign! Enjoy!

2005-09-24T13:06:00.000+03:00

It's been a while since I last updated. No particular reason, aside from being distracted with this new country. Now, I'm actually a lot less busy than before, and partly because of the fact that I'm now taking one less class than expected. The class, Academic Writing (in Finnish), occupied my Friday morning, and now that it's gone, I've got 4 day weekends until the beginning of November. So, believe it or not, this has made me think that I should perhaps find some work. No clue on what yet, but we'll see what crops up.

Until then, this means I've got some free time for weekends. So, it looks like I'll be going to Tallinn, Estonia, somewhere around October 1st with a few friends, and then perhaps St. Petersburg, sometime in the middle of October to visit a friend from high school who is now studying in Moscow-- depending on, of course, how long it takes to get a visa. Even if I miss her in St. Petersburg though, I have to go. Another friend suggested bringing someone who speaks Russian well, because things suddenly become cheaper. I don't think my Russian has remained at the point where I'd get discounts for it, though.

Anyway, a lot of the past few weeks here has just been getting more and more adjusted to the place. I've got a few more acquaintances who speak Finnish much better than anything else, which is good for me. I guess I'm a lot more relaxed about what languages I use here now, since it would be nearly impossible to use just Finnish. I have even observed people who both speak Finnish fluently switch to English for a few sentences. In a way it just seems natural of people who speak more than two languages to use whatever they will. Sometimes the point is just more easily expressed in one or the other, or both.

Over the past few weeks I've also gotten to see how well I fit with this city. I may not be a native (don't exactly intend to be), and I may not speak Finnish amazingly enough yet to conduct all business in it, but there's just something about how it works, and it mostly is with regards to transportation. Since I don't drive, and can't, this has always been an issue in the U.S., but here it's no problem at all. If I stay out late downtown with friends, there's no worry of not getting home. In the U.S., I would start getting worried about going home (if I were providing my own transportation) at somewhere around 11, since a majority of busses just stop running completely. Here, there really is no worry-- though, I try to head home before 2, when the busses cost more.

There's something else to be said for the people here. Maybe I'm jinxing myself by saying so, but I just feel so safe here. It's unbelievable. Part of it seems to stem from the fact, that almost no one looks at you while you're walking down the street. It seems like people tend to just keep to themselves. Though the Finns (at least in the city) in truth are not as quiet as everyone says, or indeed as much as they say, no one wants to bother you. Even Greenpeace will quietly let you pass if you don't make any sort of eyecontact. I am beginning to suspect that the assorted stories I've heard of people being harassed meant that they weren't exactly trying to blend in. No cause to completely let my guard down though, it's just that there is so much less of a worry of anything. Anywhere.

Speaking of quiet, anyway. Here's what I've gleaned off of these city-living Finns. They are not quiet if you are dealing with them in a more social atmosphere, though it seems like if it is just a business sort of thing, or stopping someone on the street to ask for directions, they may at first be confused as to why you are speaking to them. On the other hand, lulls in conversation are more acceptable, though again it seems to be whether or not you know someone well enough. In the U.S., we have this idea that if you are spending time with someone, you have to be talking constantly, or else something is amiss. In some situations it seems like it holds true, that if you have nothing to say, that is precisely what you say.

A professor told a joke in one of my classes playing on this sense of silence-- so here's the version I remember:

Two farmers are travelling toward a bridge over a river that lies between their respective towns. The bridge is the only one connecting the two cities, and when the farmers and their carts get on the bridge, they realize that there is not enough space for both of them to cross at the same time. Neither of them wants to turn around, so that the other can pass, and neither of them are terribly enthused about speaking to one another, and so after a short time, one of them takes out a news paper and begins to read it.

When a half an hour passes, the other farmer climbs down and walks across the bridge: "When you are done reading that news paper", he says, "Could I have it for an hour?"

The class I heard this in was titled The Finnish Way of Life, and seeks to figure out what exactly it is that is Finnish. So, during the first two lectures the professor has been going through what the Finns have to say about their history, and what they consider to be important in order to knock down some stereotypes, and shed light on what exactly is Finnish culture. So I guess I've never really been confronted by a shocking amount of silence, aside from various times when I'm walking down the street. I may see many many people, and yet none of them is saying a word. It's something that's a bit hard to pin down, but I'll get it. If indeed I have somehow picked up some of this quietness by the end of my year here, I'll thankfully have a lot to say when I return (but please don't freak out too much if I don't).

So, in summary. I'm really enjoying myself. New photos of what's been going on here have been appearing on and off, but I've not said much about it. Some more could appear during the next few days too, when I next get around to checking what exactly it is that's in my camera.

Classes begin!

2005-09-12T15:14:00.000+03:00

I had my first class today, and it was kind of a riveting experience. It was one of the classes I am taking in Finnish: Introduction to North Sámi. I learned a whole lot today, and it seems like every day of class will be like this. It was kind of funny since I missed a week, yet had had a jump start on everyone in the class since I had studied a bit of the language outside of class before. At the beginning of class I didn't remember much at all, but by the end it had come back to me. Don't worry though, I won't be posting in it for a while yet.

North Sámi, however, is a language that is spoken in Northern Scandinavia. It is often referred to as just Sámi, Saami, Sami or Lapp, however there are about 7-11 different languages that are just as unintelligable to eachother as various languages in Europe such as French or Spanish. One can still understand a little, but complete comprehension is not easily possible without some sort of training. North Sámi has the largest amount of speakers of the rest of the languages. It boasts a small literary tradition, and in fact some radio stations. If you want to hear some Sámi, I'd reccommend going here, and clicking on Guldal Audio. It requires RealAudio.

Image from Lysator Academic Computer Society

So, that was an interesting experience in and of itself. Not only was I remembering what Sámi I had known, but I also found that I understand way more Finnish than I expect. At least, there's something about hearing it and being able to see someone talk that helps understanding. Visual cues really seem to help, and especially since it was a familiar topic (linguistics). So, I've picked up some linguistic terms today as well, which I find to be quite useful. I guess the funny part is, I couldn't explain what I learned today in Finnish for some reason-- I think it's going to take a bit to actually acquire these linguistic terms for my own personal use. Hearing them in context means that I don't exactly have to know them to understand.

So that's that. Otherwise, I now have a short grammar of North Sámi to peruse and be happy with. Such resources are ever so difficult to find in the U.S. It's quite something else when you're almost dying to get to a café so you can do your homework for class.

Who knew drainage pipes could be so interesting?

2005-09-10T18:49:00.000+03:00

My Dad and his girlfriend, Becky arrived safely in Helsinki on Friday afternoon. Turning the tables, I went to pick them up from the airport and helped them get going to a hostel. Most of the hostels in Helsinki are booked, perhaps because of Oktoberfest, so it was somewhat difficult. Thus, they stayed on Suomenlinna, which is a fortress on an island south of Helsinki. I hear the stay was magnificent, so I'll have to check that island out before it gets too cold.

Today, we went for a walk around Helsinki, and I took some time photographing various things that stood out to be interesting. So, check out the photos page, as there are somewhere around 20 new photos. This should give you all an idea of what Helsinki can be like. We went through the less commercial areas, and those commercial areas still maintain some sort of historic feeling, but they're a bit more "glamorous" in terms of shops and signs posted everywhere. The less commercial zones are a lot quieter and peaceful to walk through.

So, this is just a brief post, but check out those photos. Know you can do it in form of a slideshow by clicking here. You can also pause the show at any time, to get more information about the photos by clicking on them. From there you can somehow even see larger versions. Here's a teaser from today's walk:

Photos

2005-09-08T17:58:00.000+03:00

If you look to the right, there's a link to some of the photos I've taken of this place. There are a few up because I haven't had a whole lot of time to take pictures. Now that things are relaxing for the most part, more should appear, as I'll have more time to experiment with this camera. Enjoy!

Week 1

2005-09-07T19:14:00.000+03:00

I've been here, in Helsinki, for a week now, so it seems like it's a good point to sum up my experiences. It's hard to believe it's been a week, in a way, because it has been so filled, and yet, I'm pretty much fresh off the boat. I'm not alone, fortunately. I've pretty much been spending most of my time around a friend from school, Jeni, who was in my Finnish class, and ended up on the same plane as me, and living in the same appartment complex. Since we both have a good sense of humour, we've managed to turn things that would be horribly anxious moments into things to laugh about. There are pleanty of these, when there are many moments where our newness to this city makes itself known from time to time.

Otherwise, we fit in. Jeni has been told she looks rather Swedish, and as for me, looking as Norwegian as I am, there is no problem. Most of the other guys are tall and thin, and sometimes even more tall and thin than I. I've managed to get away with just coming off as someone who is just non-specifically foreign, rather than specifically American, which is not exactly something I've been trying to wave about. No offence to my own country of course, but, some of the things it has been doing in the international community don't exactly make you proud of your national identity when abroad. So many people have just had to ask me where I'm from, so I'm glad it's not clear. I've even been asked if I'm Swedish too, and mainly just based on how I speak Finnish.

Getting acquainted with the city has been quite fun, so it seems like it will be a joy to live here. The city center is filled with things to do, and yet everything is in such a small space that it's easy to walk around the city, or perhaps take the streetcars for the longer distances. Honestly though, I've only been on one street car line my whole time here, because I've been walking most of the way around downtown. This means I've been walking from 7-15km a day, or so it seems. This seems like a lot, but when you're walking around, the first thing on your mind isn't the distance you may have to walk (since that's an unknown), but the plethora of new sights that the city has brought.

Orientation is almost over, which is very very fortunate. Orientation for international students has been a rather trying experience. It's organized, but just barely. Many of the tutor group leaders don't exactly have a grip on what they're doing, and there is a lot of double talk on what is true of various facts. Despite this though, I've been surviving. I've managed to find things out on my own, and without help of a tutor so that I'm not feeling lost when things are explained to me. A lot of this I've been doing through Finnish, which doesn't always make things clear, since I don't feel I have a steady grasp of it in all situations.

Classes were scheduled to start the same week of orientation, which has been a big point of confusion, so, I haven't attended classes in order to make sure I'm getting the information I need, and the things done that I need done. Now most of these things are done, so I will be starting classes on the following Monday with the rest of the students. Fortunately, most of the professors in the Finnish department are aware of this, unfortunately, a large part of my classes may well be in the Department of Finno-Ugrian Studies*, so this means I'll get to be very good at explaining where I was last week, because I don't intend to speak English.

Speaking of which, it's very interesting to see where exactly I am with my Finnish skills. I'm pretty good with conversing about day to day subjects-- where I've studied, why I study what I do. I may not say things perfectly, but I've got no fear of this. More specialized vocabulary, such as, that needed to buy cell phones, isn't exactly present yet, and, I've found that when I get tired and hungry at the end of the day, the Finnish doesn't flow as well. Today however, I got to use it much more than I have yet, and partly because I just forced people to speak it with me by using unambiguous greetings (hei and hey can sound the same), and by responding in Finnish when the opportunity allows.

I've found a number of people who are much more confident in their Finnish than they are in English. One of my roommates, for instance, is from Russia, and has, for some reason (I haven't asked why), decided to focus more on Finnish than English. In my tutor group, I've met a girl who is Estonian-Finnish, and thus speaks both fluently, so she prefers to use Finnish with those who understand it. Also in the tutor group is a Latvian girl who studies Finno-Ugristics to some extent, and said that, when they were deciding on what languages to study, she was much more interested in studying Finnish, because it seemed more interesting than just doing what everyone else was.

I quite understand this. You can always get weird looks when you tell someone you're studying Finnish (unless they're linguists, in which they'll be inordinately interested). You can also get weird looks from the Finns themselves. Without exception, if you go anywhere and talk to people for a little bit, the subject of why you are in that place will come up. Here, everyone emphasizes the question a little differently-- even if they themselves have come here to study the culture and language. "So why exactly did you come to Finland?"

No one, save the international students who have come here for the language and culture, understands why anyone would maroon themselves in a country of 5 million, and in doing so, maroon themselves further by learning a language that is so remote from the rest of the major european languages as to not be useful, unless you visit Estonia. Most of the international students of course**, realize that as unimaginable as it is to want to go to study Finnish, there's something that just sucks you in. Maybe its the culture. Maybe you love the heavy metal. Maybe you just want to go to a country where public drunkenness isn't a huge problem. Either way, you're trapped, and soon you find yourself addicted to all sorts of bizarre suffixes that the language has to offer.

So, during the past few days I've learned easy ways to freak people out, especially if they speak a language that has 5 million, or less, speakers. Tell them something you like about their language. I've gotten strange looks from Estonians, telling them I like the sound õ (which is basically pronounced by saying 'oh' while smiling or grimacing), and then for Finns, you just tell them that you've come here to their own country, to study their own language. Sure, maybe I could be studying something that would overall be more useful in the long term, like Mandarin, but to me, Finnish is more personally useful, since my interests and hopes for things to do in the future reside here.

* * *

Fashion is quite different here. Or, if not exactly different, quite obvious. A lot of people down town seem to have their own style, and they all look damn good in it. Particular styles do not by any means stick to one particular age group. Thus, 50 year old women may dress in styles similar to punk-- which is a style (somewhat centered around a type of music) that focuses on tweed, brightly dyed and maybe spiked hair, chains, and clunky boots.
Diversity is quite amazing here. Like at home, I don't go a day without hearing somali, but, for its size, Helsinki is incredibly diverse. It's half the size of the Twin Cities metro area, population wise(so, around 500,000 people) , and yet because of its location, and perhaps partly due to Finland being a part of the E.U., Helsinki is incredibly international.
I've heard more languages the past week just on the streets than I could probably sit down and list, but it's not rare at all to hear, in particular, Swedish (Finland's other national language), and Russian, and then a mass of European languages. I think I've heard some Turkish and Italian, but I've definately heard Latvian, and Estonian, Castillian Spanish, French, some sort of Chinese, German, Korean, Japanese, and Serbo-Croatian (though perhaps something else eastern european-- my ears aren't well attuned to slavic languages). Then, there are a bunch of languages that I haven't had any idea about.
Quiet. Okay, maybe not always. Downtown Helsinki is filled with the noises that any large city has to offer, and then even more than some. There are trains, busses, streetcars, cars, people, boats, churchbells, construction noise, street musicians (even opera singers), and then of course pidgeons. It's not all noisy though-- going a little ways out of the center of the city you can find peace and quiet. In a neighborhood where some of my classes will be, Kallio, is very quiet. Also, the neighborhood in which I live-- about 7km north of Helsinki, is rather quiet-- aside from the construction workers outside of my window, but they dissapear in the evening, and hopefully will when winter begins.
Nature. Compared to my home state, there are somehow more trees here. I'm horribly shocked by this, because I thought I'd seen a lot of trees in a city. Downtown, I feel safe, but when I leave, the nature just errupts and suddenly I'm in a forest. My walk to the train, when I take it, includes a nice and quiet walk through a forest for 1km or so, and to the north of my appartment there's a forested area with paths, that nicely buffers the sound of traffic from the nearby freeway. Helsinki, in all its noise downtown, can be incredibly peaceful. The wildlife is different too. Among the various song birds, there are also european squirrels, magpie, and even I've heard there may be some hedgehogs around my neighborhood.

So, I guess that's a vague summary of my week. More has happened, but this is a good start. Also, I hope there's some idea of what Finland may be like. So, I'm going to work on getting some photos up soon, so the descriptions can make more sense.

A new perspective

2005-09-07T09:32:00.000+03:00

I'm farther north and east than I've ever been in my whole life.

Since I am a bit pressed for time, I'll just leave this first entry with a map. The dot on the left would be my home, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota; and the other dot on the right is Helsinki. The thick black line marks my new residential latitude: 60ºN.