First Day in Oulu

September 5, 2009

I am now almost all the way unpacked in my single room in Oulu. It only took about 20 minutes to do since I didn’t bring a ton. The room is nice. Though I have fluorescent lighting, the fixtures make it a little more homey and interesting. The walls look very clean with a sort of patterned plaster. Half of the room is painted a light minty green and the other half is white. The floor and dresser/desk were a little dirty, but I got some dish soap and towels to clean the dresser/desk (no sign of Lysol wipes yet). I heard a dog barking in one of the buildings earlier and I was pretty jealous when I found out you can have dogs. I miss Noah 

I just got back from Pizzeria Baabel with the 3 other kids from UNCG, Rebekah’s kummi, a guy from Africa and another couple of Finns. We got a whole huge pizza for about 6 euros! We split it three ways. Now THAT’s a good price. I’ve been meeting lots of people and I cannot remember ONE name. I met a boy named Mikko so that was easy and is like the most common name in Finland. I also met a boy named Joho (pronounced yo-ho) and I only remember that because he made fun of his name. Some of the Finns were making jokes about how if someone speaks proper English they must either be American or Irish. I’m not really sure where that came from, but yea. I met some guys from Mexico and they seemed really nice. I think there’s this sort of unspoken North American pride thing going on. Other exchange students get really excited when they find out you’re from America. They say things like, “You’re FROM there!?” like the streets are paved in gold or something. Oh man, I do miss America. And it’s only been ONE day. I think what frustrates me the most about this place is that I have no way to contact anyone. The only way I can meet up with someone is if I happen into them on my way somewhere or if I linger around enough for someone to see me. I just really want to get my internet working so that I can start using skype. I apparently have to go to the store and pay to get my internet set up… I wasn’t too thrilled to hear that. I’m trying to save money every way that I can.

I’m so exhausted. I’m making myself stay up, though, so that I will maybe sleep through the night and be more adjusted to the times when I wake up tomorrow. It’s only 9:11pm right now so that means it is 2:11pm at home. Well… technically they say 21:11 but I’m not quite used to all these new ways of doing things yet. I learned some words today. And I forgot most of them. The most important word I learned was “kiitos”. It means thank you. Oh and if you want to know what it’s like to go grocery shopping, just imagine shopping based on the pictures in the advertising only. I bought a jar of grape jelly today. Well, I assume it’s grape jelly because there were little round purple things on the front and it felt pretty solid.

They don’t, however, carry peanut butter. And if they did carry peanut butter I would only know that it was in fact peanut butter if I saw a picture of a peanut on the front. So, I plan on living off of jelly sandwiches.

The best feature of my room (the thing that sets it apart from any other room I’ve seen yet) is that I have a little electronic box above my door that has an illuminated green running man in it. It’s just like the man you would see in a crosswalk, except his legs are lifted a little higher… kind of like Ussain Bolt perhaps. I think I m going to name him. He stays lit even when I turn the lights out. I think of him as my protector.

There is also a button on the inside wall above my light switches (which are low and, well, different) and it says “PALAUTIUS” underneath it. I press it every time I come in my room and nothing happens. I’d tell you what it means, but I don’t have internet to look it up. So for now I’ll just keep pressing it.

They are having a thrift sale where they have secondhand items and some things that other exchange students left behind at the school Monday and Tuesday at lunchtime. I plan to go and see if I can get a good deal on a bike. Apparently a secondhand bike from a store would cost anywhere from 40 to 85 Euros. I’m trying to pay like 20. Haha. I have a booklet of things that Alli gave me to look over about orientation and stuff and I am just too pooped to read it. I may read it tomorrow though. I have to meet at the school with the other 500 exchange students on Monday at 9:00am. So, I plan on really taking the Lord’s day tomorrow and resting. Hopefully I will have some time to make some lists of things I need to get done, things I am going to have to buy, budget out what I need, and go over some of my orientation material.

The last thing I have to say is that when I got into Finland, I was excited to see if the toilets flushed in the opposite direction as they do in America. Well, those Finns have done it again because it does neither! It’s more like a cascade of waterfalls in every direction going straight down. No swirling necessary. It almost looks messy.

For tonight, I think I am done. I am going to organize a few things and lay down. I hope I can get to some internet soon. Being in this little box has me begging for an outside world. And it would be nice to hear some good ole American accents