Waiting for the day to end

Cheers everyone! And also hyvää ystävänpäivää kaikille! :) There's no point saying Happy Valentine's cause it has a different meaning in Finland and I don't really care for the that kinda message right now cause i miss my friends...
Althought gotta admit that I totally enjoyed seeing how huge Valentine's is in England. Since we came here almost a month ago, it was everywhere, card shops for only Valentine's day cards, all restaurants had so many special offers, especially if the man would propose. The ladies get their chance to propose and get free cake and a glass of champagne on the 29th of February. Ladies can be happy it's their turn again after 4 years....

I have been ill for the last 5 days now and today when I woke up I believe I felt slightly better although not much of an improvement. Last night I tried to skype with a friend and it was really painful since my throat was hurting so much. Thanks to my lovely roommates special magic tea it went away so I could get some sleep. That's probably a habit, not unexpected one though, that I will take home with me. I do enjoy tea in England, but I also think it has a lot to do with the climate and the houses. You just don't survive here if you don't drink a lot of tea, every day, morning and evening. I've always been a coffee person, but for the past 3 weeks I've been drinking more tea than coffee.
We were just talking about the climate yesterday, and how people who are not here do not understand how the English weather can be so cruel. Alright, it's not snowing, it's not -39,2 C. However it is in it's own way the most horrible weather you could think of. I do feel it. It's like if the whole winter in Finland was just one everlasting October.

Wish I could get better soon, cause we have so many plans. But I guess this was bound to happen. Moving in a new country and stuff, you will eventually get ill. 
Anyway, the last days I have been mostly watching movies and sleeping, which has been really boring. Yesterday I managed to get out of here and went to have lunch with my fellow Finn who is actually also ill at the moment. Today I have been heöping my roommate with cleaning since her parents are coming to visit this weekend. I finally got rid of the spider webs on the ceiling. Now I am terrified cause I know they have a thing for me and there will be a revenge for distroying the webs. And they looked kinda cool on the brick wall....

I'm gonna look at some pics I could share in this entry. I haven't taken any for the past 5 days.

 

 Not a very good picture of the Town Hall of Leeds

 Some more Leeds, on a sunny day couple of weeks ago. I really think it's a beautiful city.

 This is Oliver the Ferret! And his favourite activity, attacking your feet and when you try to get his teeth out of your toes he just gets more excited. Love him!

 A beautiful bridge at the canal. And some twat trying to ruin the view.

 There it is again. Looking a lot nicer. Beautiful Leeds <3

Culture shock

What is a culture shock? Does it happen to all of us? I know I am in England and it's not really that different compared to our culture in Finland, but there are lots of small things and some with bigger importance, that separate us from each other. I have been here for almost 3 weeks now, which isn't much, but it feels like months. Of course it might be that I am still in this honeymoon phase when everything new seems so exciting and interesting. Anyway, in my mind I feel like I have settled in about million times better and faster than I could have thought. I have always known I could be living in the UK, and when I applied to the exchange program, I didn't even think about any other choices than the UK. And here I am now, and it's just like I had imagined.  Only in a positive way.

I do not miss Finnish culture at all. I've wanted to get out of there for a long time, and I wonder if something is going to change about that in these next 4 months. I really wish I could learn to love Finland and appreciate all it has to offer. I don't hate it either, not seriously, and I know my relationship with my home country is like a rebel teenagers relatioship to her parents. You are a little embarrassed with them, sometimes hate them, but you are still part of them and can't escape that reality. However, there are more and better gigs here with cheaper tickets, nicer people, polite strangers, better sense of humour, more interesting culture, more interesting history....
Today I almost bought another tickets to Placebo concert to Edinburgh. It is so much harder to miss the gigs when you are there where everythings happening! Anyway, to make myself forget about that I will just go to the museum of Royal Armouries and be a tourist with my camera all afternoon :D 

Anyway, some pictures....

 There's lots of shopping possibilities, what ever is is that you may want. This is from Leeds. Corn Exchange.

 This pic is from the way to Manchester almost 2 weeks ago, but it actually snowed in Leeds and the whole country last Saturday. There was about 5 centimeters of snow, and the buses were not running, nor were the taxies. As proper Finns we walked to the bar....

 

This is from the beautiful city of York. Last thursday we visited the original York and it was totally worth it! Such a gorgeous small city, with a stunning old town city centre. I can recommend it to anyone who loves small weird shops, narrow streets and cute houses. It is so English in a good way, and if you go there, don't leave before the sun has gone down. The streets are so beautiful when it's dark. 

 From the River Ouse

York at night, you can see the York Minster at the back.

Happened at the Headingley Campus...

It is starting to feel like home in Leeds. Definitely don't feel like I'm on a week long vacation anymore. The uni started yesterday and it surely was interesting. Everything's so different here.
An hour long lectures, no breaks, wandering around the Headingley Campus trying to find the next class room. Everything seems so basic and simple so far. Some of the modules seem really interesting, but at least one of them, although level 5, seemed like i've taken it before - when I started studying tourism... I have a feeling it is going to be quite easy semester, however, it was only the first day and this place is full of surprises. It was interesting to see how the lecturers were so worried about us and wanted to make sure we are following everything. We had this feeling they are really treating us like we are a little stupid and don't speak any English. But that is understandable I guess, and expected. There are only three of us exchange students anyway: me, Kata and a girl from Switzerland. Rest of them are really young English people, mostly girls.

We had this little depate going on about tourism in Haiti yesterday. It was really short but sure interesting to see how English people talk at the lectures. In Finland we are so matter of fact and polite, we don't interupt or say "that is horrible thing to say" or anything like that. The culture is so different when it comes to that. First the lecturer asks if anyone wants to share their opinions about the subject. No one says anything, and it was exactly like us Finns. However, 10 seconds later, someone opened her mouth and the arguing started. Much easier job for a lecturer to get people talking than in Finland. We don't wanna say anything if we aren't 100 % sure of the correctness of the answer. It is really funny to see the differences like that.

Besides that I don't really know yet what the studying is going to be like. All I know is that I'm loving the creative industries course, and in the Valentine's day we are taking a field trip to Sheffield and see the creative industries business in action. I am so looking forward to that!

 This is Headingley Campus. The massive and typical English buiding is James Graham Hall.

Manchester! We went there on saturday, just to vote for the presidental elections in Finland. No way I am gonna miss voting, especially now when my candidate is on the second round. Also seeing Manchester sounded pretty awesome, it is actually smaller city than Leeds, but there were TRAMS! I thought I wouldn't see a tram here but I did! And I know where I am going now when I need to go to do some serious shopping! We didn't stay for long this time, but definitely gonna visit there more often in the near future. Most importantly my vote went for Pekka Haavisto! ;)