First days in Leeds

I am in Leeds. It is wonderful, weird, funny and so so absurd to be in this house and in this city. It's my third day here in the north and it has been so much fun so far. The school only starts tomorrow morning (or the welcome week at least) and we have been exploring the city without any expectations or prejudices. There's only been positive surprises and things have gone so smoothly. Even the first day, when I woke up at 4.30 am in Kirkkonummi, Finland, travelled to Helsinki-Vantaa airport and we flew to London Heathrow, taking a tube to Victoria station, getting in the bus to Leeds and finally after 5 hours on the weird noise making bus journeying through the English Midlands a taxi to Kelsall Terrace, went beautifully without any stress or frowns. No kidding! Even the lack of elevators in the tube stations or the 5 changes of a tube couldn't bring us down. At the end of the day we were so proud of ourselves with my fellow exchange student Kata!

So far it's been all about the city centre, Starbucks, getting to know our flatmates, Fish 'n Chips and some shopping in the sweetest and cutest little shops. This week's plans are going to be interesting. On Thursday we were thinking about going to the first gig, skip the welcome party and see Panic at the Disco. On Saturday we will travel to Manchester, to vote for the first (openly) gay president in Finland. And on Sunday it will be York, and I've been told it is really going to be beautiful. Besides doing all these fun things, I have to get myself a student MetroCard, English phone number and probably an English bank account as well. I will be informed about that tomorrow I guess.

Me having some Fish 'n Chips in the Nash's.

This was just a quick comment about the beginning, I will be wiser about everything sooner or later. Now I don't really have much else to say, but I am loving every single moment of it. Absolutely brilliant and the people are so polite, calling us "darling", "babes" or "love" all the time. I miss my friends and family, but not Finland. I will be interested to see how my feelings towards the cold northern home will change during this exchange. The chocolate in Finland is better for sure though.

Cheers

Time has come

In less than a week, next Sunday, I will pack my bags and fly to London. Then I will take a train or a bus and journey to the beautiful Northern England and the city of Leeds.
In other words, the 5 months period of my exchange starts very soon! The most interesting observation right now is that I am actually not panicking at all. I have been fighting with Kela and lost the battle (for now anyway), I haven't even started packing yet, I know I won't see my loved ones for a long time and other stuff like this is probably going to hit me in the face with an imaginary shovel when I get to Leeds and have time to stop and think for a moment. I'm not going alone anyway and there is always Skype..... So I can't really see the point of panicking right now. Instead I am concentrating on bringing all my music from the old lap top to the new one. Which I love btw, the lightest and most compact sized Asus there is. <3

I plan to continue writing this blog more often (weekly at least) from now on. I haven't decided yet about the languge I'm going to use, and it's possible some posts will be in English and some posts in Finnish. I will post pictures as much as possible, tell about the things I've done and places I've seen and also about the aspect of moving in a foreign country.

Right now I don't want to go deeper into it because I need to tell about the cult I've joined. I'm a proud member of the Wolf Pack, which happened on the Independence Day of Finland at the legendary Tavastia Club in Helsinki. I'm pretty mad I had not heard about Mr Wolf before the year 2011 because he is one of most inspiring musicians who can create unique sounds and musical worlds by multi-talented instrument playing and mesmerizing strong voice and huge stage charisma.

I recommend everyone to have a listen to the prince of folktronica, Patrick Wolf.