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! ;)  

 

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.

"Cold showers are for psychopaths"

As the imaginary reader can see my blog doesn't look pretty at the moment, which is consequence to me deciding to change the appearance of it and pretty soon after that getting bored doing it, which leads to the fact it looks horrible. I hope the imaginary reader can forgive me.

I haven't been writing anything here or anywhere else for couple of months. After this week I have realised many things, come to understand some things and thought about, well, things. I could say I have seen the light, but probably more accurate expression would be that I have seen the black holes of this life. I've been reading quite a lot, some blogs, some books, some articles, and have come into a conclusion it's all a big scam. Of course I have known this for a long time, but knowing is not the same as realising. It's like being in a huge crowded room and seeing all the people but not really having a conversation with any of them particularly. When you go to a silent corner of the room and stop seeing everyone and instead you really see someone, a person, a human behind all the commotion. Then you can say you are paying attention, realising instead of passively knowing.

However, seeing the life as it is, the personal truth, is worth nothing to any other living soul than you. Sometimes you see a person (you most definately admire already) say something that opens your eyes. It's all lies though, and you're own individual thoughts and ideas do not exist. There's no need to get sad about this though, because we still have thoughts and ideas, we still have values and heroes and ideologies. If it's all based on a lie does it really matter? The counter argument is based on a lie as well.
I can't help it but I am quite extreme supporter of philosophical relativism. But I don't like pre-chewed theories, I got my own teeth for that. I think ideology is a matter of the number of habits and manners you have adopted. Without the daily routines we are anarchists!

Anyway, I don't have anything to say that anyone else but me would be interested in, so let's smoothly change the subject.
The long expected IAMX gig was a week ago, and I got no words to tell how huge it was. Without art there is no soul, and I feel like my soul is doing much better after seeing and feeling what I saw and felt.
I must say I fell in love with Janine Gezang. No kidding!

   

Only thing you can rely on is that you can't rely on anything

I got 2 weeks off from work which is a very needed break indeed. Besides being happily on a winter vacation I am more than happy to announce that I was accepted to the Leeds Metropolitan University to study tourism, hospitality & retailing and event management for the 5 months time in spring 2012. I just got all the motivation that was missing coming back to me. I've always played with the thought of living abroad and now I can actually try for real if it's going to be as good as I've imagined. Is the grass really as green as I've thought it is in England? At the moment, when it's still about 8 months before I leave, I pretty much feel this is the dream coming true and nothing could possibly disappoint me! As I've heard people's experiences and stories about all the things that can go wrong and become an issue I am still not afraid of going. I'm going to take this as a exploration and an adventure. I got certain expectations but hell with them! What happens, happens and I'm aware everything is not going to be going smoothly. But that will just make it all more interesting and exciting :)


When I return to Finland, I expect I can say "Bloody 'ell matey" and sound convincing :D