A Week in the Life of a Walrus

   Hey guys, and welcome back to Seikkailu Suomessa!  Now that I have been in Finland for about a week, I just wanted to give you guys an update on what it has been like.  When I got off the plane at Helsinki-Vantaa, I met with one of Aalto University's tutors and she took me to get my apartment keys.  I spent most of my first night unpacking some of my belongings and sleeping.  After that I decided to venture out and see what was around my apartment.  There are a few restaurants in the area, as well as a popular grocery chain called Alepa within a few minutes of the apartment, and there is a shopping mall about 20 minutes away that has anything you could need.  I currently have two roommates; one is named Denis and is a Bulgarian who was born and raised in Spain, and the other is Jules, a native of the Ivory Coast who goes to school in France.  The set of apartments that I live in may not be the fanciest, but they are cheap, and the previous tenants have left behind things like dishes, pots, pans, blankets, pillows, ethernet cables, and some cleaning supplies, so its nice that I haven't had to go and buy these things.  The only thing that isn't too nice about living here is being about 20 minutes outside Helsinki's city center, but that is fairly minor, and I'll explain why later.  Now that I have given some basic information about my living situation, I'm gong to describe some of the other elements of life as university student here in Finland.

School:

   This is the Aalto University School of Business's main building.  The School of Business is divided into a few different buildings and a library.  As of right now, I haven't been able to explore many of the other buildings, but I plan on doing that sometime this month.  The main building doesn't look like much from the outside, but inside it is very nice, with multiple computer labs, a cafeteria, and various printing stations around the building.

  As I mentioned in an earlier post, Aalto University has split its Spring semester into three different periods, with the current period being Period Three.  Right now I am taking my Inventory and Supply Management class, which so far has not been too different from the way that USC conducts its classes.  The main difference is that my class lasts about 90 minutes to two hours, which is about twice as long as a normal class at USC.  Given that I have only experienced one course at this point, I can't comment too much on what all of the classes at Aalto are like, but as the semester goes on, I will provide updates on what they are like.

AYY, KY, and Social Life:
   You are probably wondering what AYY and KY are, and to start, I'll talk about AYY.  AYY is simply the student union that is responsible for helping all of the students at Aalto University,  They also organize events for students, and provide tutors for the exchange students.  Once you decide to attend Aalto, you are required to join AYY, and there is no exception.  KY is a part of AYY, but is an organization that focuses on helping business students rather than the entire university.  They are responsible for arranging most of the events that I will be attending this semester, including a Finnish Sitsi party that I will discuss in my next update.  KY is also the reason that the word walrus is in the title of this post.  When you join KY, during the first year you are called a walrus, which my tutors explained is because the Finnish word for walrus is similar to another Finnish word relating to education and it simply devolved to walrus after time.

   As I mentioned, if you are an exchange student at Aalto, you are assigned tutors that are there to help answer any questions that you may have about Aalto or Finland in general.  Each set of tutors have a group consisting of about seven to ten students.  In my group, there is only me and another girl from the United States and the rest come from countries like Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Singapore, Canada and Malaysia.  During our first day of orientation, our tutors took us on a tour of the campus and took us to get our travel cards, which are the best way to use public transport in Helsinki.

   Last Tuesday was my first cultural event in Finland, and it was called the Lux Festival.  Basically it is a festival that allows artists from around Finland set up displays involving light in some way.  There were about eight exhibits and some of them were fairly strange.  My personal favorite was the fire-dancing show that took place on the steps of the Helsinki Cathedral (shown on the right) in Senate Square (Senaatori in Finnish).  Some of the other displays were interesting, like a projector that displayed a multitude of colors, and to experience the display, you put on these white goggles and moved your head around (Shown bottom right).

After the Lux Festival, the next event that was held for us was by KY last Friday.  They invited all of the exchange students to their building in Helsinki and organized a party where we could learn about KY and get to know each other better.  One of the biggest traditions they introduced us to was the overalls, essentially a jumpsuit that you wear that displays what school you are from and apparently is quite popular among Finnish and other Scandinavian students.  For KY, our overalls are dollar green, which denotes that we are from the business school and that we are students at Aalto University.  By going to different events that KY holds, you collect patches that you can attach to your overalls.  There are also three rules that must be followed when you wear them.
1. You do not wear you overall to class, you can wear them anywhere else but not to an academic           function
2. The only way to dispose of you overalls is by burning them.
3. You can only wash your overalls if you are wearing them while jumping in a fountain or by                 permission of at least two executive members of KY.

Exploring Helsinki:
  Since I am only taking one course right now, one of my favorite activities has become to simply roam around Helsinki and see where the different roads take me.  Helsinki may be the capital of Finland, but it is relatively small (only about 500,000 inhabitants in the city itself) so walking isn't too difficult.  I have been trying to go different directions each time I decide to explore or if I have already gone a certain direction, I try to go farther than before so that I can slowly begin to find my a around the city.  I also only have classes on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, so there are a couple days where I don't have to go to class, so yesterday, me and my roommate Jules decided that we wanted to go see Senate Square again, and check out Suomenlina, a giant naval base off the coast of Finland.

The first place we visited was Senate Square.  When I had last visited the square, it was fairly dark and the cathedral wasn't open yet, so we decided to use or precious daylight to check it out.  The cathedral towers over the square and provides a great view of the surrounding area from the top of the steps.  While Finland is officially secular, most of the people follow the Lutheran branch of Christianity.  Inside the cathedral there is almost nothing.  It uses the minimalist style, which is characteristic of Lutheranism, and the only two features that really stand out in the church is the large organ found above the entrance, and the mural that is at the front of the pulpit, depicting the Virgin Mary and Jesus.

   After checking out the church, me and Jules decided to then head to the Market Square (Kauppatori in Finnish) to catch our ferry to Suomenlina.  Unfortunately because it is still in the dead of winter, there weren't any market stalls open at the square, so I will have to go there to check it out when it is busy.   We boarded the ferry and set out to the island where Suomenlina is located.  I was surprised when we arrived to discover that since the decommission of the militaristic portion of the fort, it has been turned into a residential area.  The fortress itself is not Finnish, but Swedish in origin and unofficially finished construction in 1750.  Following a war with Russia in the earky 1800's, the fortress fell under Russian rule along with most of Finland.  As with Kauppatori, most of the sights and museums were closed on the island, so I will be going back in the spring when they are open.  The picture on the right is the view from the Artillery Row of the fortress (and just for refrence, it was about 3 P.M. when I took the photo).

Challenges:
   While I have had a lot of fun here in Finland during the past week, there have been a few difficulties.  The biggest problem I have run into so far is simply the language barrier.  I do not speak any Finnish and although most people do speak English here, it is difficult to get around or buy food when you can't really understand Finnish.  Another problem I had was dealing with public transportation.  This was a fairly simple problem to fix, and despite living 20 minutes away from the school, it is not as daunting to ride the bus as it was once.  Over time, I have started to learn the bus numbers I need and about what time they arrive at their stops.  There is also a travel card that you can purchase that allows to pay for either a one month or three month period and it allows you to travel on any form of public transportation in Helsinki without having to pay outside of the fee for the one/three month plan.  Culturally I haven't experienced any issues, but considering I haven't been here long, I'm sure I will run into a few later this semester.  The weather has been another issue, and one that I can't solve.  It is usually either snowing or raining, and with the cold temperatures, it creates an abundance of ice.  So far I have yet to figure out how the Finnish can walk or drive on the ice.  There is also a distinct lack or sunlight right now.  As it stands, the sun will start rising at about 9 A.M. and will start to set at about 3 P.M. which means that you only get a few hours of full sunlight.

That pretty much does it for this update, I will post again next week describing the Sitsi party and whatever else I encounter in the next week.  Until then, go Gamecocks!