I'm still around :)

Hello hello,

It's about time I write something else here. 'Cause I'm definitely not still in Finland...

Like I said, my camera is broken, but I will find some photos from other people (without their permission... hope it's ok).

A while ago (before the snow and all) I went on a kayaking trip with the Boe paddling club. I got lots of practice in waves and learned to go over a small drop. I paddled solo canoe a little too, it felt nice to be in a canoe again. Yesterday the paddling club had julebord (a group Christmas dinner and party). Someone made a video about the trip to Nidelva and I will show you the link if it gets put online. I've gotten to meet so many awesome people in the paddling club!

Fall kayaking!
Picture from Ann

For weeks now we've had about 20cm of snow here and it's been consistently cold. Unfortunately there isn't quite enough snow for it be tracked for skiing. It's really depressing for a skier to go running in 20cm of snow. A 15min drive out of town there a place with some ok ski tracks where I went last weekend. I also got to go on a weekend trip to a cabin near Rauland. It was a fun trip with nice people, and Rauland is beautiful! But we weren't really able to go skiing. I know I'm complaining a lot about skiing-- I'm sure there will be plenty of time for wonderful snowy and warm skiing later in the year. It's just that the races I want to prepare well for are in the end of January! That's coming up quickly, especially if I'll be traveling a lot during the Christmas holidays. So I would like to have some good training until the end of January.

Photos from a real Norwegian hytte! :

Beautiful view from the cabin in Rauland.
Picture from Marie

The cabin!!
Picture from Marie

Thanks Mille for letting us stay in the cabin, your awesome guitar skills and the delicious food!
Picture from Marie?

Ann always has energy!
Picture from Marie?

Annie and snow, but no tracks
picture from Marie

Doing the wave to passing cars :)
This was during one of our many transport problems...
picture from Ann/Marie?

Walking for a few hours to catch the bus :)
Picture from Marie

With one of my classes I had a field trip to Morgedal, a famous place for skiing. There was a great ski museum, the Olympic flame, and we walked to where Sondre Norheim used to live. Everyone was playing in the powdery snow.

Morgedal (view of the valley on the way to Sondre Norheim's house).
Picture from Aaron

Here's a bit of a video they showed at the museum:

And on American Thanksgiving day the school arranged a Thanksgiving dinner for all the international students. People also brought food from their home countries. I thought everything was delicious. But it was funny to watch people try pumpkin pie for the first time and make a face that said, "this is WEIRD, yuck". It was a nice party. The internationals students this semester are a great group and we've had lots of fun together. It's sad to think that soon about half are leaving. But I feel glad that I'm not leaving yet, and that I'm not homesick, and I that I chose correctly when I decided to move for the whole year.

Thanksgiving celebration
picture from Randa

Because I'm not leaving, I don't have the feeling 'Go do something, it's the last chance'! Instead I'm settling in and doing relaxing at-home stuff like baking and watching movies. That's a little embarrassing to admit, you know. But realistically I'm not always on trips... I just don't blog about the normal at-home days. Actually I am feeling antsy and wishing for a trip, but now is the time where I really have to remember that I'm a student and do my homework! OR ELSE!

Maja in Finland

Hi! Here I have some pictures and stories from my trip to Finland Oct. 11 to 15. If you're surprised that I traveled to Finland, well, so am I!

It's not a country I've dreamed about visiting or even thought about often. So perhaps it's strange that I chose to go there.

I had a week off school (just one class that I missed) and decided to go to Finland and visit Jane, a friend from high school who is studying in Jyväskylä this semester.

Going to a country I had no previous plans to visit, almost no preconceptions about, and no plans to return to was more or less a new experience for me and really made this trip unique. I looked at everything with extra interest and wonder because I thought, this is likely the only time I'll see this!

Finland is in the group of Nordic countries like Norway, but I thought it was quite different than Norway! As you probably know, Finnish is from a totally different language group. But it was more than that. The land was very different: everywhere mixed forest of small trees, many lakes, and rolling land. Then, the history of Finland is more connected with Russia than with countries located west and south of it.

The people, landscape, and of course language had a unique Finnish feel to it. Sometimes in Norway I feel like I could be in Canada or anywhere, but when I was in Finland, I really got the feeling that now I'm in a different country. Not somewhere that could be anywhere, but definitely in Finland!

But this short description doesn't do the country justice, so if you'd like to know more about what Finland is like you can read about it somewhere else. :)

Jane was a wonderful host and friend. She's a great tour guide and cook! Thanks again for everything!

It was nice to spend time with someone from home- with similar backgrounds from living in Edmonton, we sometimes responded to things in similar ways, and it felt good to have someone understand my background and perspectives without having to explain them. (Again, I'm not very good at writing about this. Sorry for my lack of eloquence. Back to some concrete happenings....)

I stayed with Jane in Jyväskylä for 4 nights. One day we went to the nearby city of Tampere to sightsee, and I also spend 6 hours or so sightseeing in Helsinki. Staying with a "local" and experiencing student life in Finland, I felt like I got a much better idea of Finland than the typical experience of being a tourist in Helsinki.

View of Jyvaskyla and its lake from a tower

lake

Jyväskylä surrounds a lake and there are trees all over. In the residential areas, it's almost more of a forest with houses in it than a city with trees in it. The university is large and has many historic buildings. Jane lives with one other person in an apartment about a 15 minute bike ride away from school. When she arrived her apartment was unfurnished. Now I really appreciate that I didn't have to look for furniture for where I'm living!

Her apartment has these brillant dish drying-rack cupboards!

Trying a new Finnish food: viili. It's like yogurt, but stretchy!

I was surprised that the students usually eat out for lunch and dinner, but it makes sense because there are lots of affordable and delicious restaurants, and the university has many cheap cafeterias. I definitely enjoyed the cheaper food prices to have some nice restaurant meals and spend time in cafes. I also went a bit crazy at a sports store sale and got lots of great training clothes. Seeing one- or two-digit prices again made it easy to forget that euros don't equal Canadian dollars....

(Telling you about Finland makes me realize that I haven't written much specific about my own university, town, food, prices, and so on in Norway. I'll get around to that soon.)

Classroom

I went to two of Jane's classes. A history class, where we watched a really good Finnish movie set during WW2 (I forget the name...), and a sports class, where there was a guest lecturer: the Secretary General of the Finnish Antidoping Agency. Now that was a subject I was excited to hear a lecture about!

I met a lot of other friendly international students who are Jane's friends. We went shopping, to a sauna (of course!), and watched a movie. One night, we went to a bar and were convinced to join in a speed-dating event that happened to be going on. Now that's something I've never imagined myself doing...

Walking paths and distances to any destination!

It was clear that physical activity was big in Finland. There are paved walking and cycling routes everywhere. Almost everyone in Jyvaskyla uses a bike for the main form of transportation. It was also normal that almost all the bikes were quite old and in unreliable condition! Thankfully, I was able to borrow one, saving Jane and I many hours of walking.

Jane and our bikes

Bike parking area in the main walking street

One morning we (happily) woke up to snow, and it stayed on the ground for days!

Brr!

Jane in the snow on the way to school

The common themes in sightseeing in each city were churches and tall observation towers.

Jyvaskyla observation tower

Spot the tower!

Tampere observation tower

I thought seeing the cities and surrounds from above was the best part of sightseeing!

Tampere from the tower!

Amusment park





A "beautiful waterfall" someone recommended we see. Bit of a letdown, haha...

Giant ninja helmet or garbage can?

Oldest train I've been in yet

One morning I checked out a sports complex built in old underground halls from the military. It was awesome. (I think I have a weakness for underground things. They are sooooo cool!)

Entrance hallway

Map of the complex

On the last day I did some sightseeing in Helsinki! All I knew about what to see was from the tourist brochures and Jane's advice. Oh, or does this count?

Unfortunately, my camera finally broke down just before I arrived in Helsinki. It's been working less and less reliably for the last half a year, but why did it have to die just now??! So now I have no more photos to show. It's been almost a month now since it broke, how will I write interesting blogs without photos? I will take some from other people maybe...

The highlights were:

An exhibit of bear statues painted by different countries outside a church (the picture is from the website)

A church inside a huge rock (Jane took this picture when she was there)

EDIT: I forgot to write that I also went to the Olympic stadium, of course! And went up the tower to have a nice view.

Suomenlinna, a fortress town on some islands which you get to by ferry. It was nice to see the harbour a bit on the way there.

Then I (unexpectedly) missed my flight back to Oslo. That sucked. Like a million bricks of guilt being thrown down onto my head by angry birds. I don't think we need to go into details. On the plus side, I'm really becoming skilled at taking short naps on the floors of public areas.

Now here's a trivia question for you: Who is a famous person (in the sports science world) who lives in Jyväskylä?
If you leave a comment with the answer I'm thinking of, you will win... the prize will be that I'll write a blog post on a topic of your choice.

Bye until next time!

Sightseeing in Oslo

Hi! October 8-10 I went to Oslo for some sightseeing!
(Friends wanted to plan a trip there, and I was flying out of Oslo to go the Finland on Monday, so it worked out great to spend the weekend in Oslo first!)

Meet the friends I went with: Terri (the other Canadian from Augustana), Kirsten and Aaron (Americans and we are in the same Norwegian language class), and Jonas (Danish, my housemate, good at cooking, and in the outdoor program).

So now here's some stories and pictures from the trip!

Terri and I hitch hiked from Bo to Oslo on Friday morning and it worked out really well. It took about 4 hours instead of 2 on the train. We got picked up quickly and people were really friendly. But they were surprised that we were hitchhiking. For example...

Maja: Er det rart --nei, jeg mener uvanligt-- aa haike i Norge?
Person som kjoerer: Nei, det er RART.

(When I asked if hitch hiking was uncommon in Norwegian, at first I accidentally used the word 'strange' instead of unusual. The driver answered that the first word I used was correct: it is weird to hitchhike.)

We stayed in an OK ho(s)tel (but read the reviews here, the bad ones are quite funny) ... All accommodation in Oslo is very expensive so we were happy enough to get this room.

5 for the price of 2 ;)

The first thing I did when I got to Oslo was take a nap. Not very exciting, but I had to charge up my energy for the beginning of my holidays.

Aaron at Bari Pizza for dinner. This is the best restaurant in Oslo I tell you!

Later we did some night time sight seeing in Aker Brygge, a neighbourhood on the waterfront with fancy cafes and apartments with cool architecture.

Aaron, Kirsten and Terri riding a polar bear. So cool.

Terri is the master of great poses.

Artwork outside the Nobel Peace Center.

The next morning I went to the Folk Museum (where many buildings from different places and times and different types were displayed). It was impressive to see so many different buildings, but a little disappointing that I could only look from the outside.

This church was made in 1200 of only wood!

Then we went to Vigelandsparken. This is definitely my favorite place to sightsee in Oslo (and maybe in any city?!). I think I could go there again and again and be interested every time! The fall colours made it extra beautiful. It was also cool to see some people doing parkour and some breakdancing in the park.

The park is full of people sculptures is all sorts of poses.





Look carefully and you can see the Holmenkollen ski jump on the hill in the background.

The ski jump was where we went next. Looks like it's coming out from the clouds!

Here's a view of the biathlon range and stadium (the finish area is on the right behind the building).

And a view of Oslo from up there. Lots of construction still and the train line not quite finished . The road up to Holmenkollen was totally renovated compared to when I was there last summer, they're making every look nice ;)

Saturday evening we cooked some dinner in the ho(s)tel and then went out looking for nightlife. We were turned away for being too young (!!) a lot of places, found a nice cafe-like pub where we talked with people who had immigrated to Oslo.

On Sunday we went to the Edvard Munch Museum. I really enjoyed looking at his artwork. You know, I haven't really been in an art gallery ever before.

The Scream

We walked though a botannical garden and enjoyed the sunshine.

A less than successful group picture...

Terri and I playing with the leaves :)

In the evening I saw a strange Norwegian movie in the movie theatre. It was a true story of a ridiculous bank robbery in Stavanger.

I spent the night reading my ecophilosophy textbook and trying to sleep now and then. I began by sneaking into the hotel we had stayed at for a few hours of sleep on a couch in the common room. I went to the train station at 3:30 am, but it wasn't open yet. After a bit of a worry about whether I could get to the airport for my plan at 7, I saw a few other people waiting outside for the first train at 4:45. Then the station opened before I got too cold and I continued my short hour naps there, on the train, in the airport, and on the plane to Helsinki. OK so Finland will be the next post. Bye!