Finnish Autumn

 

Terve!

Days go over into weeks, and weeks go over into months. I have been in Finland for two months now! Finally time for a new blog post.
Autumn has arrived and the Finnish trees have been transformed into a beautiful symphony of yellow and orange shades (so far do my poetic sentences go haha). Unfortunately, the days are gray and rainy, and we have not seen the sun in the past few weeks. In addition, there is a chance of snow next week! I can not believe it ... October and snow ... But it's also not that hot. Usually the temperature fluctuates around 6 to 7 degrees during daytime.

.... I wrote this 3 weeks ago (where is the time). The situation is different now. Last week there was a beautiful white blanket of snow over the city of Joensuu. On the coldest day it was -10 degrees. Since Saturday, everything is melting again, and next week, the temperature can rise up to 6 degrees (after which the days get colder again).

My study requires a lot of time right now. I have finished the Finnish language lessons (minä opiskelen suomen = I'm studying Finnish). It's really an impossible language to learn, haha. For example, a word in Finnish has another exit when you're inside something(I'm home) than when you're outside (I'm outside the house).
At this moment I'm following a course Python. Python is software in which you can program. I will not go into the technical details haha. Furthermore, I read the book "cognitive neuroscience of language", and I get an exam about this book (some day in the future). I also have lessons like psycholinguistics (psychology and language), neurolinguistics (brain and language), text corpera (a database of texts), and speech research, where we work with a program (Praat). Next week, the course 'Clinical Linguistics' starts, and soon we will also get lessons from two guest lectures (Autism and Neurodegenerative Language Disorders). At the end of November, we will go to Helsinki to a neuroimaging center. I look forward to it!

I would also like to improve my Russian. I am not following a course, but there are several "language cafes" organized. This is not really a cafe. It's more a fancy name for groups that learn a language together. Together with some others, I get lessons from two Russian people. It's much fun (очен хорошо which means 'very good')!

Russian Party

Besides studying, I have enough time for fun things. Unfortunately, there is not much for sightseeing in Joensuu. There is therefore not much to see hahaha. At least not if you compare it with Moscow. However, there is a lot of nature to see and to photograph, but when it's raining you're more likely to stay inside. In addition, there is little time left to go for a walk unfortunately. But my parents will come to Joensuu and then I can finally see some things here in Joensuu (good excuse haha).

One of the things I can not forget to mention of course, is that I'm went for ice swimming last week! There is a club called the 'Polar Bears'. You can go there for the sauna. It is close to the lake and it is therefore intended that you swim in the lake befor the sauna, in between the sessions, and afterwards. We did this last week while there was snow outside and there was a thin layer of ice on the lake ... Brrrrr. But it was such a great experience! (video on my instagram)

With an international group, you must also do some international things of course! For example, we have had an international brunch. Everyone had prepared a dish that they eat in their home country. So we could taste the international cuisine. We also had a sushi and pizza evening at our home with some of our international friends. Also, we once roasted marshmallows and sausages over a campfire next to the lake of Joensuu. Last Friday, two Russian girls organized a Russian party with vodka and all kinds of nice things to eat.

International Brunch