Distraction

I'm using this as a distraction tonight. I am not going to rant about the fact that yet again I have no means of cooking food, except a toaster, but it has brought a few things into perspective. Food is a big part of my life: my family lives in our kitchen. We spend more time discussing food than probably anything else and I definitely should be studying that (or product design, instead of textiles – not complaining!). In my life it is a means of relaxing, being creative and social. So to be stripped of that function, one that I usually rely on so heavily, has brought over some what of a dark cloud. I guess it's been an interesting challenge to eat more than just bread, but with my spice cupboard lacking anyway, it's not been easy. I've been here a month and I've already gone through 1/2 of a bottle of Tabasco – that says a lot.

The education system here is great. I am doing a course called 'Get Finternational' where you get points for doing workshops and attending events. Today I had a two hour workshop where we had to rate Finnish music and discus Finnish art and design. I also get points for going to Lapland and there's a class where you can make a blueberry pie. They're happy as long as you're learning, it almost doesn't even matter what, as long as you're expanding your mind!

Which is why on Friday 23^rd we got out of class early to go mushrooming! We were looking for edible and dying mushrooms, which is related to textiles, so it's fine, we were learning. There's not a lot to tell you about: we wandered around some rather nice woods for a few hours, I didn't pick very much just because most of them were a bit eaten and I don't really like mushrooms anyway. I'll leave you with the visual.

Making crispie cakes for Noora's cocktail party wasn't easy without a stove, but our fabulous neighbours came to the rescue once again, letting us melt some mars bars and chocolate in their kitchen. Rachel and Scott came over to get ready too, and they helped us find out that you can get a pizza that's too big to eat from just outside my window (next to that sweet ass second hand store) for about 6e – that's right, one of the things that's actually cheaper than at home! Taking the cocktail theme very seriously (and being a little too influenced by Mad Men) we quaffed and rolled our hair. Safe to say a good night was had by all. 

 

Sunday night was Nordic movie night. We watched 'Let the Right One In', a Swedish movie (in Swedish) about a little vampire girl and a boy that liked her. Don't even try and relate it to 'Twilight' it was way more... slurpy, in the bloody sense.

Class remains to not be mentioned. No designing as of yet, which is a little painful, although today there were no teachers and incidentally our most productive day. We are called 'Maanantai Design', which translates as 'Monday Design'.

Also learning a lot of Finnish phrases! 'Hauska tavita' means 'Nice to meet you' and 'Mita vittua!' means 'What the fuck!' but you have to put stress on the 'vi' of 'vittua', otherwise it doesn't really work. Also 'Mina olen Skotlantilainen', 'Mina puhun Englantia' and 'Mina tulen Skolanista (baby)' – Respectively 'I am Scottish', 'I speak English' and 'I come from Scotland (baby)'. Remember too that they pronounce every letter in each word and notice here how instead of using the preposition 'from', they add the ending '-ista'. It means that you can say whole sentences that are just one word. Confusing? Nah...