i don`t eat anything here, so i have becomed a night bus gost

pictures, my dear friends

pre-winter time came with greyish daylight, rain, for and rare day of pure “winter feeling”. this, of course, made me make some pictures.
lake near Lapinkari, one of two, which basically sorround Tampere

famous finnish sauna habits in the amazingly beautiful sorrounding

to add some coulours – Tampere jazz festival closing jam session

welcome to the welfare state

coming back home after a long day at the university and at work i have been suddenly welcomed to the world of welfare state and western bureaucracy by a huge pack of official letters from the tax office, housing company, my employer and,
among others, the ”Hobby Hall” catalogue.  before, the reality where people get all these extremely polite automatically
generated letters appeared to me before only in the movie and now here I am – right into it.

about my life in short, everyhting is great: I am recieveing good marks, been to see Chritoph in Austria an almost accidentelly droped in neighbouring Slovenia and Italy.

my favourite quote so far

“Chips is decadance” by Coline, France

cactuses attacking

Generally I hate cactuses. I just can not understand why people keep bying and placing them on their desks. They are mostly ugly and they do not serve any purpose. Some say there plants absorb harmfullness of a monitor, but even if it is true you would need a dozen of them (and some huuuge ones) . 
But the thing is these ugly weird creature keep on appearing in my life. Fist, my Mom gave it to be as a present and I have hated that thing so much it almost did not grow and since it was moved away to my sistres room it started to flourish. Then, my work colleague in Riga gave a tiny cactus to me for my birthfay – its fate was the same. There were couple of other cases like that.  And finally, beeing introduced to my new workng place here I have noticed that on my desk there is a cactus.. This is some kind of a weird karma,  I think (:

yes, i am still alive (:

Sorry again for not posting for such a long time. I knew I had to do it and I also had a lot of stuff to tell you, but then I had no power to do it. But there is news now.
 
First of all, I have found a job.  I am a software tester in one of the companies here in Tampere. Since I have sighned some sequrity paper, I can ot really tell you what I am doing, but it has alot to do with language and my responsibility is Latvian. So now I have some books of grammar and a dictionary and hope to manage it well. The only thing is that I have to wake up at 6:40 every morning to be in the office by 8:15. I am a part time worker, so they do not care when I come here, but this is the only time I can devote to it.

Studies are quite intensive and I think I am not paying enought attention to them. Mainly because this work in the mornings makes me exausted by the end of the day. But I have to fly to far away countries from time to time, so there no other opportunity…
this week there is a Finnish exam and I dont understand a thring, this ilalla-language makes me crazy. Well, there is a lot I could write here about my study problems, but I think that would be a bit boring for you (:

By the way, about fliyng – I am flying to Austria in the end of October!

 

studies and democracy

Sorry for not writing for the long time. Christoph came and I do not have so much time even for Finnish studies homeworks, not even speaking of blog posts and letters.

My courses have generally started and life here is getting more and more routine – like and I already feel a strong differense between exchange and degree student studies. A lot of essays and work
have to be done this week already and some of it is quite serious.
There is one observation about Finnish way of managing studies. There is incredible democracy that rules in theis university when it comes to orginising counrses and choosing topics for your works. While having a thesis seminar today our teacher suggested so many opportunities of orginising courses. It went like this: “and maybe we can orginise such conference” or “next month we might make an interdecipinery seminar” and so on, although all these things are very far away from the actual cuririculum of  our programme. Well, I  will see how it goes and is this democracy thing is as promising as it seemes to be.

Now we are off to the movie with young Daniel Redcliff (for those of you, who dont know – actor who is playing Harry Potter), chocolate and cookies. By the way,  there are some pictures to be online soon from our trip to Helsinki.

appears that i have posted here my incorrect phone. nr.
so here is the correct one:
+358 449 482 711

photos at last

Finnaly I have uploaded some photos of my finnish like to Flickr, so all of
you are wellcome to take a look. here you will find my room, people I
hang around with here and some shots of finnish life.
The link to my Flickr account is on the right sidebar.

and this is a lake 5 min from my appartment.

connected to the world

So, now my room is really cozy. First of all, I have made some changes in the firnutere, but, most important, I have internet. It costed me 59 euros, because at this amazing accomodation you have to get not a lan cable, but some weird and really rare webcard. But I am happy anyway.
About studies: courses did not start yet, but i had my first Finish language course today, which appeared to be pretty funny and I think all the people in the bus back home were quite annoyed by me reading all the street sighns and ads on the way home – i finally knew how to pronounce all those tricky letters!