I can't beleive September is half over!

Wow, another packed week in Tampere! On Tuesday, the university had what they call "Orienteering". You get together teams of 4 or 5 and go to various stations throughout the city and each station is hosted by a different department and has tasks that need to be completed. The idea is for the teams to complete the tasks uniquely or quickly (depending on the type of task) and get as many points as possible...the pic on the left is my team (I am taking the pic so therefore not in it). There is Steve in the front, then in the back from left is Alex, Anke and Jan. Our team name was "Pretty Much the Sweetest Team Ever"...our tasks ranged from acting in a park to beer tasting to improv. We won the station sponsered by the Bio Med department...our task was to interpret a very long Finnish chemical name and draw what we thought it meant...Thanks to my superb crayon-drawing abilities and my team mates' superior explanations, we won....a box of latex gloves! Plus, our art has been framed on the wall of the Bio Med student union clubhouse! It was the happiest day of my life...hahaha. We did even better though, and won Best International Team (!) which got us all a free beer at the student pub, Yo-Talo. Overall, very funny and fun afternoon.

Thursday a bunch of us international students went to a Finnish Elite League (like the NHL) hockey game...Tampere has 2 Elite teams who are bitter rivals: Tappara and Ilves and they were playing each other in the first game of the season...The game wasn't so unlike NHL at home, but European hockey is a lot less rough and sometimes gets frustrating when they can't just bash another player against the boards to get the puck! But overall, it was a really fun game and I hope to get to see more over the next few months...

School is slowly progressing and picking up pace...I started a class on American Media and Culture this week which is very interesting and the prof is great, but it is at the same time as another class I want to take that starts next week so I haven't decided on which class I am going to take yet. I also started a Finnish History Seminar this week which sounds like it will be interesting...history in Europe is so much older than at home, so it will be interesting to learn about Finland in Medival times, etc. I also have discovered what they call "Book Exams" here...basically there is a book list for each course listed and you read the books and show up to the exam in November or December. It's an alternative way to get extra credits, and there are no lectures, just reading on your own time. I'm still not sure if Carleton will recognize these credits, but I have started reading while I wait for Carleton to e-mail me back with an answer. Finnish class is going well and has really picked up this past week....there are currently 5 pages of vocabulary that I need to memorize with more on the way! Yikes...

Here's some exciting news: next week a bunch of us exchange students are flying to Riga, Latvia. Over here there is a super cheap airline called RyanAir which flies out of Tampere so we all got round trip flights to Riga for 40euros...we are sharing an 8-bed hostel room which will cost us around 10euros each per night...I am really looking forward to it! I never thought about going to Latvia and it's a place I know nothing about...but Riga looks like a great city...here is a good website: http://www.balticsww.com/tourist/latvia/index.htm I will be sure to let you all know how it goes!

Apologies that the picture link I posted last time doesn't work...I'm still trying to find a place to host all my pics so far...one German student here is trying to set up a website so we can all put our pics up together, so I am looking into it..I will keep you posted! I'll get these pics up somewhere sooner or later!

I think that's all for now...I'm going to get back to my reading!

Love Always, Jules :)