Puhun Suomi?

Moi/Hei/Terve/Tervetuola

Mitä kuuluu? Minä olen Emma, minä 19,  minä puhun Hollanti ja Englanti ja vähän Suomi. Well that is probably most of what I've learned.

I knew it before we got here, but this language is so hard. You just can't compare it to any other language like English or Dutch. And not everyone here speaks English what makes it really hard to explain what you want.

When I first came here I couldn't even say hello to someone or thank someone. Maybe it's just me but I feel a bit rude when I can't say hello or thankyou in their language. But I started my Finnish lessons 2 weeks ago, so now I can greet someone, thank someone and I can introduce myself. Yes there is some progress and we have still a few lessons to go. So maybe after all the lessons I can have a little conversation in Suomi with someone, or order a pizza ;)

Puhua myöhemmin

Emma

Turku City

For this semester we live in Turku. Actually in Varrisuo, what is close to Turku, but not that special, so I will tell you something about Turku City.

Turku is located in south-west Finland and was the capital of Finland. There live around 175.000 people in the city, so it's quite small.

The most important place in the city is Kauppatori, or marketsquare. Here is the central busstation and the square is surrounded by shoppingmalls, restaurants, a theatre and ofcourse the nightclubs.

Turku is a real studentcity, there are two universities and a lot of colleges here, so that means a lot of students. Most students here have an overall and each overall has a different colour according to the study you follow. So for nursing you have a yellow one with red pockets, ofcourse we had to buy one. So when there is a event for students, the only thing you see in the city are students with their overall.

Turku is located at the Aura River, at she riversides there are a lot of restaurants and it's lovely to just walk there on a sunny day. Drink something on the boatrestaurants and enjoy the sun

Actually I expected to see a lot of old buildings here, but the first time in the city everything was quite modern. Turku has been burned down a few times, so that is why there are more modern building now. 

A highlight from Turku is Turun linna, Turku Castle. Together with the Turku Cathedral, Turun tuomiokirkko, it is one of the oldest buildings still in use. Turku Castle is also the largest medieval surviving building and it stands at the banks of the Aura River.

The Turku Cathedral is considerd as the most important religious building of Finland. And it is one of the city's most recognizable symbols. The cathedral is also worth a visit.

Probably there are a lot more highlights of the city, but I still have to find them.

Puhua myöhemmin

Emma

Day in a life of a nursing student

On  a ¨normal¨ day, my alarm goes off at 5.15 a.m. Then I try to get out of bed, put my clothes on and make myself ready for the day. around 5.30 I eat my breakfast and make some food to take with me. I pack all my stuff I need for the day and around 6.15 I leave home to take the bus to my practice place.

At the hospital I change my clothes and put on my uniform. I had never worn a uniform before, so it was a bit strange, but it also felt good.

Morning shifts here start at 7 a.m and then they start with giving rapport about the patients, they do a round to check all the patients and then share the medicines. So after that it's around 8 o'clock, so that means coffeebreak and for some also breakfast. The first time they did a coffeebreak and so early, I was suprised. We only ¨worked¨ for one hour and we already had a break. Well that is just a cultural thing here, coffee is really important and they drink it all the time.

After the coffeebreak it is time for the morning washes, and for some patients time to get out of bed for a while. Till 11 o'clock there is not much to do, we're just waiting for someone who rings the bell. Besides that for me it's just sitting around waiting for the lunch. So we serve the lunch around 11 o'clock and then we go have lunch ourselves.

After lunch we're again waiting till someone needs our help, so sometimes when you don't have so many patients, it can be a little bit boring, cause you have nothing to do. At 2.30 the evening shift comes in, and we give rapport to them. Then you finnish the last things you have to do and 3 p.m the morning shift is done, and I can go home.

For me as a foreign student it is quite hard to communicate with people, cause there is a language barrier. I thought most of the people here could speak english, but I was wrong. So that makes it really hard for me to understand the patients and to take care of them, because you aren't able to explain what you're gonna do. So most of the time I'm just observing and asking what the other nurses do. Although I can't do a lot of things, it is a great experience to see how it's organised here in the hospital and I learn a lot from it.

Puhua myöhemmin

Emma

The journey to Finland

It's now exactly 5 weeks we are here, and we have done a lot, but I want to tell you about the journey to Finland.

So let's start at the beginning. Last year Aniek and I decided that it would be a great experience to go abroud for school. Get out of our comfortzone, go on an adventure and see something of the world. So Aniek is my classmate and also became a really good friend and now she is my travel buddy! So after a lot of searching Finland seemed the best option for us, and then all the organizing began.  

And Aniek if you're reading this, I'm so glad we're doing this together, this will be an adventure of a lifetime♡

I was really struggling with packing my suitcases. The only thing that was in my mind all day was HELP! how is all this stuff gonna fit in my suitcase? Do I have everything? Didn't I forget to buy something? I also planned to pack everything 2 weeks before we left. Well ofcourse that didn't go as planned, I actually packed my bags like two days before we left... Eventually I had packed everything and I was kind of reliefed when I closed my suitcase, but still felt a bit worried if I had everything packed.

Te week before departure was kind of a hectic week, you have to buy the last things, arrange everything for the flight, check if you actually arranged everything in Finland. A lot of things to do, and as the day of departure came closer, the more nervous I got. And again there was one word in my mind, HELP! it's almost time to leave.

Besides all the stress I had a great last week. Every year in one of the last weeks of summer holiday we have a feast in our town called ¨Heldersfees¨ (one of the best parties of het year). Every evening a big party, so I think I couldn't have a better last week than this. Being with my friends every night and just having fun.

 

August 24th 2018

It was the day of departure, it was around 6 o'clock in the morning and I heard a lot of voices downstairs. So I went downstairs and I saw my friends sitting there, ready to say me goodbye. It was the sweetest thing ever, they woke up so early just for me. (We partied the night before so it was a short night for them, lots of love for you guys!♡) It was also quite hard, cause then you realise, 'now I'm really going to leave'.  So I said goodbye to my friends and brother, and we left to the airport.

I think it was around 8 a.m that we arrived at the airport. I have to say when I arrived there, I was quite relaxed and not as nervous as the days before. We would leave around 11 a.m so we had enough time to check in our bags and all the other things you have to do at the airport and ofcourse, not least inportant, say goodbye to our parents.

 

So it was time to say goodbye to our parents, go through customs and get to the plane. Well on that  moment I felt the nerves, and I was really happy to have Aniek by my side. I think when we were sitting there, waiting in the gate, Aniek and I both were really nervous, but luckily we had eachother, so we could support eachother through all this. Besides being really nervous, I was super excited to explore Finland and make some good memories.

After a long day of traveling we finally got to our appartment. We have an own room, a little bathroom, quite a big kitchen and a little balcony. A great appartment for the two of us.

So when we were kind of settled in our appartment, we orderd a take-away pizza ( One of the best I ever had!). After that we went to bed, exhausted from the long day traveling.

Puhua myöhemmin

Emma

Helsinki

Last weekend Aniek and I went to Helsinki, the beautiful capital of Finland. We left home around 5.30 in the morning. Way to early on a saturday morning, but we had to be on time for the bus to Helsinki. This morning the weather was so bad, it was raining, a lot of wind and really cold.

I think it was about 8.30 we arrived in Helsinki, so it isn't such a long trip from Turku. Good music, a bit of sleeping and candies also helps to make these ours not so bad. Luckily the weahter changed when we arrived, no rain and even a little bit of sun.

The first thing we did when we arrived was getting a drink at Starbucks, always a great start of the day. So after we finnished our starbucks we walked to the city. It was quite early so it was quiet and peacefull in the city. I fell in love with the city immediatly, all those beautifull buildings, the lovely small parks, it was just perfect.

Before we went to Helsinki we looked up some highlights of the city and we got some advice from colleagues. The churches here are worth a visit. you have a lot of them in Helsinki and we visited two of them.

At first we visited the Helsingin tuomiokirkko, the cathedral of Helsinki. It was a beautiful, big, white cathedral and in front of the cathedral you have the big senate square, which is also surrounded

by beautiful buildings and have a statue in the middle.

The other one we visited is the Uspenski Cathedral. This one is a bit smaller but also really beautifull.

Also a fun thing to do when you are here is to go in the ferris wheel. It is close to the harbour and

it will give you an great view over the city.

Another highlight are the markethalls. Helsinki has three, they all have a lot of restaurants and other market stalls in there where you can buy delioucious cinnamonbuns and ofcourse other food. If you ever come to Finland, you should try a cinnamonbuns, cause they are really good!

After the sightseeing it was time for some shopping. With a lot shoppingmalls Helsinki is the perfect place for a day full of shopping. And when we had spend enough money for the day, it was time to find a nice dinnerplace. Well that is quite hard with so many restaurants. But on our way we bumped in to some kind of ¨foodfestival¨. It was like a marketsquare full of stands with food all from different countries. We tried a ¨Trdelnik¨, it's a typical Czech kind of pastry. It's made from rolled dough that is wrapped around a stick, then grilled and topped with sugar and cinnamon.

We still had to find a dinner place, we wanted to try sushi. Actually we both don't like it, but we just wanted to give it a try. Well that wasn't the best decission of the day, but we had a lot of fun. Probably we annoyed a lot of people, we had a laugh and therefor almost forgot about the sushi.

After dinner we went back to the ¨foodfestival¨, cause we hadn't seen everything of it and we searched for one other thing, real Dutch cheese. Almost lost the hope they would be there, but then we saw it. A big stall with Dutch flag, and yes sold cheese. I think we've never been so happy seeing a cheesestand and we immediatly know we wanted to buy some cheese. While discussing which one we wanted, we heard someone talk Dutch to us. We were just suprised, even though I actually knew the were Dutch. We were just happy that we could Dutch to someone else. We tastedsome cheeses and bought 2 and they are delicious. At that moment we both were the happiest persons on the world.





It had been a long day, so we went to our hostel, the first time for both of us to sleep in a hostel. It was a nice hostel, with a big kitchen and a place to relax. We slept on a 8-persons room, not really my thing, cause some people like it to make a lot of noise and play with lights around 6 a.m. But we had a place to sleep and for students like us, it's a good cheap option.

So we left the hostel quite early, ready for another day. It was beautiful weather, the sun was shining all day long. We bought some delicious pastries and a ticket for a boattrip to the little islands close to Helsinki. The first stop was at Vallisaari, We just walked around there and enjoyed the good weather and our pastries. There were some great viewingpoints where you, at one point could look all across the ocean, and on the other side you could see Helsinki.

                                                                 

 

We got back on the boat again and saild to the island Suomenlinna. Here we also just walked around a little bit, and got a drink. We sat outside, probably catching the last sunrays we will see in a while. After walking around here we got back to the boat and back to Helsinki.

It was almost time for dinner so again we searched for a nice place. This time we got to a kind of mexican place. We had some delicious nachos and a pizza, what we were craving for all weekend.

So almost 46000 steps further, it was time to go to the bus and go back home. And I have to say Helsinki stole my heart a little bit this weekend.



Puhua myöhemmin

Emma

Cultural experience

As I noticed in my first post, I have to write this blog to get my ECTS. But we got the instruction that we couldn't only write about what we have done or what we are going to do. We also have to right about the cultural differences we notice.

So there are a few things that I noticed immediatly.

Well number 1 is language. The first time I heard it, I thought they were speaking kind of secret language. I couldn't understand a word of what they said. Also in the supermarket is was really hard to find the right products, cause this languages isn't even a little bit simmular to english or dutch. It was also kind of weird we didn't know how to greet or thank someone. People also didn't really respond if we greeted them in english, so that was a little bit of a problem in the beginning.

Another cultural difference I noticed is that most of the time it is really quiet everywere. I'm used to sit in the bus and hear a lot op people talking, but here it was really quiet. We had the feeling that we couldn't talk normally to eachother, cause nobody did. Also when you are walking in the city centre it is really quiet, most of the time. Back home, when I walked in the city centre, there was always a lot of noise. I have to say it is nice when it is quiet in the city, cause it makes the city seem very peacefully.

Well that's it for now!

Moimoi,

Emma

Hyvää syntymäpäivää

Well happy birthday to me!

Last week it was my 19th birthday, to be exact it was the 16th of september.

This was kind of a weird day, it didn't really feel like my birthday. Probably cause I usually cellebrate my birthday with family and friends. So not having them around just felt weird. And I have to say, this was the first day I really missed home.  My parents and friends did sent me postcards and presents, that gave me a bit of a birthday feeling. So if you read this thankyou so much, loveyou all! And also a special thanks to Aniek for the sweet present ♡

Although I didn't celebrate it with my family this year, I had a real fun night out with Aniek and Leah, so I kind of cellebrated it here In Finland, with some drinks ofcourse:)

Hei hei

Emma

Moi!

What we would say, Hello!

So this was one of the first Finnish words I learned, well this one is easy for me cause this is how we sometimes greet eachother back home. For now enough about the language, I will come back to it later on.

Well where should I start? My first post... It's now almost four weeks ago that we arrived in Turku, Finland about 1635 km away from home. Looking back on these four weeks, a lot has happend. but I will write about that in an other post.

On this blog I will post about my trips, my experiences and all of my adventures here in Finland, so kind of just a braindump place where I can write about anything.

And also important, I write this a little bit for a course I am following, so I can get my ECTS :)

So I hope you will enjoy reading about my adventures and experiences in Finland.

Moimoi,

Emma