First impressions of Am. university life

Not really that much to tell yet. It's pretty cool that most of my teachers are PhDs in a field related to the course in question. They seem to know what they're talking about :) For a Finnish (European too?) student it's hard to get enough courage to open your mouth even if you're not quite sure what you're saying, or if you disagree with the teacher. I think that in Finland the student-teacher relationships are kind of strange. On one hand we often call them by their first names but then on the other we seem to hold them on a pedestal, not daring to question their opinions, taking everything they say as the only truth. It's quite enjoyable to be in a class where people express their opinions, and especially get counterarguments from the teacher and other students.

What has surprised me is the amount of books I need to buy. For 5 courses I have 13 books and one large set of copies. That adds up to quite an amount. And students are really expected to read during the semester, not just for the exams - classroom participation can be up to 25% of the grade!

Outside school, I do feel a little "stuck" here. The busses don't run on weekends and my free bike isn't good enough to make long trips. Today we rented mountain bikes and ended up doing quite a workout. (Stupid Europeans think they can actually ride their bikes to the start of some biketrails - oh no, you kind of need a car for that too!) Next weekend we'll probably go see Spokane or some other bigger city. Looking forward to that!!

Finally in Moscow

So here we are then. It's hot. I definitely didn't expect this, and have far too little summer clothes with me. Have moved to my room on Thursday, it's quite nice really. Well, the bed is so high my feet don't reach the ground at all and I'm always afraid I'm going to fall off the bed at night. I share the apartment with 4 other girls whom I haven't had much chance to talk to yet. So far it definitely looks like a (American) girlie apartment.

The first few days we spent at the Royal Motor Inn (not exactly as fancy as it sounds ;) and especially the Northern European students kept saying how badly they want to cook their own meals and now that we're here, everybody rushes to the next building for all-you-can-eat breakfast, lunch and dinner :D It's really not worth it. Same food for lunch and dinner, day after day. Forget about it.

I've been doing some sightseeing at the supermarkets. Found only cheddar cheese and nothing with 20% or less of fat. And what's with the way of recording the nutrition facts? They give them in servings, so you have to go around with a calculator to get a good picture (like 28 ounces of cheese...). These people here should definitely give up and accept the metric system.

Anyway, it's been interesting. I've spent a year in American high school and so far it doesn't seem that different :D Parents take their kids around, teachers practically hold your hand to make sure you go to class etc. Well, the actual lectures start on Monday, so more comments then!

Here we go

New York. Warm, humid but cloudy. You never get this atmosphere in Finland – maybe it’s the big city smell?

Flight wasn’t too bad. I actually got some sleep, with my “shades” and some peaceful music. There was some terrible turbulence though. I really didn’t enjoy that. It was very suspicious: outside it was all nice and sunny but the plane was jumping like hell. And there were no announcements or anything…

The traffic in New York is chaotic – we’d never taken a cab or a bus before but now we took the Super Shuttle to Manhattan. Very South European :) And also the way how the driver (well, he probably _was_ Italian) stuffed more people into the van than there were supposed to be.

“Driver’s tips are not included in your voucher” – “so what – if the guy like starts telling you what to see in New York you’ve gotta tell him to shut up if you don’t want to pay extra?” Yeah, it took me a while to realize the sign was talking about tip for the driver… :D

Now I’ve got to figure out a way to stay awake for some 5 more hours (I’ve already been awake for 17, and slept only about 5 hours last night). Way to go.