Skip to main content

Swinging into School


Well, kind of. We had orientation three days this week and had a chance to meet our fellow LLEES classmates. The program is truly international with students from Taiwan, Germany, China, Korea, Greece, Basque, Bangladesh, Iran and Mexico. There are only twelve of us right now but there are two students from Ghana and one from Nigeria who haven’t been able to make it due to visa issues. Besides being international, the areas of interest vary a great deal so it will be fascinating learning about everyone’s thesis topics and professional experiences.

The inside of the cathedral
Life on campus has changed dramatically. When I first got to Turku, you would see a few tourists hanging around the cathedral, which is on the edge of the University of Turku and Åbo Academy campuses (there are three universities in Turku, the third is Turku School of Applied Sciences). Now the area has throngs of students walking to and from the city center to the universities. Coming from a university town, this is a familiar phenomenon but somehow it feels more festive here than it did back at home.

There have been many highlights this week: meeting my classmates, being able to show people around who are newer here than me, discovering the other university cafes so I don’t have to go to the one in Educarium all the time. But the biggest highlight has been discovering swing classes!

Swing hadn’t originally been on my radar but I ran into the Turku Swing Society’s stall at the University Opening Carnival and changed my mind spur of the moment. The first class was the same day so in the evening I trekked over to Tarmon Talo, a rather innocuous wooden structure pretty close to my apartment complex.

My first thought walking into the packed room was that I was the only one there who had significant amounts of melanin in me. It’s interesting because the only other times I have been so hyperaware of my race have been when I was in Japan and Korea. Fortunately, learning a new dance puts everyone on the same playing field so this feeling quickly went away.

Another thing to note was how very un-Finnish the atmosphere was. If you’re going to spend even a few minutes dancing with a person it’s best to be somewhat friendly. Of the 36 leads I danced with, I only learned two of their names but that’s a start. There also was the Finnish guy who turned beet red when I smiled at him. It was adorable.

The best thing was that I ran into some of these people while walking around campus during the rest of the week. We don’t know each other well enough to actually say hello but it’s nice to recognize faces in the crowd. Turku is starting to feel like home.

PS. Please know that I do read your comments, even if I don’t respond to them! Thank you for all of the wonderful feedback so far.

Love,
Avanti

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dual Identities

A picture of my parents and cousin from Diwali. In my house we celebrate Diwali and have a small Christmas. I don't know many Finnish people, even after being here for five months. But I feel that I've done pretty well, considering I'm in an international program and can say I have four Finnish friends (one isn't quite a friend, but he has helped me out quite a bit) and I can say I have nascent Finnish language skills. I've grown comfortable here, though I still feel like a foreigner. One man who has been living in Finland for almost a decade came here from an African country for his masters. He married a Finn but cannot speak any Finnish himself. And yet, I have the sense that he still does not feel like he belongs here. In one of our classes, he told us how he still gets called racial slurs walking down the street. He commented offhandedly one day “I don’t know what I am.” I understand this feeling, to an extent. I have never been called a racial slur b...
1 comment
Read more

Heart of the City

The past week in New York was jarring to say the least. Though the city still makes me overwhelmed by even the smallest of tasks (where do you go to buy a pack of cards??), I have begun to slowly get used to the constant movement of the city and everything that comes with it. The sound of airplanes flying constantly from La Guardia over my apartment doesn't register any more. I can estimate how crowded the train will be based on what time I am leaving my apartment in the morning or TC in the evening. And although the feeling of always needing to do more still raises the specter of anxiety to make everything I do feel inadequate, I've become resigned to its presence to the point that it is part and parcel of the city itself. Solitude is rare in the city, but last week it was the norm All of these things fell apart this week though, one by one, as another phantom seeped into our lives. Starting with an email from our college president that optimistically called off only no...
Post a Comment
Read more

Finland's mark

Today in Finnish class I went up to a Nepali classmate and asked him if he knew a Nepali song that I have been obsessed with for the past two weeks. I told him that I was in love with the song but couldn’t understand a word so could he please translate it? In the middle of asking my question I realized he had no idea what I was talking about and that this was really awkward but it was too late to back out so I ploughed ahead anyway. The result was that I avoided him for the rest of class. But part of me didn’t care. Being in a new country gives you thick skin for awkward encounters. Being in a new country also shapes you and molds you into a different version of yourself. A friend of mine wisely said that “where you live leaves a mark on you.” I’m still only a couple months into my two year long stay here in Finland but it is leaving a mark already. On our way to Naantali, a town 18 km away from Turku. There are the little things. I drink coffee (well, half of it i...
Post a Comment
Read more