Suomen Soliloquies

Time is a funny thing. It seems to move in leaps and bounds at times and at times it moves slower than molasses. Right now it's doing both. I can't believe it's only been a week and yet I can't believe it's already been a week. Sunset in Helsinki This week I've been in Helsinki for our Fulbright orientation. We learned a lot of information and it would be impossible for me to fit all of it into a reasonable amount of space so I will leave that summary for another day. But a week has given me some time to notice some differences in how things work in Finland and how they work in the US. I thought I would highlight five here that encompass a fair variety of my experiences so far. I have to give credit to my friend Marie who helped me with this list. Many of these are her ideas. 1. Nature is Everywhere This one is first because I think it is the most important one for Finns. Finnish people love nature and it shows in the way cities are built (at least th...

Only 2 more days before I leave for my next adventure! Over these past couple of weeks, I’ve had a lot of questions and they’ve followed a general pattern. I thought this would be the perfect place to answer all of them at once. For the geographically inclined, Finland is far north right next to Russia. It is so far north that a fourth of the country is in the Arctic Circle. This means that this part of Finland experiences the midnight sun, when the sun never sets in the summer, and the polar night, when the sun doesn’t rise during the winter. The far north is also known as the Lapland. Turku, the city that will be my new home for the next two years, is in the southwest corner of Finland so my day and nights won’t be as extreme as the Lapland but it will be more extreme than what we experience here in the Midwest. My plane journey to Finland will be a total of nine hours, with a very short layover in Iceland. Once I land in Helsinki, I only have an hour-forty-minute lo...