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

Love Letter

One of my friends requested that I write a post about love. Now felt like a good a time as any for such a post. Admittedly, this post is extremely personal and I have more than a few misgivings about putting this out for the world to see. I wish that I could write about how I was in a wonderful relationship. My first somewhat real relationship was a whirlwind of emotions but it ended soon after it began. It’s end though allowed me to appreciate the other kinds of love that I am blessed to be surrounded by. These are the wonderful people around me who have come, in all forms and at all times, to lift me up during times of doubt, worry, pain or loneliness.   My class loves potlucks and recently we had another one. Since my kitchen has proved to be a good location for such gatherings in the past, I volunteered to host it again. The day of the potluck turned out to be a very emotionally low day for me. I spent much of it crying and then trying in vain ...
1 comment
Read more

Holding Sand

 My mother once gave me the sound advice to avoid holding tightly onto things (she was specifically talking about people at the time) because if you do, they have a habit of slipping away. She did this through a marvelous metaphor that went like this: If you have sand in your hand and make a fist, the sand begins to fall out and you are left with less sand than you started with. If you gently cup you hand and let the sand come in however, it remains in your hand, and you can perhaps even add more. This metaphor has stuck with me because it helped me with the problem that I was having back then. But I’ve come back to it again and again and slowly been realizing the smaller and more subtle ways that I grab onto things. These things are now always visible or tangible, but they still have important implications. Take meditation. I meditate every day. It’s like brushing my teeth, I simply can’t skip this part of my day. But unlike brushing my teeth, which is a methodical and easy ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Change of Pace

A view of the Turku archipelago in the frigid weather. PC: Sami All of my time in the past month has been spent with doing one of two things: preparing for next year and making sure I get done with this year. The flurry of activity has been a welcome change to the rather luxuriously slow pace that had been defining my days up until now but in the process, this blog has fallen by the wayside. So what are these many things that have been taking up my time?   1.      Ice skating This is by far not what has occupied most of my time, but I think it has been the most refreshing. Last year I went ice skating only once and, as thrilling as it was, never got around to going again. Plus, the weather last year was so mild that you had to take advantage of cold days when they came to get much time on the ice. This year has been much better and ice skating has been a great excuse to bring people together. It’s this year’s version of chai. Thanks to my mo...
Post a Comment
Read more