Finnish people

I heard some interesting views from a Spanish person about Finnish people. She said that in night clubs all the people are very drunk and added that in Spain you can see few persons like that but in Finland everyone are wasted. Other notice was that Finnish people are very shy. When I was in Spain I expected Spanish to speak more for strangers but they did not speak to me. She explained that in Madrid people do not tend to speak to strangers that much.

My Spanish language studies got recognized and I received nine ECTS. These are obligatory third language studies for Finnish business students and now I have completed those.

Recognizing studies

Finally I received the academic transcript of second semester from Spain. Now my faculty has to recognize my studies which I did in Spain and it will take about one month. There are some ambiguities how many ECTS my studies are worth in Finland. University of Alcalá have not replied for my inquiries about the credits. I assumed that the credits I earned are ECTS but my faculty did not accept them right away as ECTS. One Spanish credit means ten hours of lessons and one ECTS credit means about 37 hour of work. Therefore these credit systems are not very comparable.

ESN Sea battle

ESN organizes a big Erasmus cruise of 2000 students. Erasmus students from all over Finland, Sweden, Latvia and Estonia are participating to the cruise. There were 50 tickets for sale in Joensuu. You had to go to the cue three hours before the sales started to get your ticket. the trip includes visit to Stockholm, Tallin and Helsinki and it costs 110 euros. I am not going this semester but there should a another cruise in the second semester. In Spain I skipped a party cruise to Ibiza with exchange students of all over Spain because I had playoff matches in floorball.

Fail fast

Today I had a meeting with my bachelor thesis supervisor. I proposed her an idea to make my bachelor thesis about failing fast. The idea of failing fast is to launch product or business quickly to see if it fails or successes. You cannot know which idea will success therefore the best option is to try and see what happens. The supervisor said it is a great idea but her co-worker said just that the idea is ok. I am thinking about to write the thesis in English because the source material is probably going to be in English.

Floorball with students

In Spain I played in a floorball team and many of my team mates asked if I will play next season in a Finnish floorball team. My answer was that probably not. Here I can play floorball also with students few times a week and I did not have enough urge to join a team. University will probably organize a floorball league and I can have competitive matches there. Playing is much less organized there but still competition brings different element for playing.

New words in a foreign language

I have noticed that often in international group when people run out of topics to talk to they start ask other person to teach them their language or saying words and phrases in the other persons language . So far I have not liked much this topic because it is usually teaching bad words and basic "how are you" and so on. I feel like learning few phrases is not very useful but it is always nice to show a foreign person that you can speak their language and he/she will be probably impressed that you can say something. I wondered would it possible to take even more out of these little language learning sessions and learn little by little having a conversation in a new language.

Hard language

I have witnessed many times conversation about different languages. First thing what comes up is that Finnish is a very difficult language to learn. Almost every exchange student comes to Finland to learn English and excuse not to learn Finnish is that it is too difficult. The fame of the difficult language prevents people to learn Finnish. Reasons for this are that words do not resemble any words of any other language they have studied before and the extremely long words. Irish polyglot Benny wrote a post that there are no such thing as a too hard language to learn. I wish that exchange students could get a great attitude to learn a new language like he has.

Get To Know Each Other Party

ESN of Joensuu Organized the traditional Get To Know Each Other Party yesterday in the pub. This time party had to be organized in the pub because last year Erasmus students had released boats to the lake in the previous party place. Therefore They are not allowed to have party there. Party was success also in the pub because about 200 students arrived there. I continued getting to know Spanish people.

Spanish in Joensuu

I have got to know many Spanish exchange students in Joensuu. The fact that I can speak have definitely had a lot of effect to it. Most of them have come to Finland to learn English and some of them want to learn even Finnish. I am wondering that should I speak just English to help them to learn speak better English. On the other hand I would like to continue improving my Spanish. I have had some conversations that I speak in Spanish and the other persons speaks English to me. That way both can practice to speak more fluently.

Welcoming students

This time welcoming exchange students have been different because I have not accompanied any of the students to their flats. Almost everyone have gone to hotel before getting keys to their flat. You can see the close family ties when some students arrive with their mom. I think that no one who is going to exchange from Finland arrives with their mom. On the contrary to the big amount of Italian exchange students in Spain there are not many in Joensuu but Spanish people really seem to like Finland because they are the biggest group and they are staying also the whole year.