Collar

I have noticed that Spanish like to use much more collar than Finnish people to keep their neck warm. I think that in Finland children are using more collar as adults use mostly scarf. This season you have been also able to see the coach of Real Madrid using a collar. I saw many times that Spanish did not wear a hat but they pulled the collar as up as possible to warm up more their head and to cover their ears.

Kuopio

Puijo

This weekend I went to Kuopio my home city with three Spanish friends. Here are things what we did in Kuopio. Saw ski jumping competition, saw landscape from the Puijo tower, Drove with car on the frozen lake, ate Finnish military food pea soup, ate salmon with smashed potatoes, sledging, walked in the center and saw some night life of Kuopio.

Finnish women

I have heard some comments about looks of Finnish women from foreigners. They have noticed that among Finnish women it is very common to have colored hair. Finnish women use more make up moreover they use it everyday. Finnish women dress up to nice clothes and shoes even it is very cold outside.

Bread

Spanish do not use olive oil only for cooking. They put olive oil also on bread and to salad. I had never imagined that someone would put olive oil on the bread. In Finland you always cut the bread to pieces with knife but in Spain people like to just break a piece of bread by hand. Bread in Spain is usually the same form as French baguette but of course sliced bread for toasting is also sold.

D-vitamin

Sun is starting to shine also in Finland and it makes me to wake up when light enters to my room through the curtains. I started to think does the light make waking up easier because during the winter getting up seems to be harder because the lack of the light. But in Spain I always woke up in a very dark room thanks to "persianas" and I do not remember to be struggling to get up from the bed. The recent debate about the importance of D-vitamin for your energy level made me think that maybe I am getting now D-vitamin more and that is why getting up from the bed is easier. Apparently I never had a lack of D-vitamin in Spain. Also one Spanish exchange student felt very tired all the time during the winter and after he started to take D-vitamin he felt that he had more energy.

Snowboarding video

Here is a video of the last weeks snowboarding sessions in Koli.

Language learning

It has been a long time since I have started to study a new language. Spanish is the latest one which I started seven years ago. Now I am beginning to learn a new language after a long time and I have found some interesting approaches for learning a new language. I read a book of Oddbjørn by and he introduced in the book so good memorizing technique for language in his opinion that he would like to learn all the languages. Tim Ferris introduces a method to deconstruct a language and that way you can reach conversational level of a language in few months. Adam Bader suggests to use Pareto's 80/20 rule for language learning. It means that by learning the most frequent words of the language you can understand 80& of the language. For example 80% of English can be understood with 300 words because these most frequent words constitute 80% of the written or spoken English.

Snowboarding

Today I went to snowboarding for the second time in my life with three Spanish who had never done it before and with one who had some experience. It was interesting to hear that for them it was easier to do snowboarding than downhill skiing. A guy from Canary islands has naturally very little experience about winter sports could go a slope down with skies in two hours but with snowboard he could do it in one hour. For me skiing is easier than snowboarding.

CE-Certificate

Certificate

I received Campus Europae certificate which means that my university recognized at least 45 credits which I completed during my exchange year and I have completed at least B1 level in Spanish. Though I think that I could even pass higher level exam in Spanish.

I have also now access to learning platform of Campus Europae to start learning Turkish. Next academic year I am heading to Turkey and that is why I am starting to learn Turkish. I am still waiting for the official confirmation letter but I hoping to get it soon.

Coffee

Finnish have been topping the coffee drinking statistics last years. The coffee what Finnish are drinking is not strong compared to the coffee called espresso what people drink in Spain. Spanish have even said that Finnish coffee is like drinking water. No wonder then if Finnish people drink much more coffee. In Spain coffee was served from glasses instead of cups.