Terveisiä suomesta! Greetings from Finland! I am so excited to be here in Europe, and even though I have only been here for a
week, I have already had such an incredible experience. In this post, I will tell you about how I got this opportunity, my journey to Finland, and the things I have been doing since I arrived. First though, I'll tell you how to pronounce Jyväskylä, since that's a question I've been getting from a lot of people. In Finnish, the letter "j" is pronounced the way you would say "y" in English, and the "y" sounds a little bit more like the word "uh." So, Jyväskylä is pronounced more like "yuh-vas-kuh-la" if that makes sense!
I heard about the opportunity to travel to Finland for a semester abroad in early October, 2017, when I received an email from my school's International Office. In the email, they told me that they had one position available at their partner school, the University of Jyväskylä (JYU), in Finland for the Winter semester 2018 and that I should let them know if I was interested. It seemed like an incredible opportunity! Ever since visiting China last spring, I seemed to have "caught the travel bug" (as my mum would say), and so I jumped at the chance. Since the program started so soon, I only had a couple of months to get my visa in order, pick my courses and get ready to move across the ocean. But I think it was definitely worth it!
Jyväskylä is a located about 270km north of Helsinki so it is not that easy to get to from Canada. I left on New Years' Day, flying from Ottawa - Toronto, and then Toronto - Reykjavik - Helsinki and ended with a train ride from Helsinki to Jyväskylä. All in all, it ended up being about 24 hours of travelling, and I arrived in Finland late in the afternoon on January 2nd. One great thing about the University of Jyväskylä is that they have a Facebook group for all incoming exchange students, which I was able to join in November. In this group, I found another student from Canada who was on the same flight as me. Kayla is from Hearst, in Northern Ontario, and studies at Laurentian University. We met in the Toronto airport, and travelled together all the way to Jyväskylä. I'm really glad we met up, because it made finding our way around much less stressful.
Before arriving to Jyväskylä, all exchange students are grouped based on their field of study (I'm studying intercultural communication), and then each group is assigned a tutor. My tutor's name in Tina, and she is a Master's student who was born in Finland but grew up in the UK. When we arrived at the train station in Jyväskylä, our tutors met us and took us to our apartments. I'm not sure if this is true for all of Finland, but at JYU, there are a few rental companies that offer subsidized apartments to students. It's different from Canadian universities in the sense that there are no "residences" that are on campus, and all the apartments have their own kitchens and bathrooms. Most students live in the student village, Kortepohja, (pronounced core-tuh-poe-ya) which is owned by the student union. Lucky for me, Kayla lives in the same building as me, one the floor above. Most people in Kortepohja live in 2 bedroom apartments, and from what I can tell, most exchange students have roommates who are also exchange students. Unfortunately for me, my roommate hasn't shown up yet! I don't know who she is, but she apparently was supposed to be here on January 1st, but never picked up her keys. It's definitely kind of weird living alone and a bummer not to have a roommate, but I've made some other friends so I'm not too lonely!
When we arrived in Helsinki, Kayla and I had to make our way to the train station. Our flight landed at about 1pm local time, and our train left at 3:30pm so we had lots of time to find our way there. After that, it was about a three hour train ride from Helsinki to Jyväskylä. By the time Kayla and I arrived and met our tutor, it was already about 7pm. When we found our apartments, we unpacked our luggage and then found the nearest supermarket. Kortepohja is conveniently located near 3 different supermarkets, so it was pretty easy to find some food. I think we both slept well that night!
Classes didn't actually start until January 8th, so from January 3rd-5th, all the exchange students took part in an orientation, where we learned about the university, registering for courses, and how to get around the campus and city. Mostly, though, we spent the time meeting other exchange students and making friends. Since Kayla and I knew each other, we stuck together and again, it was really nice to have someone here who I already knew. During our campus tour, we met some students from Austria and Germany and it turned out most of them live in the same building as Kayla and I. They had already met some other German students, so we ended up meeting some more people through them. When we weren't at orientation, we spent most of our time walking around the campuses and the city.
Jyväskylä is not a very big city, with only 135 000 inhabitants, and it is definitely a student city. About 1/4 of all the inhabitants are students at either JYU of the Jyväskylä Institute of Technology, so it feels a little bit like Halifax and a bit like home in that sense. However, not everything is as close together as Halifax. Kortepohja is actually about a 35-40 minute walk from campus, and about 25 minutes from the city centre, so we all bought bicycles over the weekend. Unlike Canada, everyone here bikes all year round, so there are lots of paths around the city that make it easy to get from one place to another.
I had planned to talk a little bit about some events and things I've done since arriving here in Jyväskylä, but this post is getting a little long. So I think I'll save that stuff for tomorrow or Friday, and hopefully get some more pictures too. That way I can give more details about the events, my travel plans and my classes! I hope you enjoyed this blog post, it's been a while since I've written so I'm a bit rusty. Thanks for reading :)
