Vappu!

Vappu-Finnish party week!!!

This week is Vappu week, the biggest carnival-style festivity that takes place in the streets of Finland's towns and cities and the student traditions are also one of the main characteristics of "Vappu". Today the students of Oulu university paraded in town and then at 2pm the first year students were "dunked" into a large container filled with water and ice-cubes and afterwards had to swim in the lake in town. A group of us walked to town at 12:30 to join in on the festivities and spectate the event.

It is also traditional to eat tippaleipa (funnel cake) and munkki (sugar coated donuts) so we bought some and enjoyed them while sitting at the lake. There were hundreds of people gathered around the lake to watch the swimming and join in the festivities.

Us girls (from left Barbora, Petra, Amy, ME and Lind) enjoying our Tippaleipa and Sima which is a sweet mead that one is supposed to drink during Vappu.
Pauly, enjoying his Tippaleipa!








A first year students being "dunked"


After we saw the first few students being dunked we decided to warm up in our favourite hangout - Hemingways, for some coffee and hot chocolate as it was a rather windy and cold day!

Farewell to Andrea!:(
When we came back from town, Andrea came over to say goodbye as she is sadly flying back to Austria this evening...
The farewell party: Marko, Paul, Petra, Andrea, Becky and I

Pulla-baking!

Today Petra, Amy and I got together to have a pulla-baking session. Pulla is a traditional Finnish mildly-sweet dessert bread flavoured with crushed cardamom seeds and occasionally raisins.
Petra, me and Amy busy at work...

Daffodils and teabags

Elena (my italian flatmate) added a new member to our family in our flat...a Daffodil plant...spring is in the air! Elena has also started a collection of used teabags (from the help of her her flatmates), as she is on a mission to create a curtain made just of used teabags...after seeing an art exhibition displaying this...

Aland Islands

On the road again...to the Aland Islands!

Hello everyone!

I am leaving on a trip to the Aland Islands tomorrow and will update my blog with pictures of my trip when i return on Friday. And of those who don't know, the Aland Islands is an archipelago in the Baltic Sea. It is situated at the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia and forms an autonomous, demilitarised, monolungually Swedish-speaking administrative province of Finland.

I wish everyone a wonderful week...

More update...

Makkara braaing!
We decided to do a typical Finnish thing and have a Makkara (the Finnish are big on grilling their Finnish sausage known as Makkara over a fire in the freezing cold weather) braaing session one late afternoon at the braai facilities right outside our building. The days are nice and long now and the sun sets at about 9:10pm so perfect conditions to have a late afternoon/eve braai.
The tons of Makkara grilling away on the braai...
Wolfi excited about sinking his teeth into his "Makkara-hotdog!"

Finally an update again...

Hello all my lovely friends and family!

I have to admit, i have been neglecting my blog a bit...i have been busy working on my master's thesis and questionnaires that I hope to administer during May here in Oulu. Well, what i have been up to follows shortly...

FORMULA 1:

On Sunday was the third formula one race of the year in Bahrain and Marko and I (the only formula one fans, out of our group of friends) were especially looking forward to watching the race especially since we were not able to watch the previous two. So we decided to get together on Sunday, and Petra, Paul and Naomi decided to join us. First Petra and I prepared a nice pre-lunch before the match for all of us...a typical Baltic dish called Burek. 12:30pm everyone else came over for lunch and then got ready for the formula one to start at 2:30. The pre-match interview started at 2pm and at 2:30 just as the race was supposed to start...an episode of "The Simpsons" was shown instead!!! We were to find out on the internet that they stopped broadcasting the race on normal t.v. and is only shown now on a paid channel...what a disappointment!
Our television, that usually is packed away in the cupboard, was taken out, and dusted off especially for the formula one race.




Good food, good wine and good company!

This past week we have been busy trying new recipes and baking a lot...and to accompany that we found a really good Australian red wine, that has become a favourite amongst all of us...
The really good Australian red wine...obviously recommended by Paul...

One of Paul's amazing recipe ideas...mini gourmet pizzas (with tomato, feta, basilica, onion, sun-dried tomato, mushroom and cheese..DELICIOUS!) Marko and Paul, my assistant chefs, busy preparing the pizza's

Easter weekend!

Lind (an Icelandic exchange friend of mine) invited me to spend Easter weekend at her place about 1,5km from campus. She stays with a wonderful Finnish family in a beautiful big house on the top floor of the house. That evening we made an AMAZING easter dinner which consisted of roast chicken, potatoes, onions, rice, grave and atleast 4 different coloured vegetables...a feast! Especially for us exchange students...it was food heaven!
An excited Lind dishing up the food...
Hmmmmm......our feast!
Lind and I tucking into our food....The next morning we met with another exchange friend of our...Benjamin (from Germany) for easter breakfast followed by Icelandic chocolate (that Lind's parents had set over to Finland from Iceland) and sweets. Later that afternoon we decided to take a nice walk along the lake since we were blessed with an wonderful warm, sunny easter day!

Life in Oulu!

Some of my exchange friends have taken some amazing photos here in Oulu and I wanted to share some of them with everyone...
Just before our walk to the frozen beach the other day, we spotted our "furry friends" that live in the trees in front of our building. Paul was able to get a really good close-up photo of one of these furry "critters" during his evening snack...although, was looking a bit annoyed that "paparazzi Paul" was interrupting his/her dinner...

Wolfi (my Austrian mate) who lives on the top floor, has amazing view of Linnanmaa campus and the lake..here is a panorama of my campus and surroundings...home sweet home!

We often witness some amazing sunsets...here Patrick and Wolfi took some beautiful photos of sunsets at the beach in Oulu...

Cooking with Naomi (my new British room-mate)!

British "surprise" fridge-cakeOn Monday we were introduced to our new room-mate, she arrived all the way from England, Cornwall. Today she invited Wolfi, Petra and I to some traditional British tea and some fridge-cake. The fridge-cake consisted of a mixture of marshmellows, 5 slabs of chocolate, biscuits and nuts...
Hehe...while we (Naomi, Naomi and I) were preparing the fridge-cake the consistency didn't exactly turn out how we expected (hence the "surprise" factor) but we patched it up as best as we could and once it had hardened in the fridge, it didn't look half as bad...and tasted REALLY good...which is all that really matters;)

(Photo: Naomi (another British student who has the same name as my room-mate) and Naomi (my room-mate) mixing the stuff)

Elnadiomitra, BOVRIL:) and yummy cake...

Elnadiomitra (our Basilica plant)

Our Basilica plant in our apartment is growing beautifully and has really become our "pride and joy"...hehe so we decided we had to name it. How we came up with the name...? well, we took all our names (my 3 room-mates and I) and put them together and ELNADIOMITRA was born!(Elena -Italian room-mate, Naomi - my new British room-mate who arrived on Monday, Petra - Slovenian room-mate and ME = Elnadiomitra)

YAY FOR BOVRIL!!!

June's (the other South African exchange student) boyfriend arrived this past weekend from South Africa to visit her here in Finland and Amy (in the picture with both of our bovrils) and I were beaming with joy upon receiving a jar of Bovril each from him all the way from South Africa! YUM!!

Sunset!

Sunset at the lake at Linnanmaa Campus. Photographer: Paul Thomas Rees

The days in Oulu are getting much longer (almost 14hrs) and warmer now, often we are lucky to see some beautiful sunsets. Yesterday Paul and I walked to a lake nearby to watch the sunset.
Photographer: Nadine Lenhard (Dori)
Paul taking a close-up of some frozen droplets hanging from a branch, the result of which can be seen in the photo below...
Photographer: Paul Thomas Rees

At the beach!

Later that afternoon (after the lasagne and ice-cream lunch) we walked to the beach (about 5km from campus). We had planned to buy some Makkara (finnish type of sausage) to braai at the beach and watch the sunset.

We had been very lucky with warm sunny days and amazing sunsets here in Oulu this past week so we thought it would be nice to go to the beach and watch the sunset from there. Wolfi and Patrick had gone a few days ago and had witnessed an amazing sunset at the beach.From left: Patrick and Sarah, Marko (on the bike), Paul, Barbora, Wolfi and me (taking the photo)...
Wolfi, Patrick and Sarah with the map to make sure we were on the right track...Wolfi catching a lift on the bike... Arriving at the beach, rather windy, cold with dark rainclouds looking down at us...this time we were not that lucky with the weather and later on while we braaied the Makkara on the fire the rain started...the sun had tricked us with beautiful sunny weather the whole week and the day we decide to go to the beach, it decides to rain (some of the first rain drops in Oulu since we arrived). The beach...Frozen...

Hmmmm....Makkara!

Wolfi's amazing lasagne!

Yesterday afternoon for lunch a group of us met upstairs in Wolfi's flat for lasagne...YUM!
Everyone enjoying the delicious lasagne that Wolfi had prepared. After the lasagne we all still had an appetite for ice-cream so Wolfi quickly went by bike to the shops and came back with ice-cream, chocolate sauce and banana's...

And my own invention...marshmellow, chocolate sauce and banana surprise!!