As you may've noticed, I finally decided to upgrade to the new blogger and all that comes with it. As the new template develops the links will (finally) be expanded and bugs generally worked out. After a hiatus, I plan to get back into publishing here as time allows. Thanks for staying with, and please continue passing stories and news along to me! jekjact [at] yahoo.com
Student from the US with a Finnish heritage returning to the homeland as often as possible. Blog of what happens while I'm there, and what happens while I'm away.
Something has me a little bit confused. This is going to require a bit of explanation though.
Finland has a sort of mixed presidentialist/parliamentarian political system. Up until the 2000 constitutional ammendments, the president was quite a powerful figure. Now the president is mainly a figurehead for the republic, and is politically involved mainly in issues of foreign affairs.
Most of the rest of the powers invested in the executive in the US fall in Finland to the Prime Minister, that guy over there on the left, Matti Vanhanen. He and his cabinet of ministers take care of domestic issues, and other general political matters.
Now, here is where the mixture of systems comes into play. The president is directly elected by popular vote (since Finland has abandoned the eletoral college system similar to that used in the US). The Prime Minister, like in your run of the mill parliamentary government, is elected internally and generally comes from the party holding the most seats in that body (unless you're in Germany apparently). I'm not yet certain how Finland Parliamentary elections work, but from what I can gather it's a hybrid between list voting and individual. Since I am giving a presentation on this next Wednesday, I suppose I should start reading up on the subject. In any event, Finns do not directly vote for the Prime Minister in the same way that they do the President.
As you've read previously here or elsewhere, this year was a presidential election year in Finland. Matti Vanhanen was among the list of candidates for president, however he didn't make it past the first round. In fact, Vanhanen finished (it's hard to remember to type only one "n" in that word;)) third with 18.6%, behind Niinisto with 24.1% and Halonen with 46.3%.
Now that all that's out of the way, here's my question: How can a guy so influential in the Finnish political scene, maybe the most powerful person (it seems to me like the prime minister is more powerful and the president is more respected only out of tradition- correct me if I'm wrong) perform so poorly when he's directly voted for or against by the Finnish people? The numbers aren't even close! And what does this poor performance mean? Are the Finnish people so happy with the job he's doing as Prime minister that they don't want to let him out of that spot? Would they like to see him out of that position too, or if prime minister was voted for directly would he earn that office? It's difficult to know, and considering the debate between the democratic-ness of presidentialist vs parliamentary forms of governance, Finland hybrid could be an important case study for comparitive studies.
As I began anew my study of the Finnish language from text I came across the webpages maintained by Fred Karlsson at the University of Helsinki. On this page he lists the 2,253 possible forms a Finnish noun can take. Yes, that's right. A single Finnish noun may be in one of 2,253 conjugations/forms/tenses/whatever depending on the intended meaning. Maybe tomorrow after I learn all these I'll let you know about verb forms... or adjectives.... and I bet you can't wait to hear about the Finnish gerund!!
Friday I left with a couple of the girls from my second host family (they now live in Helsinki) to make the 7 hour trip to Iisalmi, the place I called home during my junior year of high school. Returning can be described as nothing less than an awesome experience. It was eerie, for sure. Everything was almost exactly the same. One new shop was built, two shops changed locations, but everything else was exactly as it had been the day I left, exactly as the map I've travelled through in my head many times since showed. It was very reminscent of "A League of Their Own," and I felt the whole time like Madonna's "This used to be my playground" was playing in the background.
Friday we arrived rather late. I visited for a bit with family #2, the B's, then headed over to say hi to the 1st family P. I walked back to the B's from there, wanting to see the town by foot. It was a bit longer walk than I remembered, but nice nonetheless, especially after having been in a car much of the day. When I got back to the B's, my friend Kartsa was there with his fiancee who just happened to be the best friend of one of the girls I had driven up with. Kartsa speaks english better than I do, so he and I started talking a "mile a minute" not realizing that no one else had a clue what we were saying until they asked us to speak finnish or slow down. After so long though, it's only expected. After coffee and the breads and desserts that come with it Kartsa and Hanne left and I headed to the sauna. The place was familiar, yet bigger than I remeber. That boxed room with its wooden benches and miniture plastic figurines is a place I'd spent much of my time during the core of the Finnish winter, the time I'd lived with this family.
Saturday was the day I thought I was going to explode. The day started around 9. I had a small breakfast, then we headed to see my host dad's new vet clinic that he'd set up since I'd left. It was unbelievable. That's about all I can say about that. The change from the small practice he had when I was there to this new teaching clinic is just incredible. After that we headed back to their place for an early dinner/late lunch with salad and breads, of course, and beef filets with sauce and blue cheese mushrooms.
From there I headed to meet my relatives in Finland who I was lucky enough to meet when I was here last time because they too were living in Iisalmi. There we had an amazing salmon and salads and breads and cooked vegetables. Desert was cloudberry yogurt... my first time having cloudberries since coming back to finland. It was great to see them again, though unfortunately their children were away at school. I'll hopefully see them soon. After visiting a bit and seeing a couple home movies of my cousin in the army drum corps (army service is require from all males in Finland), we had coffee and cakes. If you're keeping track, that's 3 meals in 2.5 hours.
I left straight from there around the corner to my first family's palce. Many of the aunts and uncles and grandfolks and cousins had assembled for an evening of feasting and visiting. The evening started with salmon and various cocktail foods and moose, beef, pig.... salad, breads, and a lot of other foods that aren't coming to mind at the moment. Seeing everyone again here was (as in the other cases) just an extraordinarily special experience. After dinner, we had fresh cloudberries and vanilla sauce, and a blackberry mousse along with some cloudberry liqour that my host mom had made herself. It tasted great. I looked at some pictures and spent some time with the host siblings and cousins and then we had coffee and carrot cake and cookies. Add those 3 meals to the count. Around 9 it was time to head back to meet some friends and get ready to go out. When I got back to the B's place a third salmon was waiting along with Karelian pastries and a variety of other things. Already busting at the seems, I ate as little as I could while still being polite. That evening we headed to the local "Irish" bar for a few, then over to the local disco. I ran into some old friends from school, along with the girl who was one of two partners for the Vanhojen tanssit. Again, just a great experience to see everyone, but maybe not as interesting for everyone else.
Sunday we headed back to Helsinki pretty early. The whole weeekend was much too short, which is why I am headed back Thursday:)
More interesting posts coming, I promise, but now I finally have work to do... for better or for worse.
Taken from the car somewhere in the 3 o'clock hour during the drive back to Helsinki from Iisalmi. The Finnish sunset lasts a long time, and the sheer number of colors the sky can turn during that time is amazing.
The gloves are off. Today is the second round of elections here in Finland, a runoff election between the top two performers in the first round. When I was visiting in Iisalmi this past weekend my first host family had an extra TV which they are letting me borrow, so I have been able to follow the coverage as the polls close. The candidates are both at the YLE TV studios, just down the road from me. On the way back this evening about 2 hours ago we drove by there and I saw everyone in the studio lobby (it glass walls to the outside.. In the US that would never happen. Probably not secure enough or something along those lines. The results should be in in about an hour. Otherwise, look for my post about this weekend tomorrow (it'll be another long one). I didn't take as many pictures as I should've but you can see those that I did take in Flickr.
Step outside the front door of the main building of the university of Helsinki and this is what greets you. Helsingin tuomiokirkko, The Helsinki (Lutheran) Cathedral.
This past weekend I went to Saarijärvi to visit some friends of mine from Iisalmen lyseo back in the day. From left to right, Heini, Tarja, me, and Tiina. These are some of my girls that I used to have wild fun times with when I was here with Rotary. Heini came to the states the year after I'd been in Finland, and she was randomly placed in Ohio about 3 hours from where I live, so I was able to see her more recently than Tarja or Tiina, but it was still awesome to see everyone. I was also able to meet a lot of cool new people in Heini's life- her boyfriend Janne, and her friends Antti, Tuomas and Tinia.
Here's me and Tinia trying to figure out what Tarja is grabbing so firmly. Apparently it's round, but that's all I know.
And here are the guys- Tuomas, Janne, Antti, me.
So the weekend went sorta like this:
-Thursday night I had a meeting for a special program organized by the Erasmus Student Network at the Helsinki University and Helsinki University of Technology Student Unions. The point of it is to make mixed groups of internationals and finns so we can all hang out together and so everyone knows at least a few people on a smaller scale. The group I'm with is pretty awesome, so it'll be nice to see what we end up doing. So far we've got an appointment each Thursday to meet up before the ESN night at the bar I mentioned before. Last week was a good time. The music was pretty bad... really bad actually... but I did get to hear me and KJs song, K-Maro "Femme like you." It was a special moment. I missed the last tram home and had to walk a bit of the way in some pretty bad weather, so that was unfortunate. I need to figure out the night trains I think, since there's no night bus here.
Friday I got up early (6am!!) to catch the train to go see the ladies. I had only gone to bed at 3, so I wasn't well rested, nor recovered from the previous night. I dragged myself across the bridge to the railway station and bought my ticket. The train was running late, they announced after I'd stood 15 minutes on the freezing platform, so i went back in for a bit. They announced the trains arrival again, so I went back to the platform, but the train that came was the wrong one. I was only wearing tennis shoes, so my feet were absolutely untolerably cold. (It got to -37 this weekend in Jyväskylä!). After doing this a few times I went back to the ticket clerk and asked what was up. He said the train had already come and gone, which was news to me, but he graciously exchanged my ticket for the next train. I decided to use the two hours in between to get a decent pair of warm shoes. Unfortuantely this meant I had to trek back to my place. Now normally I'm an advocate of whoever it was that said when you start worrying about comfort over fashion you're just getting old, but ultimately I had to realize that it would be much more stylish to wear my boots than to loose my toes to stupidity.
Eventually I got on the train, and the rest of the trip there was pretty mundane. When I arrived in Saarijärvi, it was to a surprised Tarja (Heini and I agreed it would be best not to tell her I was planning on coming). It was SO GREAT to see them again! We went to the store for food, then headed back to Heini's place to cook it. We spent the time catching up while Heini did the dishes and Tarja cooked. After we ate Heini wanted to go swimming, and after a little convincing I agreed. The swim hall was quite nice, and as it was my first time in a sauna since coming back to Finland, that was pretty awesome as well. It's such an amazing experience, and one that deserves a post of its own later on down the road. Also remind me to mention how the sauna culture makes Finns much more comfortable and healthy with their bodies. We ended up crashing at Janne's place that night because none of us wanted to go back out in the cold. Honestly, can you blame us?
Saturday we slept in. Tiina came a little later on in the day, after we'd run a few errands and such. Saturday night, however, was reserved for partying and a trip to the local "bar." (I use the term very loosely- though great fun, this place isn't exactly a club as I am used to.) After a visit to Heini's sauna, and a few moments outside in the -37 degree weather wearing nothing but a towel (:-D so much fun because you steam like a piece of meat taken off the grill and held in the freezer- plus, look at those muscles!!), we got the party started. It was mainly just a bunch of the normal party craziness, topped off by a drinking game in which Heini made a rule that you couldn't use any variation of the first person pronoun- so in English no I/my/mine and in Finnish no minä/minun/minua/minut/minuun/minutta/minuna/minulla/minulle/minulta/minusta/minussa/minuksi/and so on. This is a much easier feat in Finnish, since verbs function just as well without the minä in a normal sentence. Minä olen mies means I'm a man. Olen mies means I'm a man. Sadly you can't just say "am a man" in english and expect people to know what you're talking about. If anyone got drunk this night, that rule would surely be the reason why.... of course... The time at the bar started off in an amazing way. After that... well it was still fun anyway, just not quite as prime as it started out.
As is often the case, Sunday was a day for everyone to recover from the previous night's festivities, so we just kept things low key, watched some tv, chatted about life, and hung out as such. Sunday the weather thankfully began to thaw, but it was still less warm than one would like it to be. While hanging out at Janne's place again, we got the camera out once more, but this time for video. Below is an awesome video of heini and tarja demonstrating their awesome english skills. (actually they're just being silly and the speak english better than I do, but still it's soon to be a classic watched in classrooms across the globe (when finnish becomes required study everywhere), so you should take your chance for a sneak peak).
I hope you enjoy!!!
Monday was nothing more than the bus/train trip home, classes week two, and a meeting showcasing many of the international groups at the university. This morning I was running late for class, so there was no filming going on when I walked by the windows. shucks! My registration was finally processed today, so I was able to get library and computer network access (score!), so now I have to do some real work (damn). Oh, and to all of you at Brown- I have 6 candles burning right now, and it's not gonna cost me $600 if the inspector comes round:-P
This week's forecast: Thursday an innercity rivalry: Jokerit vs. HiFK in the Finnish national hockey league. It's gonna be awesome. Headed there with the Behm's (my second host family) and my/their friend Jukka. Friday we're all then gonna drive up to Iisalmi to see the town. I'm sure there'll be the faint sound of Madonna's "this used to be my playground" playing as we drive through the town and I see all my old friends. Unfortunately not everyone I want to see will be there this weekend, so I'm going to take the train there next weekend. It'll be great to be there so much, but the trip is a pretty long one. Nonetheless, it's gonna be such an amazing thing to head there both times! And of course you'll hear all about it right here, in a vivid multi-media experience.
I'm back in Helsinki, working on a post from this weekend. Until then check out the pics I uploaded to Flickr. I'll put pics there til i reach the limit, then figure something else out. Look for the full post tomorrow.
I was told that at the coldest, today windchill factors put the temperature at -44. Considering the fact that I still can't feel my toes, I'd believe it. Exposed skin is a bad thing, but I couldn't find any good way to completely cover up my face, so I was left power walking from place to place to keep damage to a minimum. And I'm still going out tonight. hah! We have the International Student "buddy groups" kickoff, followed by the ESN international student night at Baarikärpanen, a local pub. The best thing about it is that happy hour is from 22-23.00, ergo 10 to 11PM, and beer/cider is but a single euro. In any event, the thing that I most enjoyed about today was watching people walking along the street. Every time one exhales, a blast of condensation, breath smoke if you will, hits head on. Walking along the road people look like steam locomotives, sans tow. Of course after smiling slightly about this observation my face froze like this and I looked like a maniac the rest of the day, but it was worth it.
In other news, today began the class I've been most looking forward to. It's taught by a guy named Burkard Auffermann. Last spring he came to Brown and gave a seminar of which I was one of a handful of particiapants. I went up to him today to see if he by chance remembered me. I was quite surprised by his response. "You were the guy sitting over to my left side." I didn't think this guy would even remember being at Brown, let alone the place I was sitting while he gave his lecture. We had a good conversation then (longer than I've had with any professor previously anyway) and it was awesome. I'm so glad to be taking his class (Finnish Foreign Policy). I'll learn a lot, and I'm not afraid to ask questions, for once.
Tomorrow I'm catching a 7 am train to Tampere, then Jyväskylä and ultimately a bus to Saarijärvi to see my friends Heini, Tarja, and Tiina. I CAN'T WAIT to see them all again. Heini I saw in Ohio about 3 years ago, but the other 2 it's been about 4 years. I won't be updating this weekend then, but (if Heini is the same as she's always been) expect pictures and wild stories when I return!
LOST is the latest series from the US to get imported to Finland. This picture is taken at the Main Railway Station in Helsinki. The escalators you see head down to the subway. The compass points on the floor are a popular meeting place. On weekend nights the goth people like to hang out in this area. The underground walkways between many main buildings in Helsinki are quite extensive, if one knows the proper stores to cut through and such (a big help today, with temps at or below 0F and windchills -20F). But I digress...
The real reason for this post is to discuss the completely imported ad campaign Finland seems to be using to promote Lost. Now I'm not gonna lie, I haven't missed an episode before coming here. It's my guilty pleasure, and I'm gonna miss Wednesday nights with Steph watching it:( But posting builboards this size all throughout the metro tunnels is a bit much. I have never seen such advertising in Finland, even for the most successful movie in Finnish history which just hit theaters last weekend (75 copies, every theater sold out). The movie is called Matti, and it's about the famous Finnish ski jumper Matti Nykänen. All that movie has is a few posters around town. Why is all this necessary if you are making a quality product?
Alright, so I talk about the weather more than I should, but it's genuinely cold here, and you all should feel my pain and understand why I don't think it's all that cold in Rhode Island or Ohio. Right now, as I am getting ready to head out for class, it's 5F/-15C. With the windchill that number drops to -14F/-25C. My weather report from a couple days ago said the low was 6F but we should still reach a high of 21F. Not gonna happen... So much for being spoiled!
I added a button from theweatherchannel so that I don't have to talk about how cold it is everyday. It doesn't display in Celsius though, much as I'd like it to.
Something has me a little bit confused. This is going to require a bit of explanation though.
