After leaving from work on Friday, I took the train to Helsinki. After arriving, I went to drop off my backpack to the hostel where we were staying for the weekend. The hostel was in the old Olympic stadium (from the Helsinki Olympics in 1952.) We then headed back to the city center and stopped at a coffee place to wait for the rest of the group. The hostel was about 30 minutes walking from the train station, so we bought a two day public transport ticket and took a tram.
There are tons of lakes in Finland. Lake Suolijärvi is nearest to where I live. Several international students decided to have a BBQ by the lake and go swimming, so we headed over around 9pm. I don’t remember if I went swimming that time, but we go there a lot. The first time I was there was with some coworkers.
Not sure what they were doing with the grill here…
I didn’t do much my first weekend in Tampere. I purchased basic things like cleaning and kitchen supplies, along with bed sheets and a towel. I also bought a SIM card for my cell phone. One interesting thing I noticed is that in the shopping place in Hervanta, where I live, there are three different supermarkets right next to each other. All two are comparable in price and product selection (K Supermarket and S Market) with one budget place (Lidl). I still can’t understand why three different supermarkets are within a 30 second walk within the same building…
My trip began in Rochester, NY. I woke up early and finished packing. My housemate drove me to the airport early to catch my 10am flight. I arrived to JFK airport in NYC around 11:30am. I had lunch and found one of the charging stations to plug in my laptop while I waited until my 5:40pm flight. Even though there was no one seating next to me, I did not sleep much at all in the airplane.
I am currently living in the city of Tampere in Finland. Last year I spent the Summer working in Switzerland and thoroughly enjoyed it. I figured I should do something similar again, so I ended up here in Finland.
So I skipped a few days. I’ll get the hang of this eventually…
So today I “helped” the Students Innovating Technology group with a new hydroponics system. I say “helped” because I mostly just took pictures and documented the build. I did carry stuff around at one point, but I can’t take credit for the work.
The way this works is with a water reservoir at the bottom with a pump. The water (with nutrients) flows to the top pipe, where plans will be, and down to the next step. When the pump is flowing, the water level rises until it overflows through the larger pipes in the end of the tube. There is a much smaller pipe near the bottom of each tube that helps empty out each level once the pump turns off.
I woke up this morning to a room temperature of 10C (50F). I think the someone turned off the house heater. Either way, I was not prepared for that. I need to get my thicker bed sheets.
I didn’t take any pictures today, so here’s one from yesterday. I was messing around with my 50mm prime lens for my new camera. There was this one flower that survived the snow. There were more earlier in the week.
I woke up this morning to see my car covered with some snow, along with most houses around the area. This is not usual for May 9th. Here’s a picture while it was still snowing.
Ok, so it’s a picture of a fence… You can see some snow around the stop sign though!
Today some friends came over to have some pão de queijo, quesadillas, and other stuff. It was a lot of fun. I went to the Rochester Public Market around 7am to get some fresh fruit, which we finished rather quickly.
Today I finally received my passport with my residence permit, or oleskelulupa uppehållstillstånd as they call it, from Finland. I am really looking forward to working there over the summer!
One partof the lake.
