The Cultural Outsider
Experiencing everything that makes up a different culture is what makes travelling great.
Finland Facts
With school ramping up the workload this week things have slowed in the adventure department. The next couple weeks’ mantra is buckle down, and get work done before the trip to St. Petersburg on April 30. Contrary to our semester back home, classes here are winding down in all different ways and at different times.…
Sailing to Stockholm
You may remember me mentioning ESN – The Erasmus Student Network- in one of my earlier posts. It’s this great student run organization that spans the entire European Union, with chapters in nearly every university across the continent planning a number of great events in both competition and cooperation with each other. One of these…
Oslove
Consider this the Finnish spring break – but with less sun and bathing suits and more Saunas and negative temperatures. I’ve got the week off of school, and since I’m still on a mission to see all the Nordic countries while here, three of us booked a trip to Oslo for five days. We had…
Lapland Photo Essay
I would be lying if I said I didn’t expect some sort of ceremonious “crossing into the arctic circle” roadside sign or border on our trip up north. There was no such indication. When we drove through Rovaniemi, we stopped at Santa Clause Village, the “official” home of Santa Clause. Across the street…
Adventures in Lapland
During Ski Week here in Finland – a week off of school at the end of February- I took off to Lapland to soak in life above the Arctic Circle. Check out the video recap below in Vlog #2 of my semester abroad here in Finland. Fair warning: it’s a long one, and if you…
KHL vs. NHL: My Experience
Last week marked the end of the regular season for the KHL and the beginning of the playoffs. I had given up on my hopes of seeing a Jokerit game while I was here after learning how soon the season ended and seeing how expensive tickets were for the remaining games. I figured that playoff…
Suomenlinna Island and Open Prisons
This past Wednesday I took a day trip to Suomenlinna, a fortress island off the southern coast of Helsinki. The island is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site, dedicated to preserving the unique cultural and historic value and disseminating the information it holds to future generations. The Swedish originally built the fortress in the 1700s,…
Getting Weird in Finland
Just this past week I caught up with a buddy of mine back home, and the first thing he asked me was “What’s the weirdest thing about Helsinki?” I was stumped for a moment, because as a foreigner, there are a lot of weird things about Helsinki that it was hard to narrow in on…
Vlogging in Helsinki
Moikka BCIT! This week’s post is a little late because I sorely underestimated the amount of time it would take me to throw together a brief video recap. Holy video rendering, Batman! But don’t fret! because this week’s post is fresh today in the form of a video update from Finland! I had a bunch…
Finland: Week Three
This week has officially marked the transition from vacation mode to regular life mode. Things are starting to feel like home here in Helsinki. I’m settling into routines, finding favourite places around the city, and all of the things that come with developing a new home. This doesn’t mean the place has already lost its…