First Day of Classes

5-20-13

Day 1 of classes

The start of the week begins today with my first class, Finnish Language and Culture.  I met my tutor, Suvi and her other tutoree, Becca, another American girl at 8:30 to walk to campus.  We also walked with two other tutors and their students, a total of six of us.  Three with bikes, three without.  The walk took about 30 minutes.  I was able to chat with Becca a little on the way there.  She will be a sophomore at Kansas State University, the purple, anti-JayHawk School.  It was nice to talk.  Once we got to campus, Suvi showed us the room where our class was and we started class. 

            Our teacher is a Finnish lady.  She is maybe thirties, blonde hair, blue eyes—very Finnish.  We learned how to say some Finnish words, like greetings and numbers.  Finnish is a phonetic language, so they pronounce every single letter.  Each letter is also always pronounced the same no matter where it is at or what it is next to.  We briefly went over some history of Finland too.  She told us that it is very rude to be late in Finland.  They are a land of very timely people.  Johanna, our teacher, said that if a person is five minutes late, that is unacceptable.  Good to know.

            There are nine people in the class but only eight were there today.  Another girl from San Diego, California.  I feel like she is typical American.  I will try to get a picture of her.  Example: She asked about where she could buy a hair dryer.  There is a girl from Russia, she is pretty quiet and doesn’t talk much.  I don’t know if that is the culture or if she is shy because her English isn’t very good.  Then there is a girl from Poland, a boy from Germany and a girl from Holland.  A wonderfully diverse class.

            We had lunch and I ate with Becca, Roumi (sp?) the girl from Holland, Jureh (sp ?) the boy from Germany, and Alexandre, the Russian girl.  I think I will like the Dutch girl.  She seems very sweet and fun.  Jureh seems a little quiet.  Becca and I became friends.  We walked back from campus together and then went shopping.  We got some groceries for breakfast and for tonight’s dinner.  She invited me over to eat. 

            We made delicious macaroni and cheese, and mushrooms with tomatoes and cheese and pesto.  However, whatever she did to the mac and cheese it was fantastic.  Absolutely delicious.  Theresa, who is Becca’s roommate also joined us.  She is from the Czech Republic.  I already like her a lot.  She made plans to go out with some friends at 8 tonight and invited us to go with her.  It’s nearly time now so I shall write more later.

Nadan,

See you later,

McCall