Exploring Lahti-More Pictures

I realized I forgot to show some pictures of Lahti in my last post. Below are some more pictures.

Pictured here is the area around my school, my school can be seen in the background next to the ISKU.

These are verious pictures of streets around Lahti.

This is my art school in Lahti, it is the art building. There are other departments from the school, but they are all in different buildings scattered throughout the city. Another important fact that I found out is that it is illegal in Finland to charge tuition for post-secondary school, and all Finnish students in post-secondary school get 500 euros a month from the Finnish government. Most students after graduating from high school are also encouraged to travel for a couple of years before they start post-secondary school, I found this very interesting, and it also made me a little jealous of them!

This is the view at night from the bottom of the ski jumps, there are 3 jumps, and they are all different heights. In the summer, the area pictured here is a soccer field.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures!

Exploring Lahti

Hello everyone!

Well this week was a busy one, I have been exploring Lahti and we also had our orientation this week. We first explored the sculpture park in downtown Lahti. The sculpture park is located on top of a hill in the forest and the sculptures are located on the trails through the forest. This time of year its hard to spot the sculptures because they are all covered in snow and a lot of them can be mistaken as trees or rocks, but when you do notice them they are quite impressive. Most of the sculptures that are pictured below look quite similar to one another and have the same motif, they are also mostly made out of cement, believe it or not, even though they look natural. Pictured below are just a few of the many sculptures located in the forest.

The orientation week started out with a music concert at Felix Krohn Hall located on Sibeliuksenkatu. The concert was a symphony orchestra with many guest opera singers, they were all very good, and the orchestra also sounded very good, and it was all free! There is also another music hall in Lahti, it is called Sibeliustalo, or Sibelius Hall, it is located on the harbour front and is home to the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, its quite a nice looking building and another place that would also like to visit.

The second day of the orientation we had a cultural walk. We first visited the Lahti Ski Museum, where we saw ski's as old as 2000 years ago that the viking's use to use for hunting reindeer and moose. There are also a lot of fun things to do at the museum, you can try the ski jumps in virtual reality, I wiped out, lol! You can also try cross country skiing, target practice, and virtual ski jumping and skiing on another machine as well, it was a pretty good museum. Below are pictures of the museum and the 3 world renouned ski jumps located right beside the museum. The ski jumping festival is at the beginning of march every year.

We then went to the Lahti City Museum, which held a lot of artifacts on the history of Lahti, as well as an artists exhibition on the first floor.

Most of these artwork installations had motion, the swings moved, the coats moved, and the projection of the carriage also moved. The theme of these works was life and death.

There were many different parts to the museum, inlcuding the history of the city itself, and the history of design and furniture design in Lahti and Finland.

These are pictures of the outside of the City Museum. We also visited the Church of the Cross, which is pictured below.

In this picture is Lotti, she is from Southampton, England, she is also on exchange in Fine Arts.

On our own time, we also walked around the harbour on the other side of the sculpture park. There is a huge marina here and many walking trails, including a walkway that goes around the lake. The pictures below show the opposite side of the lake to the previous pictures on the blog from my place in Mukkula.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures!
 

Finnish Cuisine Class

Hello Everyone,

Well today I had my Finnish Cuisine class for exchange students, it runs over the dinner hour which is quite handy! This week we learned how to bake Finnish "pulla", salty paties, and sweet pastries. We made Salmon coulibiac, Karelian Pasties with egg butter spread, Finnish onion pie, Deep fried meat pasties, cinnamon buns, shrove buns, Lingonberry pie, and Runegerg's muffins. Needless to say, I am extremely full right now from all the bread and pastries, but boy did it taste good!

 In this first picture, you can see Sam, (the one giving the thumbs up), he is an exchange student from Southampton, England, he is also in Fine arts. The girl with the red hair and black shirt's name is Tiirn, and she is an exchange student from Estonia, which is just below Finland, she is in Design. The two other students are from Vietnam and they are degree students, they are here for their full degree which is three years.

Each group was responsible for making one part of the dinner. Our group was responsible for making the Karelian pasties with egg butter spread. This is my group pictured here, ready to bake! Carine is the one looking at the camera with the blue apron on, she is also in design and is from Stuttgart, Germany, the girl behind her is also from Germany, and the two girls in front are from Vietnam, they are also degree students.

Here are the Karelian Pasties (with rice filling), before they went in the oven to bake. the shell is made out of rye flour and white flour, and the filling is made out of rice, milk, salt, and butter. After they are done baking, you glaze them with a glaze made from melted butter and milk or water, and serve them with the egg-butter spread which you top them off with, I forgot to get a picture of the finished product, I think they were all eaten, lol!

Sam's group made cinnamon buns. The first picture shows them before they are cooked, and the second one is after they were cooked, they were also devoured quite fast and were delicious! I was not able to get pictures of everything we made but it looked fantastic and I apologize, I think I got carried away with the eating part!

 In this photo you can just make out our teacher, she is the one on the opposite side of the table with the white chef's hat on and the white shirt on, she was very helpful and showed us exactly how to make the food properly!

This is the table where we feasted after our labours!

Lingonberries are a very famous berry in Finland, and they looked very similar to cranberries and have the same health benefits. The Scandinavian diet is noted to be just as healthy as the Mediterranian diet, which is something I did not know until I came here. Tonight's example is not of their healthy food, lol! they do make healthier food as well, including lots of fish, and extensive use of a wide range of berries for thier health benefits, among other foods.

Overall, it was a really great class and a really great experience. Next time, we get to look at fish in the heart of Finnish gastronomy, and we will be making Finnish fish dishes, most of the food we make in our class is traditional Finnish food. I will keep you posted for next time!

Arrived in Finland!

Hello Everyone,

I have finally started my blog! Sorry for the delay in creating it, I hope you all enjoy it! I have arrived safely in Finland, I arrived here on January 6, 2011, and I am now all settled into my apartment in Mukkula, talo III,  in the city of Lahti, which is about 1 and a half hours north of Helsinki, (I think 'talo' is 'building' in Finnish).

 

The weather here is very similar to Canada, except I think there is a little more snow here, and yesterday, (January 15), was extremely cold! Its not a dry cold like Canada, but more of a damp kind of cold, and my hands are not quite as dry as they usually are in Canada.

I have some pictures of my residence and the area around it. My residence is right on the harbour, so it is quite a nice location. Here are some pictures of my residence.

 

If you are planning to come and visit me, hopefully these pictures will help you find my place.

The area around my residence is also quite interesting. I am close to the harbour and a campground, and both of these places are surprisingly active during the winter months.

These are people out in the middle of the ice, there was quite a lot of people doing many different activities out there, there were people ice fishing, walking, cross-country skiing, and some kind of parasailing, but I could not see exactly how they were doing it.

These are pictures of the harbour on the lake, it looks like it will be quite a nice place to go to once spring and summer arrive.

Here are the parasailer's, I think they are either using ski's or a snowboard.

This is a pool cut out of the ice, it is located right next to the sauna, the sauna is a traditional Finnish pastime, and is huge in Finland, you can find sauna's almost anywhere in Finland. You are supposed to go in the sauna first, and then jump in the 0 degree celsius water, brrr! There is a pathway that goes from the sauna to the water, and the steps have a little ice on them, brrr! They keep the water bubbling all the time, I think its to keep it from freezing over. If you don't want to jump in the water you can also choose to roll in the snow instead. In more traditional saunas, you are supposed to hit yourself with birch bark twigs, the birch tree is also a symbol of Finland, and there are a lot of them in Finland! This process of sweating in the sauna and then jumping in the cold water, than back into the sauna again is supposed to be really good for you. I have not tried it yet though!

These are pictures of the campground around my place, surprisingly a lot of people were actually there right now. You can also rent a cabin in this campground, some of which are pictured in the first picture.

Lahti is about the size of Burlington, maybe just a little bit bigger, but it has a big downtown core where most everything is located. Mukkula is just outside of the downtown core and is about a 10 minute bus ride from my school which is located downtown.

I hope you enjoyed my first blog!