Before (not after)

I generally write about places after I’ve seen them, which displays an entirely different image than I had before I left. It’s also a little boxed-up and formulaic for an entire year of adventures.

I’m going to Germany and Austria tomorrow. I’m expecting to see lots of Christmas Trees, Santa Clauses, Beer, and some sort of raw meat that my sister told me about. I’m visiting Dita (and hopefully some more of my German Family) for Christmas, in Munich. Dita is Uncle Gene’s niece; she is from my Dad’s generation. Dita is something like my second-cousin-once-removed-in-law. My dad studied abroad in Austria when he was in college, and knows the German Family pretty well. While neither Margie nor Gene is still with us, I always think of them around Christmas time. Since I can't be with my imediate family, I can't think of a better place to be on Christmas.

It will be cold, but not colder than Finland. I’m hoping for snow, but I might not get it. I’ll do some tourist activities, but I’m interested in the people who I’ll meet. Last week someone told me he tried to say “entschuldigung” to somebody in Germany. He was corrected with what he felt was a slightly irritated, guttural, throat-clearing, impossible-to-repeat pronunciation. While he was offended, I thought it was hilarious and I hope someone does that to me! I might have to spend some time in coffee shops speaking very bad German. I don’t speak any German right now, so I’ll have to memorize a few phrases before tomorrow.

Eurajoki

Minna and Mika live in a little village just outside of Rauma. We all toured around the southern west coast of Finland, ate reindeer, and reviewed my lab protocols this weekend. Minna is serious about being a good adviser (we worked hard!). She and Mika are also serious about showing me the great things in Finland!


Old town Rauma's wooden buildings are filled with a quaint hustle and bustle of Christmas shoppers and coffee shops. It's known for its colorful wooden architecture. It's now a World Heritage Site and attracts visitors from far away places.

There's a new nuclear power plant being constructed in Eurajoki. The elaborate visitors' center had a number of hands-on energy and physics demonstrations, including a magic elevator that takes you down to the spent fuel storage wells (to store the spent uranium while its radioactivity decays for 2000 years). I mean, it was imaginary, but I still felt butterflies in my stomach as we pretended to descend hundreds of meters. Even though many of exhibits were geared toward children, Minna and I still learned a lot!

Turkish Night

My housemate, Pinar, is Turkish. As it turns out the Turkish folks have really good food and are excellent dancers. She and a bunch of other Turkish organizers threw a Turkish gathering in Building B. There are four buildings, A, B, C, and D. Each building has approximately 12 stories of people inhabiting it. There is one social recreation room for all four buildings, which happens to be in Building B. None of us have living rooms. I guess whoever was responsible for the construction of this student space did not value social space as much as me, or the Turkish folks. On top of having only one social area, it's always locked. Pinar asked if we could open it last Friday night to have a cultural event because she was interested in making food, playing Turkish music, and spreading Turkish cheer throughout Mikontalo (the four building housing complex). The building manager said "NO!" There are still some things that I don't understand here.

In spite of being harshly rejected by the building manager, the Turks realized that, even though the actual rec room was closed, the corridor outside the rec room was completely available for Turkish Night festivities. And having the event in the corridor included people who would have otherwise had a Turkless evening on their way to do their laundry or play racquetball. I made an effort to recruit these passersby, partly in protest of the building manager's antisocial behavior, but partly because the corridor was kind of a fun place to have Turkish Night.

These are two of Pinar's close friends, as well as some of the main organizers and cooks for the event.

Independence Day

Students march in the student parade, sporting hats that label them as particular majors at their universities.
These are a few shots of the Independence Day President's Ball. All of the famous people in Finland come and participate. I wasn't there, but my friend Audrey used my camera to take pictures of the television while we watched it on TV.

Pikkujoulu

We are nearing the end of Pikkujoulu season. Pikkujoulu parties are preChristmas parties, often associated with an organization, like work or your soccer team. During Pikkujoulu season there are commonly very drunk people found in slightly unusual places, such as hopping onto the train in the middle of a Monday afternoon, or in the interpretation center of the nuclear power plant. "Oh, there must have been a Pikkujoulu that just finished," everyone says. And then we all act like it's normal to be drunk in these unusual places.These are the pictures of my lab's Pikkujoulu party. As you may have guessed by now, my lab is different than the rest of Finland. This is Sannamari, Sakari, and Tea presenting their new invention that they constructed from materials found in laboratories and offices around the building. I think it was a multiple input device, but I can't remember what it was inputting to. Anyway, we had a Pikkujoulu science project contest at our Pikkujoulu.
Jaakko (standing up in black) was stuck with playing Santa, an important and ubiquitously unwanted position at Pikkujoulu parties. Everyone brought a gift that was originally supposed to cost less than two euros. But then people complained that you can't actually purchase anything in Finland for less than two euros. I jokingly pointed out that you could buy a stick of gum. But someone else countered with "well, it better be a cheap stick of gum," which is almost true here. So we upped it to five euros. It was still kind of hard to get something that was not a potato or a bottle of coca-cola.But we had a lot of fun, that's for sure!

I'm a November Survivor

It’s dark, the super reflective-snow-system has melted, and it gets way worse than this! That was the problem with November. I was dramatically confused as to whether I should stay awake or go to sleep. The darkness isn’t too much worse than Seattle’s darkness, but it is detectably worse than Seattle’s darkness. The shortest day of the year will be five hours and 20 minutes long. Until a certain point in November, every-day uncertainties in my research seemed like showstoppers. Homework assignments felt like they were taking over my life. But I survived. Here’s how:

After some very intense exercises on staying positive, lots of gmail chats and Skype sessions (Thanks to all of you who participated), November turned around. I had my first sampling day this month at a farm on the outskirts of Tampere. Outi (one of my colleagues at work) and I bravely faced the embarrassment that many scientists must face. We gathered feces to test our primers.

It was gross. Even the farmers laughed at us. We laughed too. But we got our first samples! We have millions of sampling days ahead of us, but the important thing is: we got started! If it’s possible in November, it’s possible anytime!

…and: I voted in November. Thanks to Yolanda, Dan, and a support team of Environmental Health alumni and graduate students, I received my ballot and did what I (and Yolanda and Dan) could in the election. The Finns are weary and still worry about Mr. Bush. Yes, he’s still there, but congress does have a lot of power, I try to explain. I think things will improve.

Other November accomplishments and happenings:

I’m now a regular at the Finnish salsa dancing school that Outi introduced me to. I’m learning a lot of words in Finnish like up, down, around, and left, two, three, four, right, two, three, four. And now with music...

Some of those same words also fit into my engineering vocabulary. Somewhat related to salsa, or at least dance, Outi and I saw the Estonian National Ballet perform Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. The performance was truly amazing. Apparently the plot of Swan Lake can change slightly from performing institution to performing institution. The director’s comments in the program emphasized the importance of allowing beauty to stand up against the wrong and the cruel, and that the past is not as important as the present. However, I thought it was a bummer that the young prince Siegfried was either dead or very morbidly distraught by his decision to escape from his real-world responsibilities and live in his beautiful, imaginary dream world, as the curtains fell and the show ended. Perhaps he could have benefited from a brief thought into either the past or the future. Oh well. It was a beautiful performance. May Prince Siegfried rest in peace… and beauty.

Audrey and Lea officially introduced me to Finnish summer cottage culture, also in November. The sauna was very very close to 100°C. For those of you who aren’t experts on the Celsius scale, that is the temperature at which water boils. In case any of you are thinking about coming to Finland, I wrote up a little sauna instruction list, so you can start out on the right foot in the Finnish sauna:

1. Go inside the very hot sauna
1. If you feel like you can’t breathe, cover your face with your hand—it’ll pass.
2. Stay there for 15-45 minutes chatting (through your hand if it’s over your face)
1. there are special conversations in the sauna that happen nowhere else
3. Leave the sauna and get cold
1. Option 1—sit outside
2. Option 2—jump in the icy lake (Summer cottages are often on lakes, so it shouldn’t be difficult to find a lake)
3. Option 3—dive into the snow (well, roll around in the snow until you’re freezing cold again. Don’t dive head first.)
4. Go back to 1 and repeat 1-3 until you’re almost unconscious (2-3 times)
1. I prefer to end on 2, but you can end on 3, if you’re into being cold.
5. Cook sausage
6. Eat sausage
7. Don’t re-enter sauna after eating: the order is important there
8. Drink beer throughout the process.

If you feel like bringing your beer inside the sauna, it’s allowed, but you’ll probably only do it once. 100°C beer isn’t good. In fact, if it’s in a can (often the case in Finland), the metal may actually burn you. Be careful.

Next week is a busy week of well water, farm, and septic sampling before heading off to Germany and Austria for the holidays. Have a wonderful break, and I’ll see you guys in the sauna!