Getting Emotional

Last weekend was genuinely one of the greatest I have had in my life. Me and my friends travelled to an amusement park called Dollywood in Tennessee and stayed there for three days. We were 18 people, from the Wise NASA people to students from the college, staying in three rooms at a hotel in Pigeon Fort. With the exception of Friday, the weather was exceptional and we enjoyed bright sunshine and warm temperatures with all our hearts.

Driving out of Gatlinburg and watching the setting sun, thinking about leaving all these wonderful people behind in a couple of weeks time really brought a tear to my eye. It is just best to think that with this globe of ours getting smaller all the while, it will be likely to meet a lot of these people again under different skies.

Here are some pictures, hopefully they convey the thousand words I cannot find on my keyboard.

Compare with the snowy shot of the campus in the first posts

Tasty cake!

From Dollywood. They had mad hatters.

Some of the rides were pretty amazing. 

Apparently Dollywood had a festival of nations when we went there, appropriate!

Some of the guys showing where they're from. 

Never smile in a picture with a flag in it.

After a long day at Dollywood, we retired to the hotel.

Streetview from Gatlinburg, TN. I dig the vehicle.

We also took a chairlift ride in Gatlinburg. 

March pictures, part 2: Good times

The door to our apartment. 

Is there some sort of trend here?

They even have different rules for Domino!

Some of my friends.

Yours truly. 

More of my friends.

Hotta fire mek it burn

I should wash these shoes.

March pictures, part 1: New Orleans

Well, there you go!

I tried some crawfish, it was awesome!

Probably like one person in a hundred owns a bicycle in the States.

They use a tank to clean the streets!

New Orleans streetscape.

After walking around town, refreshments were due.

Carneval madness on Bourbon Street.

This gives a good example of what the carneval is about. 

Concluding March

Hello blog!

Weather in Wise is unpredictable. And that is saying a little. A couple of days ago when I left my room for breakfast at the cafeteria, there was literally 6 inches of snow on the ground. And currently, looking out from the window of my room, I see snowfall. It's practically April, and we're further South than Spain, what is this all about? It's not what I signed up for, I can tell you that!

I am kidding of course. For a Finn, the weather in here is not that harsh, but the locals seem to complain about it a lot. I do hope that I get to see the Virginia summer before I go as people tell me that it is amazing, and a lot warmer than the Finnish summer.

After this one I have four weeks of classes left. Just four weeks! I feel like the exchange period has passed by in a blink of an eye. This time next month I will be preparing for my finals, and after they are done I will stay in Wise for a week or two before setting out to conquer the world. Classes have been going well, although I have been frustrated at times for the amount of homework the lecturers give us. It seems like in here college students are not really considered responsible for their own studies but someone has to consistently watch over their shoulder to ensure that they really are studying. There's no choice but to adapt!

I seem to have forgotten about uploading the pictures, so now I will. They will be in the next post. 

Spring Break in Louisiana

Yesterday I woke up in the morning and realized that I am already halfway through my student exchange period. The abscence of blog entries from the last two weeks is due to the fact that first we had a week with exams and essay deadlines for our midterms, and last week was spring break. I used to tell my friends that one semester was a short time, and I'd be back in Finland in no time, but I guess I did not believe myself in what I was saying. Now that I have only seven weeks of classes left until the end of the semester I feel like it was only yesterday that I stepped off the plane at LaGuardia, in New York. 

During spring break, I went to New Orleans to meet up with one of my friends who had promised to provide me accommodation during the ever popular Mardi Gras, sometimes described as the "biggest free party in the world". Mardi Gras takes place every year on the Tuesday before Lent, a period in the Christian calendar during which the believers try imitate Jesus's sufferings depicted in the Bible. Many people embrace fasting and Mardi Gras is the last celebration before this period of repentance, prayer and self-denial. Although Mardi Gras itself means Fat Tuesday, the Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans lasts for almost a week, only climaxing on the Tuesday in question.

The  average Mardi Gras goer, called a reveler, usually does not care about the religious aspect of the celebration. I saw very few if any religious insignia in the city of New Orleans during this event. The celebration has during the latest years become very commercialized with various tourist shops selling cheap Mardi Gras souvenirs for masses of tourists arriving to the town just for the occasion.

The most popular attraction of the celebration were different parades advancing slowly on the streets of New Orleans, consisting of marching bands, dancers and floats of all shapes and sizes.  The people in the floats throw different items, such as cheap plastic bead necklaces to the audience, who try to catch them. You can only imagine the immense amount of garbage which has to be cleaned off the streets the following morning to make the city presentable for the people arriving to see the next day's parades. This is why the following Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent is often jokingly dubbed by New Orleans residents as Trash Wednesday.

Whoa, now that I read what I wrote it sounds overly critical of the whole event. What I really wanted to say was that I had a good time and met a lot of interesting people there. I also got a taste of the famous Southern hospitality, which in Louisiana was even more apparent than up here in Virginia. 

I will try to upload some pictures in the near future.

On beer and other beverages

The Americans have a come up with the strange idea of light beers, which seem to be immensely popular in here. Bud Light, Coors Light and Miller Light are ones of the most sold beers, partly because they are the also the ones that are most affordable. Light beer has approximately 80% of the calories and 80% of the alcohol of normal beer. Taste-wise they are the worst you can find, so if you appreciate a decent beer, steer away from these.

It is to be noted that in most stores, beer is sold only in sixpacks. Some stores let you mix and match, picking the six beers you want, but you always have to buy at least six. I have been trying a lot of different ones and my favourite of the American beers has so far been Miller High Life. You also have a decent choice of import beers to choose from, depending on the store. Note that several European beers, such as Heineken, are manufactured here in the States and are usually worse than the stuff you get in Europe. The case is the same with a lot of Mexican beers. 

The Virginia alcohol legislation bans alcohol sale after midnight, unlike for example Louisiana, where it can be sold all around the clock. Wine is sold in grocery stores here but to get liquor one has to go to a Alcohol Beverage Control, ABC, similar to the Finnish Alko.

Alcohol is cheap, you can pick up a sixpack for a little over four dollars (about three euros) and a twelve for eight. Liquor prices in ABC seem to be rather high, for example in the prices of Scotch whiskeys I saw no great difference to Finnish prices. Finally, in a bar I went to a big pint cost about three dollars tip included, which equals to €2,20. All in all I'd say that drinking in the United States (or at least Wise, Virginia) is 25-30% cheaper than in Finland.

Going through the motions

Hello blog, and sorry I have been ignoring you for the past three weeks!

As to be expected, my life in the town of Wise has by now attained some regularity. I have gotten to the rhythm of college studying, which for me means a lot of staying up late and reading or writing the designated assignments. The difficulties I have had with keeping up with the coursework are due to the fact that the courses are neither as interesting nor challenging as back in Finland (with the exception of music classes). However, I have got a lot of interesting new friends while here and feel more at home than I did initially when I came here. It is to be noted though that I have not at any point thought of going back to Finland and abandoning my studies here. I am attributing my lack of a culture shock experience to the "Southern" hospitality (although most of the people I know in the college seem to come from Northern Virginia or somewhere else entirely) and the fact that I've had no trouble with the language since I came here. I can sincerely say that at the moment I do not miss home.

On the weekend we had an international party at a professor's house and that proved out to be a great success. About 25 people attended the party, which consisted of a walk around the town of Bigstone Gap, a dinner with (tasty!) foods from all around the world and finally some games. I had a ton of fun conversing with people from different backgrounds and hosting some of the Finnish games I knew. I also managed to horrify the people present with a sloppy rendition of Kansas's "Dust in the wind".

One aspect of this blog which I seem to have so far ignored is attending to my list of items, which surprisingly enough has not grown substantially since I entered the US. You can find my initial posessions in an earlier post. In this post I intend to add the items I've bought while here, not counting items borrowed or school books, which will eventually be put to circulation to others students.

50. Kyocera cell phone
51. LG cell phone
52. T-shirt
53. T-shirt
54. Pants
55. Folder for Cultural Anthropology
56. Notebook for music classes
57. Notebook for Jane Austen's World
58. Notebook for The Immigrant in American History
59. New alarm clock
60. Breedlove Passport D200 steel string guitar, picks, case
61. Beatles songbook
62. Jethro Tull songbook
63. Towel
64. Kettle

Some of you maybe wondering why I have three cell phones at the moment. The reason is that my Finnish phone does not work here and the Kyocera phone I bought from New York has no service up here in the mountains so I had to buy yet another one from Wal-Mart. Another thing is that I got rid of my 4cl bottle of Koskenkorva Salmiakki but I can assure you that it was all for the sake of science! ;)

For me at least there is a certain romance in the idea of having so little stuff that at any time I could stuff them to a backpack and leave, possibly never to return. Some items I brought with me from Finland I haven't even had any use for so far, which means that I could make do with still a lesser number of items.