adapted from an English essay

There is no doubt that the Finish lifestyle and a Finnish person’s mentality are quite distinct from others. They have been shaped by proud history, and a country which was not always such a comfortable place to live. It is often said that foreigners can be easily identified in Helsinki, for no Finn breaks a smile when walking alone. An outwardly cheery disposition is indeed a rare thing for a Finn, most prefering to shut away the outside world when it is not required. This often gives foreigners the impression that Finns are rude and unsociable, an opinion fairly justified, yet one which is not entirely accurate.

Finns are ultimately as social as any other peoples, although this is rarely apparent with strangers. It is nothing peculiar to observe a typical frowning Finn pick up a phone and suddenly burst into a lively conversation, often disregarding the nuissance this might cause to others. Mobile phones are indeed an ever present factor in Finnish socialisation, although this is no longer unique to Finland. Internet based socialization thrives among teens and young adults with the use of websites such as IRC- Galleria and Facebook. A more traditional social lubricant is of course alcohol, and Finns can be sure to apply it liberally during the dark depressing months of winter. Alcohol is an ever present part of Finish culture, and many take pride in the various, occasionally illegal, home brewed concoctions.

Discussing Finnish social habits inevitably requires a mention of Finnish curse words, renowned for their strenght of expression by many a foreigner learned enough to be familiar with them. Any Finn who understands the unique worth of his or her native swears is surely proud of the heritage. Indeed, this is one tradition we can applaud the youth for preserving.

Should a foreigner for some absurd reason wish to emulate the Finnish lifestyle, he would do well to begin by shedding away the token politenesses which his original culture has no doubt hammered into him. Surprisingly, this is as easily done as it is said. For this I can vouch with my personal experience from moving back to Finland after having lived in England for five years. In England I was schooled into a very polite boy, and upon returning to Finland I surprised teachers and store clerks alike with my politeness. Soon however, I realised that in everyday situations in Finland simple goals could often be achieved with as little as a grunt of acknowledgement, with perhaps a mumbled thanks if you are having a good day, which unfortunately is unlikely should you wish to fully intergrate yourself into the Finnish society.

While opinions may differ, I would consider the hallmarks of a true Finn to be pride for ones country, appreciation for a hardly cheery outlook on life, and respect for Finnish traditions. Consider that all of these can be present at say, a men’s sauna evening, where they complain about the degenerating state of the world, drink beer and make superb arguments for why Finland is a superior country.

Time now for the last in my language learning series. It's a while since my chinese course, but I will do my best to remember the highlights.

I had been looking forward to the course since I heard it was available. Once again I was surprised at the number of people who didn't even consider the course, considering it absurd to attempt such a difficult language. Having found Japanese not worthy of the "difficulty hype", I dived in. Others simply took it to fill the minimum course requirements as it didn't require an exam at the end of the period. Having now studied two oriental languages, some of the western stereotypes regarding them strike me as quite amusing. One is the common assumption that they all use the same characters. However, should you observe a sentence written in Japanese, Chinese and Korean, you would find them all quite distinct. The difference is especially recognisable in speech.  Another amusing, non language related fact is how often people confuse Japan and China. I often laugh at this when people ask about my upcoming trip or about my language studies.

It was nice to find Sodfoot in the same course, and as you might have noticed, many of the scribbles originate from the course. To start off the course we were introduced to a host of characters who, although apparently about the same age as us, seemed to be all suffering from a severe hormone deficiency, BOY here being one of them. This seemed particularly odd when we did a chapter where they talked about upcoming driving lessons.

Our teacher was a nice Chinese woman, who I will mostly remember by how her face contorted into various odd expressions as she did her best to demonstrate to us correct pronounciation. Indeed the pronounciation seemed ridiculously difficult at first. "Wo" could be pronounced in four different ways to mean four completely different things.  Funnily though, her face also occasionally contorted when speaking in English. As could be expected, she did make her fair share of, seemingly obligatory, language teacher pronounciation mistakes, among them her instructions to fill in "the blankets" on a worksheet.

In addition to proper studying, we were delighted by a couple CDs sent to us by the Chinese embassy. Unfortunately, these were made in China. Firstly, whenever you navigated on the CD menu to a different area, an error message would pop up saying the correct music could not be found, meaning you had to manually open the music files on the cd whenever prompted. Genius as I am however, I thought we could get around this by copying the music to where the program looks for it. This took a slight while, but once done it all worked perfectly, - almost. Actually, it was still a mess. After finally being able to navigate the menus properly, we clicked on something about Chinese cuisine. Now all hell breaks loose, as the flash program attempts to open the pdf file, and thus launches Adobe reader, that being the default program for pdf files. We are confronted with a veritable barrage of error messages and warning noises.

Realising now that the CD is essentially a bunch of pdfs in fancy packaging, we simply browse to the CD to open them. Inside we find pages upon pages on Chinese culture punctuated with the occasional picture. Not one to waste her country's generosity, the teacher was then content to skim the various texts pausing for brief explanations at the pictures. For what was left of the class anyway. How they thought an encyclopedic eBook would help our studies... I don't know.

There isn't terribly much to say about what happened in the class aside from what you normally get with languages. The actual language on the other hand is completely different. Ridiculously difficult pronounciation (and I usually find that the easy bit in languages), and words which are very hard to remember beacuse they seem so similar; not to mention the ultimate mammoth task of learning the characters. In comparison, Japanese is quite easy. However it was an interesting course I was glad to participate in, and I think I will take the next one when I get back from Japan. Hopefully I will remember something, which seems unlikely, since I've forgoten most already.

That might've been my only decent analysis of any of the languages I've studied, well the most useful anyway I think. I did realise that to anyone actually wanting to know about what it is to learn languages, the series is quite useless.

 As a side note, some others and I have noted the very high average age of language teachers, possibly due to the fact that theyve spent most of their life learning different languages well enought to teach. This jumble of learnt languages then has the occasional side effect of causing general pronounciation to go awry. This has the more predictable side effect of earning ridicule from students. Luckily I myself am above such foolishness... eheh...

I had long wanted to study Japanese, and after our trip to China a few years back, I was completely fascinated by the far east. So, as soon as we got home I did some research and reserved myself a space in a Japanese course. What made it most remarkable was that fate had picked me as one of the subjects for an article for the Helsingin Sanomat on different Finns starting different hobbies, one of which just happened be Japanese language. It just so happened the journalist contacted my teacher, and it just so happened they wanted a male student, aged at least 15, and it just so happened that I was the only male student the teacher was aware of at the time. And thus the god knows how many sided dice which the Flying Spaghetti Monster tends to throw to determine our fate chose me, out of all the other people studying Japanese.

I was invited for an interview with the journalist before the course began to talk about why I wanted to learn the language, why I was interested in Japan etc. I was quite nervous, and alarmingly aware that anything I said could be read by thousands of Finns in a few weeks time, not to mention not being able to see the picture the photographer took of me. I don't remember whether or not I had started the course before the first part was published, but it was an interesting experience going to school the following day.

My journey to the first lesson of the course was quite comical. The teacher had warned in her emails that the place was hard to find, essentially a very small, Japan related library in Eira, a quaint old area in Helsinki.  I checked the busses and trams before I left, confident I would I would find it. I got to Helsinki with plenty of time, but was now confused as to where exactly was I to take the tram again. So, with plenty of time to spare, I looked at some tourist map near the railway station to plan out my route, and off I went. I walked for a while, then realised it might take a bit too long after all and started jogging. I had decided on the simple route of going all the way to the shore, along it, and then back up again. However, for some reason I decided to deviate to what I thought would have been a shorter path; instead I got lost. I asked everyone I saw for directions, including a foreign motor cyclist who was quite surprised when a random boy ran up to him, blurted out something in Finnish, then asked for directions in English, only to run off again.

Then, as if a sign from heaven, an advertisement for a service which could give you directions. So, I called at a crossroads. Unfortunately it was just a waste of time, and I resorted to my intuition once more. I picked a direction, ran, and suddenly saw the name of the road where I was supposed to be. Hooray I was there! Just in time... slightly sweaty... 

The articles continued appearing every now and then, and I continued with the course. Apart from having to travel almost one and a half hours every Monday evening, the lessons were thoroughly enjoyable. It was interesting to hear from people who visited Japan during the course, especially when they brought back interesting snacks for the group. The group had started with ten people, but fairly soon had diminished to about six per lesson. It was during the lessons I began to consider the option of an exchange to Japan, partly thanks to one of the people there who was a member of YFU. She also told me what a popular destination Japan was, and that it was very difficult to be accepted. This might have dimmed my hopes slightly, but also strengthened my resolve and only sweetened the ultimate prize.

Eventually the lessons finished, and I made the decision not to continue to the second course, as it would have only lengthened my already lengthy journey. Instead I opted to study independently, while searching for another course. This turned out to be the third course of Japanese at Kuninkaantien lukio, which was, apparently, slightly ahead of my skills and so I studied the difference in chapters and beyond during the summer. Unfortunately the course turned out to be a disappointment. The lessons were few and far between, and while they were a good three hours, I don't recall learning anything. It was a pity, because the other people there were great, and the teacher was hugely entertaining; it just seemed he never got to the teaching bit himself, instead giving us ridiculous homework such as translating his favourite song  into Japanese. 

So now I continue to study independently, (making the most of late mornings and skips in my timetable) which seems to be the most efficient option. Still, the first course was an excellent introduction to the language, and provided me with a fruitful experience. Ultimately of course, I aim for fluency during my trip, the ultimate crash course for learning the language.

Last Wednesday was the international day, the plans of which you might have read. The day was quite the success. Klaus also had the last minute brainwave of wearing tweed jackets and berets. As luck would have it, my mother had sometime ago showcased to me my dad's largely unused (a lack of use quite justified) tweed jacket and my brother had a beret, and so I cycled to school wearing a tweed jacket and a beret, with a union jack fluttering from my backpack, befuddling locals and commuters alike.

I arrived at school, waved casually to the smokers outside and went to class for some silly UN quiz at which our class failed at miserably, listing for example one of the UN goals to be "Get rid of Polio". Then we listened to a teacher tell us about Nepal and our school's charity activities there, which was mildly interesting but did not compare to Tuesday's Darfur lecture which I might tell you about another time.

Finally it was time to set up our table. A triumphant display of quintissential Britishness, utterly overshadowing the other feeble "colonies." We filled our table with our wares, put the kettle on and turned up our iPod speaker system blaring Rule Britannia. Indeed soon the area was littered with people holding cups of tea, and we were constantly filling the kettle as I exploited my British accent to tempt more tea drinkers. Once our time was up we were only left with a few bags of 'Prince of Wales' and 'Earl Grey'.

What followed was the international show, which feautured some exchange students introducing themselves. Sodfoot (the new name of elf boy, as per The Crappy Little Elf Name Generator) made the crowd burst into a resounding bout of cheers and applause when he mentioned that the people in the area from where he came from were largely liberals and all err... 'disliked' George Bush.

We were also treated to a Iadio (Japanese swordsmanship) show as well as a host of bands, the most notable of which, called 'The Lilac Shamrock (Anonymous cover name courtesy of The Damned Hippy Name Generator. Who needs creativity when you have name generators?) Experience", played an excellent six minute song by Liquid Tension Experiment. Following this was a slightly modified band: "Lilac Shamrock And The Slightly Worse Virtuosos",  Lilac Shamrock being an apparently  legenadary musician at the school. As the show announcer made clear: "...but Lilac Shamrock is still not satisfied!" it was not over yet, and we were treated to "The Lilac Shamrock Solo Project" which was greeted by huge applause during the pause after the first ambient key. The then show drew to a close  but I was nevertheless to attend my last lesson: PE, particularily annoying as it meant more hauling around of all our table contents.

Due to a schedule conflict with my Chinese courses, I decided to take my first course of sociology independently. What this means is that I will study the course area and complete necessary coursework without attending any of the actual lessons. I thought it would be a great excercise in self discipline, and I even went as far as to think I might actually study the area faster and more efficiently than during class.

Now that I've started the project I'm not quite as sure as before. In addition to 50 pages of sociological gibberish forming the basis of my studies (the churning through of which is proving to be far more painstaking that I thought) I will have to write five one page essays and a minimum three page project on some dried-up sociologist to be presented to the rest of the class. Also, I will also be expected to know about the other dried-up sociologists covered in the presentations of other class members... projects which I won't actually witness since of course, I won't be attending the classes. Hopefully I will be able to scavange some of the obligatory handouts for the various projects.

Normally a course takes up about three hours and fortyfive minutes every week. Since an additional 3.75h of studying would be quite a challange with the temptations my home offers me, I plan on using my free mornings to study at school, as well as a skip lesson on Friday. This will in fact mean I will have four periods to study sociology every week. Although I have compensated for the extra time by indulging in the "aah I don't have to worry about it yet" mindset for the start of this period, and have thus tried to catch up at home with some success.

My first task is to grind through the information in the book, a task which would be quite challanging without constantly using Wikipedia and Dictionary.com to clear me up on odd words and concepts. For example the name of this post which I chose to avoid further creative thinking. I was going to tell you what ethnomethodoly was, but I can't remember anymore, so go and find out yourself lest you wish to be ravaged by the unbearable curiosity which would otherwise follow.