artbum.net

I moved in my new house and started cohabiting with a Spanish guy called Angel and with a Dutch guy called Wappy. Wappy was his nickname but he would never let us call him any other way so I totally forgot his real name…. In any case, it was unpronounceable… At least I tried a few times and I remember him always complaining about my pronunciation. Today, I really can imagine what his feeling was…

I mean I was French - French people have a very strong accent when they speak English. In addition to that, I could barely speak English, so my accent must have been its strongest back then…. And his name was Dutch, not even English… So the chances for me to pronounce it right were basically null! It was meant for me to pronounce it wrong….

Just as we were meant not to get along well I suppose….

Very early we had a clash… I am not sure if it was personality or just being in the same house… In any case, we could not work things out together…

This, in addition to my scission with my comfortable environment in Joensuu, really put me down!

Less than 2 weeks after I had moved to Helsinki, I wrote a mail to my good friend Boris, and told him how I felt - heart broken… He wrote back to me and invited me to spend a week-end in Kouvola where he was going to do his 1 year study time. The one thing that really touched me, and moved me is how he signed “Head up pal!”. At that time, what I needed most really was a pal, a friend…. and he just had called me pal!

Boris was one person I always looked up to back in Joensuu… He was outgoing, extrovert, outrageous at time and fun!

Once, on a rainy day in Joensuu - and God knows how heavy the rain can be in Finland - he came out of his home and I could see him from the warmth of my home dancing under the rain in the middle of the residence’s square. He literally spread his arms, looked up to the sky and started to rotate on himself! I was in awe.

From the first moment, I wanted to get to know him and make him my friend. At that time, it was almost impossible to communicate with him though…. His English was way too good and mine was way too poor… Needless to mention he had some sort of American accent which really didn’t help my understanding….

When you want something so badly, you really can! With the help of God…

Today, Boris and I are very good friends! He is one of the few that has witnessed my metamorphosis from my first day in Joensuu until today. We seldom meet as we are apart on the planet… But we keep in touch and love spur through our emails…

So I went to Kouvola and met up with Boris and his new friends… Needless to mention that we had an awesome time… And this time literally cheered me up for the rest of my stay in Finland! This truly was the turning point!

Boris’ flatmate and friend

Essi - exchange student tutor in Kouvola

Boris - at the guitar

Before coming to Finland, I have to say that I was a little bit apprehensive as to how cold Finland could really get…. Back in France, especially Nancy, we know what cold weather is… But extremes like -20 degrees Celsius really was worrying me a little….

I quickly realised that Finnish people had a special ability to resist cold.

On our integration day, all Evtek students went to Suomenlinna for a drinking session by the sea shore. Suomenlinna in fact is a fortified island off the harbour of Helsinki that used to serve as a defensive fort against the Russian armies coming from the sea.

And below is a picture of my friends together… Take a careful look at the amount of clothes we were wearing… Yea, as you can imagine, it was cold! But these people seemed not to mind… All Finnish people ended up almost fully naked playing games and drinking… Why were they undressing? Apparently that was part of a Finnish tradition or culture… I am not quite sure, but I was told that this was happening every year…. I can easily believe it as every one seemed to be undressing on a common accord…

That was the moving scenery of the day. You know how in china you can enter shops and discover a bit of people’s life. I mean lots of people do business in the premises of their home. So sometimes you may get lucky to witness the real China as I call it…

From the outside, that shop truly looked like one’s home, but from the inside, almost it almost looked like a paper factory… As we walked in, luck allowed us to witness this beautiful moment between a dad and his son. I immediately felt the urge of capturing it.  I was refrained however by my own shyness and embarrassement …

This is one of my problem that I am trying to overcome, I often feel worried of people’s reaction when taking their pictures. I don’t want to disturb or to be offensive but I also love to capture the simple things in life, the real emotions….

However, since they both seemed so absorbed and unaware of my presence, I decided to attempt a few shots… I took well over 1 minute to take these shots… and none of them realised my presence. The composition is not great however as I did not want to move around so much and I was just snapping … The last thing I wanted was to spoil that moment between this young boy and his dad.

I am quite satisfied nevertheless! And this is the result of my overcoming my shyness:

Father and son

We left the shop few minutes later and I nodded at the dad as he looked at me leaving to which he answered with a smile.

Sometimes, happiness is just as simple as giving a smile away…

Liulichang art street… is not really a place full of artists but more a place full of shops to buy painting materials: paper, paintbrushes and others…  Of course, paintings and other pieces of arts are never so far away from this kind of stuffs. Below are a few picture of the place.

Paper for sale

Chinese street art - equivalent of our western tags?

Paintbrushes

From the inside of a shop

Official Mao at his desk… and his little brother in the car

That night, Ying Ying and I decided to go on a night photo shoot… We had in mind to go take pictures of the Forbidden City and of the Opera located near by. For the occasion, Ying Ying suggested to take her tripod… Rather heavy and imposing but would certainly prove useful later.

We first went for some Caribbean restaurant… the food was just average but they were serving one very interesting alcohol called … I forgot …

Off we went, directly to the Forbidden City… There I took the tripod out and started to put it up …It was really quite an imposing one. Once fully setup… Oh my god, we had forgotten to take the head of the tripod… So we could not attach the camera to it.

All we could do was then to go walk around and take hand hold pictures just like we always do. That was quite a pity… Below are a few shots.

So I was on my way to Helsinki. The journey was long and I wasn’t particularly excited.

I still remember my apprehension when taking that same train but on my way to Joensuu, I could not help it but be worried that the people that were supposed to pick me up were not going to be there. If they hadn’t been there I would really have been lost in the middle of nowhere… I can’t think of how I would have managed in such case…

This time was the same. I was traveling to Helsinki but I had no home address, no keys, nothing… I had liaised with my friend Charles for him to fetch my key at the university and come to the station to pick me up. Since we were neighbour, it was no hustle for him to show me the way home …

I was a little apprehensive but still confident that he would show up…

After a long 6 hour journey, I finally had reached Helsinki. This was going to be the city I was going to spend one year at.

I still remember walking along the train track towards the station. My apprehension was growing stronger and I clearly had the feeling that my friend wasn’t going to be there…. And as it turned out, he indeed wasn’t there. I went around the whole station, carrying my 35kg luggage looking for him… But I could not find him. At some point I went to the station central radio centre to ask them to make an announcement for my friend. Unfortunately this could only be done in Finnish. Pointless!
I decided to wait. I could understand that he could have misunderstood my time of arrival or simply come late… So I just put myself in an area of the station where I could be easily spotted. I started to seriously regret that I had not taken down my home address! Silly mistake of mine!
Calling him didn’t work either… Finally, in despair, I decided to find an internet cafe somewhere to retrieve my home address. The problem is that I had no idea where it was… And it was close to impossible for me to move around with my luggage.

Luckily for me, I had 2 friends that I had met in Joensuu whom were visiting Helsinki at that very time. I gave them a call and explained the situation to them. Kindly enough, they proposed to help me out for the night by fetching me and giving me a bed in one of their friend’s place. I was relieved.

At that time, I was quite angry with my friend. Deep inside I could not believe that he could have simply forgotten about me. I had reminded him my arrival, and everything… School was starting the next day… It clearly was impossible to forget. Nevertheless, I had no explanation. As a friend, I suppose he should have thought about the problems I was going to face if he was not showing up. In all honesty, I was lucky that I had other friends otherwise, I probably would have needed to sleep at the station… Not even mentioning that I would have needed to find a way to find him still while carrying my luggage around. Luckily enough, this scenario didn’t happen.

The most logical answer to that was that he totally had forgotten about me. In other terms, he had forgotten to fetch my keys at the university, as well as totally forgotten that I was arriving that very day. Although unlikely, that still seemed logic in some ways. So I decided to wake up early the next day, call the university and ask them about my keys. that’s when I got another surprise… Not a good one unfortunately. The lady indeed informed me that Charles had actually taken my keys… In other terms, Charles was in possession of my keys but I had no ways to find him. I knew we were neighbours but I was not in possession of his exact address… Kindly enough, the lady told me his address and I decided to head straight to my friend’s place. I was not sure he was going to be there, but I had figured that if I was going there early enough, the chance would be higher… There I went. Using a map, I figured what my journey was going to be… It wasn’t far, but it wasn’t that easy anyway. I was looking for “Leppävaara, Timpurinkuja”
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Finding Leppävaara station wasn’t such a big deal, neither was finding Timpurinkuja. I had learned a bit of Finnish and I put it to good use…. But finding the right building were the both of us were living was nearly impossible. There was basically no one out there to ask for information. It really was like a small retired residential area of the city … Nobody was around to ask for help and my last resort was to ring bells of people’s houses to ask them for directions. I think it took me close to one hour to find the building… Then to find his door on the top floor.

There I was, angry, relieved, proud to have made it that far on my own, happy to have found the place I was going to live for a year… There was lots of mix feelings…
But at that time, the most important thing was that I could hear his voice through the door… Talking and laughing… At that time I seriously was wondering if he had any idea of what kind of trouble I just had faced. I mean he was holding my keys… so obviously I had spent the night outside somewhere… Not at my home… Potentially at the train station… Sincerely, that was quite saddening

I rang the bell…
He opened the door…
He saw me and started to rush back inside, saying “Oh my god he’s going to kill me!”.
I would have gotten angry, but I guess I got overwhelmed by the presence of his 2 other flatmates, including a German and a French… Time was more for introduction than for fighting… In any case, I was not going to fight him because that would probably not have gotten me anywhere… I just asked him for an explanation and for my keys.

Apparently, he was at the swimming pool and had totally forgotten about our appointment… Hard to believe really… I knew there certainly was something else but I could not dig anything out of him. His new friends seemed to talk in his favour and were sharing his apologies… Well I had nothing to say!

I finally had reached my home!

One thing I have learned while being abroad is that being separated from people is more frequent than not… Moving around is great, you see new places, you discover different cultures, you meet new people, etc. But the drawback certainly is that you keep on being separated from these people you meet, from these places you’ve liked. It may be hard to accept but you may have to accept that idea.

I figured that if you are not the first to leave, others will leave you anyway, and you’ll remain the last one - alone.

That’s probably one of the first teaching I have retired from my experience. It may sound negative, pessimistic, or fatalistic but in fact it is not. It may just be a way to moderate oneself not to be too emotional about certain events… Otherwise one gets hurt…

For all that I can recall, I have grown so fond of Joensuu as well as of the people I have met there. All of us were living in the same residence, as neighbours. We had no TV, no Internet, nothing. In the morning we had 4 or 5 hours Finnish lesson and in the afternoon the school would take us for sightseeing as well as expose us to the Finnish culture. We would go to school and come back home together by bike. In the evening we would hang out together at one another’s place… cooking different food styles. It was such a bonding experience!

One month may not seem like a long time, yet, and to my own surprise, it was enough to get really attached to the people and to the place. In fact it is hard for me to know, even today what I was most attached to: the place, the people, the overall experience… I don’t know! But after I sat in the train on my way to Helsinki and after waving at my teachers until they left, I found myself alone… again… And at that time, in the loneliness of that moment, in the loneliness of that car … I could not stop myself but shed tears… It was sudden and short, but my heart burst just for 1 or 2 minutes… Until I could find peace again.

I will always remember Joensuu as one of my most amazing life experience!

Group picture

As per my previous post, all of you already know that I was living with a Finnish guy for about a month. I have to say that the experience did not leave a strong impression on me as he was not a very sociable person and he would spend most of his time in his room on his own…

But I believe that we - Miguel and I - surely showed him a different way of life. Something he certainly wasn’t used to.

I reached Joensuu on an evening, I can’t recall what day, but I remember I had about 2 or 3 days on my own before the class would actually start. I had no idea about when the other students would reach nor where they would actually live but at that time I sure was on my own. On that night, I was dropped in this 3 room-apartment. Nobody was there but it seemed that it had been occupied just recently. Food was in the fridge, Lots and lots of empty glass bottles were left below the sink … And the overall impression was a little bit dirty. My room was overly simple: one table, one chair, one bed…

Since I had so much time, I took the opportunity to visit the … town center… which did not take me more than a day as it was very small. I figured though that it’d be useful for me to try to learn my way around. I also figured that renting a bike would be much more efficient than take the bus at the risk of getting lost… and for not much more expensive.

The whole point here is that very quickly I had not much to do… The worse was by evening… No TV, no internet, nothing … So after 1 or 2 days like that I just went into a cleaning frenzy and made the whole place mine! I threw all empty bottles, all food, everything that was in a mess… I cleaned the whole place! That made me feel better.

If I recall well, Miguel - whom was to become my flatmate for a month - reached shortly after that.

Days went by, we started the class, met with some new people and it was a lot of fun.

After a few days in this rhythm, one evening while we were chatting with a few classmates near our home, Miguel and I noticed some light in our apartment… Both of us were like “Hu, did we forget the light? Strange…” So we just headed back home, and to our BIG surprise, we found that somebody else was there… Worse than that, we suddenly felt like intruders into somebody’s property… And even worse for me, I had totally thrown all his stuff! HOW EMBARRASSING !! Especially when he said like “There was food there, wasn’t there?”…. Oh my god … I had to explain to him however I could that I had cleaned the place thinking the place was unoccupied…

That actually was my first encounter with my Finnish flatmate, and ultimately, my most “intimate” contact with the Finnish culture…

After that, the three of us went into our daily routine. Our new Finnish friend would barely come out of his room. He would come out to cook, go back in his room with his food, come back out to clean his stuff… And back in his room again. Miguel and I would have people in our home almost everyday. Especially given the fact that we were on the 1st floor, so our balcony would actually directly lead on the outside. People passing by could simply give us a visit. How nice was that?

One night however he opened up to us. He called Miguel and me in his room. That was totally unusual, almost weird…. I mean we had never even see his room from the outside, and after learning about the Finnish culture a little bit, I realised that this was actually a big big thing.  This evening, he asked us in his room, made us sit with him and he started to play the guitar for us. He had composed a song for us! wow! That was really amazing. He sang for us “I am on this side, you both are on the other side”. These are not the exact lyrics. I can’t exactly recall but the meaning was there! He was telling us how he felt that the 2 of us were so different from him. At that time, I was not really able to grasp all the details but it surely was one of the most touching thing he could have done…

One month was too short to build strong ties but today I still remember him. I am a little sad that I have lost touch with him. I have left Joensuu and we never got in touch again…. I have learned later on that making friend with a Finnish person takes more than a month, even more than time itself… So it is no surprise that we lost touch. Even if I had strongly wanted to, it probably would not have worked out … Or… maybe… We’ll never know.

Group picture - my Finnish flatmate, tall at the back

Around the table - crowded and friendly!

Enjoying, ain’t he?

Miguel and I

Miguel was my flatmate of the moment. At that time the 2 of us had some serious difficulties to communicate. You already know that I barely had any English power. He is the one whom taught me how to say “spoon”, “fork”, “knife”, “plate” and many more. After one month living with him, and with another Finnish guy, I could speak enough English to be brave enough to take the phone and call the administration in my University in Helsinki to ask them to pass on the key of my new apartment to a friend of mine for him to pass them to me on my arrival… More on this in a future post.

By the lake behind my home