NO ELECTRICITY! ALL TASKS DUE IN A WEEK! PANIC!

Today morning I woke up early for a weekend, around 7 a.m. Probs for half an hour tried to log on to Facebook and email etc. Then I noticed that my iPad wasn't charging, even though it was plugged to the charger that was plugged to a extension chord that was plugged to a socket, then I realize that we don't have any electricity... I look outside my window and Denmark house doesn't have any lights on either. I get worried. If the whole student village (especially Norway-house) has been out of electricity that can mean only one thing; NO ELECTRICITY for the WHOLE WEEKEND! I walked down to Kantina with my laptop and start to work with school stuff (Yes, me and Jenny still have our weekend let's sit, work and eat in the kantina for 5 hours- weekend mornings). I was doing my Global Politics IA (internal assessment) and needed to check one fact online. NONE of the WIFIs on Campus had internet. Everyone was is panic during breakfast since people have IAs and EEs to hand in tomorrow or in a week. All of the IAs I'm working on need to be handed in within the next 10 days, some of them I haven't even properly started... What means that next week I will just be working, going to classes and EACs. 

Luckily we got internet back around noon. Probably the Rektor woke up then and noticed that he has no Internet and called the IT-guys to come and fix it. For me to really get work done I need to wake up early and start to work straight away. Since this really didn't happen I started to design our room door. We have this room door decoration contest, so a lot of rooms do really nice decorations for their doors. Last year, my room had a colorful world map and we had our photos and names near our home countries. This year we are doing something different, but still nice. The competition ends tomorrow, so probs we won't have enough time to participate in it, but at least we will have a nice door. I'll post a pic when it's done. 

On Friday I went to Dale and bought a lot of food and baking equipment, I actually didn't spend that much money as I thought I would have. The reason for this massive shopping spree is that my Leirskule Media- activities changed. Granted I wanted to change them, but now I am taking photos of Welcome Group, when the Monday bus to Dale goes and during Fridays I normally have swimming EAC. This week the EAC was cancelled due to swimming tests for firsties. One of the cooking equipment I bought was a pie tray, and of course it was too large for the tiny ovens we have here at RCN. We had a Friday Cafe and they didn't need the proper oven so I go to bake my pie there. The leak pie I made was really good and not just according to me, a lot of people said that it was one of the best pies they have ever eaten. 

Since most of the firsties passed the swimming test yesterday, there were a lot of people today in the sauna. It was weird and nice at the same time. Last year there was a group of people  who were always in the sauna, mostly second years, some co-years. I really missed having Johanna, Karri, Marit (Estonia), Georgio (Belarus) etc. there. It wasn't the same.I had to defend the Finnish Sauna Culture alone. Most of the time the small upper bench was basically me and some crazy Eastern Europeans. At least people were not blaming the Finns this time for a too warm sauna. 

I can't remember did I mention of our last weeks Finnish Gathering, well tomorrow we are extending it by 4 other people and having a Finnic Gathering. So basically we have a gathering with the Estonians and Hungarians. I am planning on baking blueberry pie with a sweet bun base (pulla-taikina pohja). Before this during brunch me and Gong Pei ( a close friend of mine, from China) will be cooking and eating Asian food. I am so excited about this, since I miss our restaurant gatherings from last year with Marcella, Hana (Maldives), Evelina and Kornelia (Sweden), Pishun (Hong Kong/UK), Felipe (Mexico), Tim (Hong Kong) and some times Ray Nee (Singapore) and Astrid (Denmark) and Mais (Jordan). Everyone except for Tim and RayNee are my second years. 

Talking about second years, I skyped last week with Kelly and will skype Ange soon. Marcella sent me and some other people on Campus postcards... 

I can't remember and imagine how hard it is for all the firsties to learn 200 names, when they are not even used to all of these super complicated names. I have a hard time remembering/ distinguishing people from each other, while I have some 95 familiar faces around campus already. 

We started classes last Wednesday and I had all classes except for Econ, since the teacher was sick. I really enjoy all of my classes at the moment. My favorite class so far has been Norwegian, then Global Politics, then probably Math. In Norwegian my teacher changed and the new one is much better and I can understand everything that he says. I was super scared that I would have lost all of my Norwegian during the break since I have been listening and watching Swedish TV-programs. The opposite has happened I can actually understand and follow spoken Norwegian well. I am really excited, since hopefully in a month or so I can practice my Norwegian with my roommate. In Global Politics we started a new topic Peace & Conflict, which is basically what I am doing my EE on, so now I can actually contribute in class some way. Also I feel more confident in this new class... 

Hopefully next week will be great and I'll have time for something else as well as working all the time. Enjoy the rest of your weekend and next week, where ever you are! 

- anniina   

ps. Why couldn't writing 1000 words of academic essays be as easy as writing this blog post?

SUN & Flekke

As the title says we have had sunny weather today in Flekke. This is super weird, but so nice and distracting. Introweek has been awesome, mostly working time / relaxing time for us 2nd years, while firsties have all kind of rotations etc.

Since Media-group doesn't do anything in the rotations, I was put in Haugland Adventures. In Haugland Adventures we basically have games and through the games we take the students around the Campus. We all have different roles. I have been the Ambassador (easiest and shortest), someone is a pirate, one of us is a witch and one is a superhero. As the ambassador I basically run around campus being super weird and acting like a fool. Then we stop play a game and continue later on with other games. Remember that this is basically designed for 10-15 year old kids, visiting the campus for a week. Not for our firsties who are 16-18 (most of them) and with who we will spend the rest of our Flekke life here.

All of the firsties are really nice. I feel that I get along with them better then with my second years in the beginning. My room firsties are from Norway and Western Sahara. The second years in the room are from the Faroe Islands and Belarus. My personal firsties from Finland are both awesome, as well as the Ålandic girl. I am really waiting for our first gatherings here.

Today evening we will have Adviser social evening (hopefully with food). About food, I turned back to being a pescotarian, so I only eat vegetables and fish/ sea food. This has been a really good choice, since at least the vegetarian food is really good this year.

DROP is of course taking some of my free time here. I have also tried to work, but haven't accomplished that much. I heard that last year 18 students failed the IB from our school, that's like 20%. I sounds so strange, since all of them seemed to work hard with school work (or then I just happened to hang out with all of those people, who worked so much). This makes me scared, since I do not work that hard. Fingers crossed everything goes well.

Till the next post,

Anniina

Back in Norway and Oslo Day

My travel to Flekke started yesterday morning, when I woke up at 4 am Norwegian time. First flight from Oulu to Helsinki left at 9 am after what I spent a couple of hours at the airport tax free shopping. My flight was scheduled earlier then I thought, but luckily I noticed it early enough. A couple of hours on a plane where I am the only person speaking Finnish made me realize that my journey towards second year has really started. I was planning on going to the center of Oslo after arriving, but to my surprise there was no staff at the airport which meant that I couldn't leave my about 60 kilos of luggage with anyone and ended up staying there. Someone called the people responsible for Oslo Day and they told us that we'll be picked up around 8 pm. I waited at the airport for 10 hours. Luckily the time didn't feel so long since I saw a lot of my friends there and the rest at the school where we stayed the night. We had to sleep on the floor and I had a nice bump under my ribs since the electric chords needed to be covered.

Today morning we left from the school with Norwegian Alumni, my group with Miriam who graduated from AC two years ago. We walked all around Oslo, which was super nice. It was touristy, but not too touristy. I saw the area where Breivik's bomb exploded, the opera house, old factories, a park with a lot of statues went to a museum and had a great time in general. Now sitting on the bus on my way to Flekke! I have never been so excited to go back to Flekke.

- anniina 

Tampere & 2 days left

Last week I spent in Tampere working for a NGO called Naisten Pankki (women's bank). The week was really nice  and I returned home Sunday afternoon for my last week of summer. Now when writing this I have 2 days left before my return to Norway. Now that I have started packing everything once more and after realizing that I have some things already there I have started to realize that things will be different next year. They might be better or they might be worse, but they will be different. I won't have any of our restaurant gatherings happening in my room, I won't be waking Ange up every morning, Kelly won't be there talking while calculating math, I won't have the annoying upper bed in FH103... 

I know I will have 2 2nd year roommates, I know that two new firsties will live with me, I will have my awesome Finns there (even though Johanna and Karri won't be there), I know my house will stay the same, I know what subjects I am taking, I know when will my graduation be, I know when I end my exams, I know what EACs I'll have in the beginning of the beginning, I know the staff and half of the students... I know a lot of things!

I have my curtains there, I have my friends there, I have a normal daily rhythm there, I have my postcards there (A lot of post cards from family, that I got last year (mostly moomin))... 

I need to bring a lot of things I missed last year and that is my problem now, I probably have too much stuff leaving with me to RCN for the final year! One year of high school left, it feels so strange that I don't know where or what I am doing this time next year. I could be in university (probs not), I could be working at home and getting ready to start studying for uni law exams, I could be across the world volunteering somewhere, I could be working in Finland or doing something else! 

Waiting for Oslo day and return to RCN while I don't want to leave home and my vacation!

Anniina