Feeling homesick

I have less than 2 months left here and I'm feeling a bit sad. But also today I felt something for the first time in France: I'm homesick. I miss Finland. I miss exams in Finnish. I miss my pets, my friends and my studies. I miss winter! The winter here was so lame that I was almost depressed. I miss Finnish candy. I miss exchange students in Finland and having fun with them. I miss life where my grandmother was the only person to come to me and say "I don't like the pink part in your hair".

I'm sad that I had to realize that it was a wise decision to color my pink hair partly black before coming here. France lacks some kind of tolerance and is too old-fashioned for the hair that I had for 5 years. I had a friend who after 6 months came to me and told me that now she was used to my hair. I still have friends who say "it's not natural, dye it brown". I'm happy to go back to Finland and I'm already thinking of dying my hair pink again :) I miss a country where my personality was more important than my haircolor.

I miss knowing what I have to do when I get sick or something. I miss the feeling of knowing that the system works. I miss speaking a language that I can actually speak. I miss knowing that I'll pass my exams if I study. I miss having 3 hours to do each and every exam. I miss being able to have pets in my student apartment. I miss Finnish food (karjalanpiirakka!!). I miss less expensive calls and text messages. I miss a system where being on strike is rare. I miss a system where everything is based on trust and people want to help you.

I miss a system where they inform you if a class is cancelled and you'll find all the information on the internet. I miss being able to do my exams as many times as I wish without any penalty. I miss being able to surbscribe to exams and courses over the internet. I miss Finnish flexibility alltogether when it comes to studying. I miss people speaking foreign anguages. I miss a country where you can say your opinion about religion without someone getting hurt.

Well. I think I could come up with a longer list but I give up :) that's how I see Finland now. Open-minded, understanding young people, flexibility with studies and a working system. I'm not saying that I wouldn't live abroad anymore, the contrary :) I would love to live in other countries again some day. This is just a fraction of all the stuff that I'm going to miss when I leave Finland. Maybe next I'll do a list about what I'm going to miss from Paris :)

The cats in the picture are my future roommate's (but I <3 them so much)

A quick update

Yeah well... I haven't had internet connection since I left for Finland for my vacation so it has been a while. When I came back to Paris 6 days ago I had a nice surprise of not having working internet here. Now when I came home I realized that I have internet. God bless France..........

I spent my winter vacation in Finland :) We had a lot of snow and northern lights! Enjoy the pictures.

The roof of my mom's house

Velli after washing him <3

My dog sitting in our front yard.. :D

Timmy says hi from my mom's backyard!

Ranking

 In France everything is about ranking: who is the best student, which is the best university, which is the best faculty. They do this starting when they are little kinds at the age of 4 when they go to school and do this to the bitter end. In Finland we don't have this system: actually in Finland we don't have a thing called "a failing student".

At the university here all the notes you get are on a wall for everyone to see how good (or bad..) you did. They show everyone your student number, name and points you got. In Finland we have the same system with the difference that only you know your points because the paper shows only our student numbers and points.

For someone I guess this system is a motivation because you have to get a good note because everyone sees how you did. For me it was awful. I'm an exchange student so I guess everyone knew that I'm not going to shine with my numbers but I didn't like people looking at them. Only for one course here they showed only the student numbers when revealing the grades. But on an extra line before my student number there was a little text "Erasmus" and I'm the only exchange student here. Gee I wonder who that is..

In France you get points up to 20 and getting more than 10,5 means that you passed the course. For me this was really confusing because in Finland we get a mark from 1 to 5 and one means you passed. If you fail a course they say you did. So here when I looked at my marks for the first time I didn't know if I passed or not. And what's worse: they show everyone how badly you failed.

This week I also learned that the faculty of Uni Paris-Sud 11 is the best faculty of science and the ranking is really rough. I talked with some of the foreign students who have been studying here since their first year of uni and they told me that when they get 14/20 it causes a stir. "How can that person get 14/20!! He is not French! He doesn't almost speak French!" I think this gives an idea of how hard it is for the students here.

I was really confused when people came to congratulate me in person when I got 16/20 from German. But after finding out how the system in this university goes I'm not at all surprised.

So how am I going to get 45 credits when half of the French people studying here are failing their classes? Here we can try every exam two times and between these two times there are several months. In Finland we can try every exam 3 times and there is less time between each try so that we don't forget everything that we learned. I can try the exams that I failed here in 5 months and I'm really hoping to pass them.

New semester

Salut!

My next semester started and I'm so relaxed and enjoying it so much. This semester is much easier than the last one because we have less lessons. We are going to have a lot of laboratory courses but it's ok.

People started talking today that we are going to get the results for our exams this week.. I'm not so sure I want to see them! On the other hand I "only" have to do 45 credits this year so even if I only passed one exam worth 5 credits I'm closer to my goal.

This month I'm going back to Finland for a little trip! I can't wait to see my dog and guinea pigs.. We have our winter vacation next month and my mom needs me in Finland. We are going to have our spring break of two weeks in April and I'm planning a trip to Prague and Dresden for that. I have a friend who lives in Czech Republic and I'd like to use this opportunity because I've never been there. One of my Finnish friends is in Dresden now to do her exchange, so I'm thinking about visiting her too in spring break.

 Last week first people left for their home countries.. The farewell party was bittersweet. Especially I miss my German friend Lisa. I'm planning on visiting her in April.

As you can see from the pictures winter here in Paris is just.. awful. Now we started to have days when we actually have -1C but it's really nothing. I actually took up jogging because it's nice to run when it's not too hot. Of course every friend of mine is complaining like it would be too cold for them to be. In Finland it's -30C now and I can't wait to go there in a couple of weeks :P

All of my CAF papers are almost ready. They send me a letter that I need to give them a birth certificate (which we don't do in Finland..), a note from the University that I'm attending and a letter telling them that I have money to pay my rent. I was really amused about the last one. Like I'd tell them if I didn't have money to pay!

This week I've been sending e-mails all over Finland finding out what I have to do about this birth certificate thing. The paper has to be in French including information of my parents. First of all because we don't have birth certificates in Finland they have to give me some other paper that costs 35 €. Then to prove that this paper is good they are going to stamp it and send me another paper that costs 11 €. This is what I found out from the embassy of Finland in Paris. Then I send an e-mail to the register office in my hometown and they told me that they don't do the paper in French and asked me to send an e-mail to the capital of Finland. So now I have a letter coming from Helsinki with all of the papers that I need and I hope that I'll get this CAF-thing sorted out next week!

Yesterday I visited my friends in here and we had a little BBQ. Tomorrow I'm going to Paris for a gig of Synthetic Waterfall in "Le Klub". Enjoy my wintry pictures! ;) Adieu

Exams

So.. our exams started yesterday with laboratory exam of organic chemistry. The exam was 8 hours long! First we had 30 minutes of writing theory and then we started with the laboratory test.

Next Monday I'm going to have a "colle" from inorganic chemistry. The word colle actually means glue, but when having colles it means an exam where the prof gives you 20 minutes to solve a problem and after that you have to solve the problem for him. Students told me that they use blackboards for the solving part. I'm kinda nervous about the fact that I'll be locked in a room with a professor and I have to show him how to do an exercise. I'm also going to have colles from molecular theory, organic chemistry and quantum chemistry.

I don't remember if I have mentioned the date when I'm leaving for Finland but it is the 17th of December! I'm really looking forward to seeing my pets and friends :) I'm coming back to France 29th of December to spent new years here.

I have to thank all the professors of this university for deciding that all the final exams are held right after Christmas! Holiday just isn't a holiday without reading chemistry. Thank you