Frankfurt 2

They were leaving and since I'm so bored I thought I would follow them and stalk a bit. But they went to get a plane to Paris. I stayed here.

Frankfurt

I'm killing time at the Frankfurt airport. In front of me there is sitting two men with their sunglasses on (it's rainy). I bet they are celebrities. I'm thinking of a best way to take a photo without them noticing. This afternoon is loooooong.

Holiday

Kind of finished. In all the possible meanings with the word. Tomorrow at this time I'll be in a sauna in Helsinki.

Top songs of the 90's

When we make food with my Portuguese flatmate (or to be completely honest, he makes the food and I keep him company) we always listen to music. I played him some Finnish music, but more importantly he is finding me some really cool Portuguese songs. But since he hasn't been listening to any music with lyrics since he was a teenager, I'm now listening to the 80's and 90's Portuguese music. Amazing stuff.

I still think this song is the most amazing song I heard for ages (and "tu estás só e eu mais só estou" is a perfect piece of lyrics), but there seems to be a lot of great music from those decades. At some point I will need to find somebody else to share the music of the past 15 years.

Santa Claus Parade 2

I told my Portuguese friends that it was too bad that I missed the parade yesterday. They said that I shouldn't worry, I can go there next year. And I realized that yes I can, because I will be here next year (sometimes I forget about that, it's always a nice surprise to remember that). And then I will register to the event and get my name to the Guinness book of world records. And then I'll put that on my CV.

SQL

I have a SQL-exam tomorrow. I'm laughing already. Like this: ha ha ha.

Santa Claus Parade

Would you have guessed, that Porto has the world Guinness record for the largest Santa Claus parade? Last year there was 14,963 Santas walking in the parade dressed up in red and white costumes. They collect money for charity too.

It was today, and I missed it because I didn't know about it, I just saw it in the news after :(

Photos from the last year's parade can be found here:
http://www.demotix.com/news/535811/santa-claus-world-record-parade-porto

Taxi

I went out yesterday and when taking the taxi home I guess my instructions in Portuguese were not so convincing and the driver switched to English. Portuguese people are always very concerned if I like Portugal, and the way they ask it is "do you like Portuguese food?" Of course I do you cute silly taxi driver. I love it. And Porto, too.

Sunday

The busy week is almost over. And another one ahead. It's crazy to have all the deadlines at the same time, now half of the groupworks are delivered. I still need to finish two, present them, start and finish one and make one exam on Tuesday. I have five days to do all this. Uh.

The highlight of the week was when I was asked if I was Chinese.

Der Nikolaustag

Today was not only the Independence day of Finland, but also Der Nikolaustag! And look what he brought me, oh happiness!!

Flatmate

After 12 hours at the university and walking back in the rain I couldn't be happier to come and discover that my flatmate had prepared me dinner. Every woman should have one man called Claudio at home.

Hard Knock Life

It's a bit quiet here in this blog. The reason is that I'm most of the time at the faculty and there is not so much to write about that. Now it's 1am on Monday morning and here I am at home building a mockup of an internet page that we're improving. Who would have thought.

What really worries me is that the Finnish Independence day is on Tuesday and I don't know if I have time to watch the Presiden's party. Please someone, buy me on Wednesday the following papers: Ilta-Sanomat, Iltalehti, MeNaiset and Anna. And other papers with photos of the party. I need to see what the women were wearing.

Moela

I don't know what this is in Finnish, I can't find a word (well, kivipiira. Never heard but apparently it is a word). In English it's gizzard. It's more or less a stomach of a chicken. Suspicious, but really good.

I have come so far from my picky days when I wouldn't eat the food before I re-organized it so that different coulours wouldn't touch each others. One day maybe I'll learn to like olives, too. But not in the near future.

Engineering woman

I never had to queue for the women's toilet at the University.

Radiohead

Right after Queen, Beatles and A-ha, the band that I'd loooove to see in my life is Radiohead. 15.7.2012 in Lisbon. If I have an exam that day I'll skip it. Thom Yorke is more important.

Busy cat me

I have four groupworks to be delivered by next Thursday. None of them is not even near to ready. This week is going to be aaaaaawful.

But I still need to eat. A restaurant recommendation of the year: Chien Qui Fume (Cão que Fuma). My new favourite place. Beautiful meat, not so expensive and very cosy. And no tourists.

But now, back to my SWOT analysis.

Fado 2

I just noticed now that Fado, the Portuguese most traditional music genre, was added to UNESCO’s list of World’s Intangible Cultural Heritage yesterday.

Some news in Finnish here.

More Fado here.

Oh, melancholy. How I like it. Unfortunatelly Fado is much more common in Lisbon than in Porto. I need to go to Lisbon soon, sit alone in a corner of a fado place, have a glass of red wine and listen someone sing this beautiful speciality of Portugal.

Fado

Some fado for a gray Sunday.

Strikes, buttons and braces

I spent the whole day at the university yesterday, so I didn't see any demonstrations or anything cool relating to the strike.  Metro was kind of running and one of the cafeteria in the campus was open so no big drama. Quite disappointing.

One of the things that I'm wondering here is the men's shirts and buttons. And how they're not buttoned up the whole way. Even some professors have their shirts half-way open.

Another thing is the amount of people with braces at the University. Don't know what would explain that.

Btw, it's ridiculously warm in here, got some freckles today. Can't believe that it's the end of November.

Salt

Is there anything more amazing than salt in a salad, is there?

Flu and strikes

Yesterday I woke up with an awful headache, sore throat and pain in the ear. I went downstairs to get some breakfast before going to the University, my flatmate had one look at me and told me that maybe it's better to go back to bed. So, I stayed there all day. So boring. But seems like tea and ice cream cured me, I'm feeling a lot better today. Well I still had to take 3 hour nap between classes.

I'm curious about the general strike tomorrow. If the metro is not running I'll need to skip the lectures. I'm more worried if I can get any food anywhere.

Things you don't see in Finland 2

I went for a swim this morning. The hydrobic class was about to start, the traditional Portuguese techno music was already playing and some old women were hanging out in the pool.

Suddenly a man in his 70's comes to the pool wearing his bathrobe. First he dances a bit to the music, then he starts STRIPPING off his bathrobe and flirts with the old women standing in the pool. I almost choked on the chlorine water when seeing this episode.

Then I joined them for the hydrobic class.

Puppies

They're selling dogs in the pet shops. How sad.

No wonder there are so many dog shelters in this country :(

Meat and hula hoop

My friends asked me what I wanted to eat for lunch, I said "meat". And that is what I got. All kinds of it. It was the kind of a place where the waiters go around and cut the meat for you from a skewer, the meat was great and there was a LOT of it. I heart salty meat.

If you want to look like an idiot, play hula hoop with xbox kinect. It's good fun, though.

Portuguese in practice

This is how I learn Portuguese these days. The clothing vocabulary is under control, and of course I need to know what the stars are promising for 2012.

Bacalhau

I found this bacalhau codfish thing a bit funny. Because there isn't a day when I don't see it or eat it. I like it a lot (I like salt), but the Portuguese are a bit obsessed. Depending on the source there is either 1001 or 365 receips in Portugal alone. And it's probably the only fish that is not consumed fresh. I remember that in Norway I saw places where they dried the fish. This is how they look like in the supermarkets (check the pink ribbon, how cute). I'm already used to the smell now:

Blond me

Today my haircolour was described as "dark blond". It's so relative.

Studies

Yesterday I spent 15 hours at the University. Today I mostly slept, and that means that I have the evening shift doing our groupwork. And tomorrow another 12 hours at the Uni. Pffff I kind of need a holiday.

Hair 2

I was going to the faculty yesterday at 8pm for a team meeting by metro. Suddenly this woman in her 50's on the other side of the metro car smiles and waves to me, and I smile and wave back to her and think who in the world is that. Luckily she didn't come over to talk to me, because I really could not remember where I had seen her. Well then when I walked to the faculty I rememberd that she is the mother of my hairdresser, and she was there to witness the amazing day when the Girl With Short Hair got a haircut.

This reminds me of a finnish saying about everybody knowing the monkey...

Exam...revisited

I had the exam today...what a nightmare. The Finnish person in me just cannot understand that when I go to an exam, there is no room for everybody (like it's a surprise that all the people in the class might want to show up for the exam...) and that the exam finally starts 45 minutes late. And then when the time is up and I'm ready with my bad answers that I did in the hurry, they give you more time to finish the exam. Unreal. So this extra time I spend writing feedback to the professors about their organizing skills.

I think I just made sure that I won't pass the course. Not this year, nor the next one.

Slideshow

I started to read for an exam that I have on Tuesday. The course is Information Systems I. This is slide number 28:

 I'm very curious about the questions in the exam.

A weird night out

I went to a rock club last night. A portuguese man asked me where I'm from. Finland, I said. His reply was a bit unexpected - statistics of the suicide rates in the Northern Europe.

This guy needs to work on his pick-up lines.

Bad bad day

I hope that I wake up tomorrow and realize that today was just a bad dream. The only good was that I finally saw Porto's famous 2 meters tall transvestite.

Freedom

I had my last Portuguese class yesterday. We got the result of the exam and I gor 18/20, which was far better than I thought. We were drinking wine, eating Portuguese cakes (I have tried so many cakes in this country that I have lost count), watching videos and listening to music. I wonder what I'm going to do in the evenings now when the class is over.

Today I got a new radiator, yei! And I noticed that my bathroom roof is leaking :S

Hair

I went to fix my lashes today. This girl who does them is very sweet, but I miss the one who does them in Helsinki, it was so handy to have her working downstairs of my flat, and the fact that she doesn't speak so much is great. The one here is very happy to practise her English with me, and she speaks half in Portuguese so it's not all that bad.

Then she said that they have a special promotion of haircuts of 25%. Before I knew, I was sitting in the chair and was getting my hair washed. She was so happy to cut short hair, but the first weird moment was when she brought a dummy head that had a haircut that she wanted me to have. Then she said that I should get a perm. After that comment I should have ran out, but it was all too entertaining to escape from. So she started cutting my hair, and all the other staff came to look at my short hair. I was once bored in the class so I made statistics of the hair lenght in our class, and I'm the only one with short hair. Anyway, after the show I went to pay, of course there was lot of kisses when I left the place with all the staff (it's still weird, it really is), and this girl at the counter said "you look amazing". OMG she is probably hired just to say that to people, but it made me so happy that I almost wanted to pay again.

The new haircut is actually quite nice.

A typical conversation

- Emilia, how old are you?
- I'm 31.
-WHAAAAAAT?? You don't look like you're 31. What do you study?
-Services engineering.
-WHAAAAAAT, what is that? How long are you going to stay in Portugal?
-2 years.
-WHAAAAAAT? WHY? And how does your MOTHER feel about that???
-???

Ode to the bouncer

Yesterday night I went to a pub, in many places here they have a system that when you enter the place you get a paper where they mark the drinks you buy and then you pay everything once you leave. And if you loose the paper you need to pay like 100 euros. Anyway, I just needed to use the toilet in the pub and I asked the big and grumpy bouncer if it was OK. He didn't speak English, but at some point he understood and he let me in. Once I got back he suddendly smiled in a friendly way and said "Welcome to Portugal". He looked so proud of himself and I think he was practicing that sentence the whole time I was inside. This city and the people keep surprising me.

Lazy L

When I was young I had to go to a logopedist, because I had problems with letters L and T. If they didn't fix my lazy L, it would be perfect for the Portuguese language.

Exam

I'm studying for my Portuguese exam (which is tomorrow, not on Monday). Desentupidor. Esquentador. Items that I never saw in Finland.

Sister Act

Today I learned why there are so many pastries in Portugal that are based on egg yolks: it was the Portuguese monasteries who developed many sweet receips based on egg yolks, because they needed a lot of egg whites for starching clothes. And the egg whites were also needed for clearing the Port wine. That is why so many egg yolks were left over, and they made pastries. Live and learn.

Weekend report

We arrived to Geres Friday evening, first night we were six people. The house that we stayed in was amazing, only upstairs there were four bedrooms and a huge living room and kitchen, we didn't even use the space downstairs. There was a pool as well and the most amazing tenis court that I've ever seen, on the mountain side with an amazing view. Well it was too cold to use the pool, but the tennis court was a perfect spot to watch the stars and it was really amazing with the Milky Way and shooting stars.

On Saturday two more people joined the fun, we drove up the mountain and went for a small hike, saw a waterfall and followed the river up the mountain. In the river you have small pods where to swim in the summer, now the water was freezing cold. During the whole weekend we are a lot, drank really good wine (chosen by the wine specialist), played cards and chess and sat in front of the fireplace. Total relaxation.

                                                              (photo by Joana M.)

On Sunday we got two more friends joining us, and after a delicious lunch in a local restaurant we went here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peneda-Ger%C3%AAs_National_Park. Very beautiful place with mountains and water, just next to the border with Spain. Unfortunatelly we didn't have too much time to stay there, I need to go back and get a bike to drive around the park. We were then driving up and down another mountain, really cool roads coming down the hill, the view was amazing the whole way. In the evening we naturally ate more and had some nice conversations, I was telling stories from Finland and made some people jealous when telling that I saw Aurora Borealis, taught them some Finnish and I finally learned how to swear in Portuguese! And practiced how to pronounce "põem". Difficult. I also saw a LOT of bugs. And spiders. Creepy things and they love me.

It was a great weekend and LUCKY ME having met all these nice people!

Highway to Porto

We were driving back to Porto, I said to my friend who was driving: "Your roads are amazing". He replied: "Yes. And so is our debt."

I'm being spoilt

Yesterday after a group meeting some of us went to have a dinner. I love when my classmates bring me to places where no tourists ever go. The food was amazing, the sangria was perfect (it was with berries). Then a coffee next to the stormy beach and a ride home. Which was great because it was pouring rain.

Tomorrow we'll go to the weekend trip and I tried to bake a mud cake today. First i found out that we don't have a cake mould, then I spend forever in the supermarket trying to find out what is baking powder in Portuguese, then came home and realized that we don't have a mixer, so I was amassing sugar and eggs by hand, and finally the cake was in the oven for too long. They have better love the cake, I put so much effort in it.

Today when I got home from the language course I had a meal waiting for me, my Portuguese flatmate really is a darling! The same happened on Monday. Codfish number 6 I think. Now I'm full and supposed to study a bit, because I need to deliver an excercise tomorrow.

Around lunchtime I'll head up north where there is no internet, a report will follow next week.

The Chinese Las Vegas

I'm learning things about Macau. It was a was a Portuguese colony and both the first and last European colony in China. Now some Wikipedia quotes:

"In 1535, Portuguese traders obtained the rights to anchor ships in Macau's harbours and to carry out trading activities, though not the right to stay onshore. Around 1552–1553, they obtained temporary permission to erect storage sheds onshore, in order to dry out goods drenched by sea water; they soon built rudimentary stone houses around the area now called Nam Van. In 1557, the Portuguese established a permanent settlement in Macau, paying an annual rent of 500 taels ( 20 kilograms/44 pounds ) of silver."

bla bla bla, then:

"During the 16th century, Macau also served as a trafficking point for Chinese slaves to Portugal. Many Chinese boys were captured in China, and through Macau were brought to Portugal and sold as slaves in Lisbon." hmmm. and some were sold to Brazil.

And the article is long and I just got bored, so long story short: it was only in 1887 that China ceded the right of "perpetual occupation and government of Macau by Portugal". Then in 1974 after the overthrow of the Portuguese dictatorship the new Portuguese government determined it would relinquish all its overseas possessions...bla bla...The Chinese government assumed formal sovereignty over Macau on 20 December 1999.

And now: gambling revenue has made Macau the world's top casino market, surpassing Las Vegas.

I forgot why I started writing about this.

Joao, your version was so much cooler!!

Sweet dreams are made of cheese

I had my first dream in Portuguese. That was amazing. I just started speaking it in the dream, I even remember thinking "wow, Emilia!".

EDIT: The following night I was still speaking Portuguese, but now it was with English subtitles. This intensive language course is really getting to me.

FEUP week 2

This week was supposed to be the lazy week with no classes, but it seems that I'm even busier than normally with studies this week. All week just groupworks and language courses. I'm starting to think that there is only a limited amout of Portugese words that my brain can maintain: today we were learning how to tell the time, and I was thinking for a long time how to conjugate the verb "to be".

Today I got invited to join a weekend trip to Gerês in the north of Portugal. My classmate's grandfather has a big house there and my classmate thought that it would be a nice idea to take the foreigners (me and a guy from Germany) for a weekend-trip. Very very sweet of him. The plan for now is to go there on Friday and come back on Monday. Apparently this area is very nice, so I'm looking forward to the weekend very much!

Guimarães

Today I went to Guimaraes with a friend, our classmate works there so we got a ride in the morning, which was great. The city is about one hour drive from Porto. It was a bit bad planning from us to go there on a Monday, because all the museums were closed. We managed to see the castle though, which was nice. So with not much to do, we were walking around the beautiful city centre a lot. And naturally, we ate a lot. We were a bit late for lunch though, so almost all the restaurants were already closed. After a crazy amount of walking we finally found a place, just in time before I turned into a witch (which happens when I don't get food on time, as some of you might know :S)

Guimaraes is actually going to be the culture capital of Europe next year with Maribor, Slovenia. I don't recall Maribor being a particularly beautiful city, I guess I was "studying" there so hard that I didn't have time to explore the city. Well Guimaraes is beautiful, and it will be even more beautiful once they finish all the construction works they are doing, have to say that they'll have a VERY busy end of the year, it looked a bit incomplete.

In the afternoon we took the train back to Porto, and I went straight to my language course. And for the first time, I was completely lost there, they should not be teaching me grammar at 10pm. We were learning possessive pronouns and they were just too many. I'm starting to think that the Finnish language is easy, I love that the words don't have genders, they just make EVERYTHING very complicated.

Oh, and the fall is officially here. I was freezing in the metro today, and then I got very sad thinking that it won't be any warmer inside once I get home. I can handle the cold temperature outside, but I just hate it when it's cold inside as well. Now I'm wearing my woollen socks and I'm hiding under two covers, good night!

FEUP week

Nobody should have to go to university at 9am on a Saturday morning. Today I did.

But now the FEUP week started, which means that there is no lectures next week (I still have my language course though and group works) but I'll have some time to visit other cities around Porto. So the plan is to go to Guimarães on Monday and probably Coimbra on Wednesday. The bad thing is that from tomorrow on it should rain more or less for five days straight.

O verbo pretender

There is one verb that the Portuguese misuse a lot: "pretender". Let's say it's "to aim" in English. Well sometimes they forget to translate the word in English, and write "pretend" instead, so I'm always laughing so much when I see texts like "In this manual we pretend to define a set of rules..." or like today, a professor said that "In this project you pretend to improve an existing interactive model..." lolololololololooooooool

Good news and a bad one

I got a grade 18 (out of 20) in the Portuguese language test. Go Emilia! And today when we were learning words in portuguese to describe characteristics of people and played a game where you describe a person in the class and the others guess who it is, I was described as "the one who has dark hair, blue eyes and a very big heart". Awwww, so sweet!

And btw yesterday after we had a team meeting of one project (I have four of them ongoing. small time management issues here) we went to eat a proper francesinha (the sandwich with a lot of meat in it, I posted a photo earlier). This one had nothing to do with the first francesinha I had here, this was absolutely delicious. And the place was cool as well, straight from the 60's, a restaurant called Cunha. Strongly recommended. And because I was complaining to my friend that the beers were so small here (2dl), like shots, he ordered me a proper sized beer. I certainly seem happy about it:

The bad news is that one of my flatmates is moving out, which is really sad :( I hope we'll find somebody just as nice as him to live with us.

Cost savings

I was on the other side of the river (Gaia, actually another city) the other night and was looking to the Porto side. I was thinking that something was different from two years ago when I was on the other side of the river by night as well. Back then the city of Porto was lit up beautifully, the castles and all the pretty old buildings. No longer! Now they are saving costs and the city is quite dark by nights. Sometimes the signs of recession catch you by a surprise.

Accountant goes engineering

If anyone thinks that I'm in some kind of a holiday here - think again. I've never seen this motivated students and I'm spending a lot a lo a lot of time at the university, like today 12 hours. Every course has a groupwork, and the topics are like "invent a new business idea" or "take an existing interactive system and propose improvements or an alternative design". Plus one project that has something to do with information systems. I'm an accountant for god's sake, I'm really bad with IT!!

Dear Diary

I got a bit lazy with updating this. But here is the summary of the last couple of days:

On Friday I was at the university for 14 hours. I wanted to come home for a nap when I had a break, but we were doing our group assignment all 4 hours. The last hours from 7.30pm to 10.30pm I was just fighting not to fall asleep. This Friday will be the same, plus an additional bonus of a course on Saturday morning at 8am.

On Saturday I went for a swim, and after I had a lovely family dinner with my friend's parents. Another way of preparing cod fish, I think I have now tried 6 out of 365 ways of preparing it. Have to catch up if I want to try all of them. Then I went out, there was some kind of a festival with loads of live music in bars and pubs. Of course I couldn't manage to see any, because all the places were just too crowded. But it was a fun night, we were first in a pub called "once upon a time in Porto" a small place, like somebodys living room with great music that is not too loud and you can actually talk to people. Then we went to a rock bar called "Tenhinda" (I think), in Finnish standards not so rock but a nice place indeed.

On Sunday we had our traditional sushi-party with my flatmates, we are getting so good and they are more and more beautiful each time. Today I had a Portuguese exam. It was easy (well, I'll find out on Thursday when we get the results). We were also practicing pronounciation, this nasal sound that they have, I really can't say it and I just sound like very stupid when I try. Repeat after me: um limão, mil limões, um milhão de limões.

Stalker

After the Portuguese class (and a reminder that we have a test on Monday, which I had completely forgotten) me and my German friend went to a student party where another friend of ours was a DJ. The place is next to our campus, I felt really weird there, we were probably the only foreigners there, we were looking if there was anyone we know but we didn't find anyone (and for some reason everybody was just looking the same to me in their jeans, t-shirts and identical haircuts. I wonder if they all go to the same barber). Well we were enjoing our 50 cent beers and feeling weird with the Portuguese getting crazy with Brazilian music.

Just when I thought it couldn't get any more weird, a guy comes to us and asks me if I'm Finnish. I was wondering since when do I look Finnish? Then he asked if I have a profile in couchsurfing, he said that he just joined couchsurfing and he had seen my profile there. Which is a bit strange, since I don't have a couch here. And in my profile photo I'm not even looking at the camera so he really has been looking through my whole profile. He knew my age and that I moved here a month ago. How creepy. I officially have a local stalker now :S

Well then he disappearred and me and my friend took a taxi back to the centre, my friend was entertaining our taxi driver until his place, and I continued to entertain him for the rest of the trip with my fluent Portuguese. I don't know if we were talking about same things but I was explaining a lot of things to him. Poor man. Too bad I didn't have any pimped Eastern eggs with me to show him (that is my speciality in Helsinki).

I need to be at the faculty in 5 hours. Goodnight.

Räikkönen

I met two sweet girls from Greece. When the other one found out that I'm from Finland she was super excited: "OMG! Finland? Really? You know Kimi Räikkönen? I LOVE him!" Like one Spanish girl once told me that she wants to move to Finland and learn Finnish because of Ville Valo.

Me studying in Norway, and Andreas Thorkildsen being Norwegian is just a coincidence.

Candy

Today I really wanted some candy and I haven't realized it before, but the candy-shelfs in the supermarket here are just pathetic. Or are they just normal size and in Finland they are enormous? Or is it true what a Portuguese guy said when he didn't want any chocolate: "I'm sweet enough without". Sweet...or cheesy?

Dammit

I think I'm going to stop writing this blog, because
1) nobody asks me how I'm doing anymore
2) nobody tells me how they're doing anymore.

Lazy Sunday

I'm like 1% homesick today. To cure that, I'm going to watch now the Finnish version of Strictly Come Dancing. Then me and my roommates are going to make a sushi party vol 2.

Porto by night

Sice I'm here (4 weeks excactly) it has rained once. And then I was sleeping. So far it's been so, that when we go out, we just gather in a square called Piolho, we get drinks from bars (or sometimes just people that go around with their bikes selling cans of beer) and have them outside. There are some streets around the square that are just packed during the night, everybody is just standing outside. It's great but weird, being used to the Finnish laws. I wonder how it's going to be when the rainy season starts. I cannot believe it's October and the weather is still this great (apparently the summer was bad here and this weather is exceptional).

Mrs. Augusta

Have I told that we have a cleaner lady coming here once a week? How perfect! She is supposed to come every Thursday around 10am for 3 hours, but twice she didn't wake up to come. But the idea is great anyhow.

Homeless guy 2

The homeless guy has a friend! Last night when I got home the homeless guy was sleeping in his bed and his friend was sleeping there also, using the legs of the homeless guy as his pillow. So sweet.

Access

Today I had a test in using Access. I did study yesterday (last night) but somehow I managed to screw up the exam. Not only that, but we had to send the file to the professor by email and I managed to misspell her email adress. Two hours later I noticed that the email never went to her, I sent it again and I was worried that she'd think I did it on purpose to get more time to fix it. But I'm sure that when she opens it and sees my forms that do not work, she'll know that it's the original one.

Touchy!

Ah, a title from my favourite band :)

The Portuguese are very touchy. I'm kind of used to the greeting kisses now, but I'm having a problem with random people touching me. They come so close. Absolutely no respect my personal space (and since I'm Finnish, it's a big one!).

Human Computer Interaction

I have one course with the 1st year students (I'm on the 4th year). We were talking about icons in programmes, and the professor was demonstrating it with the "save" button, where you have a picture of a floppy disk. Apparently I'm the only one in the course who ever saw one, not to mention that I actually used it. Feeling old.

Sushi

This is how our sushi turned out yesterday (I'm obviously not studying). My flatmates were so happy about it that I'm extempted from washing the dishes for one year. Note our amazing tablecloth. It's the kitchiest thing I've ever seen.

The Biggest Loser

Oh, I went to the gym today. They were showing the Biggest Loser on TV. What kind of a gym did I sign up for? Anyway, when I saw the show I just got very hungry. That was probably not their goal.

Back to the days in Vaasa

I have my first exam tomorrow. It's now 2 am and I'm studying. Just like I did when I was doing my first degree.

Shopping

This morning I spent running around in supermarkets trying to find stuff for tomorrow's sushi-evening. Me and another Finnish girl are cooking for my flatmates because they keep feeding me their delicious food. Anyway, finally I found everything and actually found a very good Chinese supermarket, must go back there.

Then I met my Portuguese friend and we went to a flea market. On the way we passed a demonstration of some party but of course I forgot which one it was. I kind of participated (by crossing it and going shopping...hmmm. Keeping the economy running here). Some people who were filming it for some news or something said that some people went to the hairdressers before in case they would end up in the news. sweet.

The flea market was very nice, hot but nice, it was around 30 degrees here today. They were people selling their old stuff, but a lot od small designer shops also selling their products. I could have bought a lot, but since I'm a generous person and I only think of other people, I only bought one thing for my sister. Elli, here it is (Ulla, next time something for you):

September

The weather is amazing. On Saturday it should be +30 degrees. Today was a hot day as well, my classmate said to me "It's the wrong day to be wearing black clothes." He must be blind.

Today I discovered anywheretv.com and watched Maajussille Morsian <3.

Google Translate

I get a lot of email to my University mail adress. A lot. And 95% of them is in Portuguese. I thought that if somebody had something important to say, they'd write me in English. Well, apparently I've been missing a lot of information about courses and other stuff. Now I forwarded the emails to my gmail adress and use a lot of Google Translate :(

Homeless guy

The homeless guy has started greeting me.

I noticed that he had 6 liters of Sangria.

Pay what you want

Today was a bit random. I ended up to go see a theatre play in Portuguese, then we went to a small place to have some wine and tapas (can't remember what the Portuguese call them...just tapas but different word). anyway, when we asked for the check, the waitress just brought us a small basket, where we expected to find the check. But it was empty, and the waitress told us that they're trying a new method, where they don't have fixed prices, but people just pay what they thought the food and drinks were worth.

Nice idea. But that would NEVER work in Finland, especially when they serve alcohol!!

Gym

After all the eating (and blogging about it) I went to a gym in the centre to ask about the prices. They don't have the prices in the internet, because there are these sales guys working and you need to negotiate a bit with them. I hate it when people expect me to be rich when they learn that I'm from Finland, so I was planning to say that I'm from a poor country. Like Ethiopia.

My roommate told me more or less how much it's going to cost, so I was prepared for bargaining. But since the guy at the gym didn't speak so much English he just skipped the negotiation part and gave me the student discount prices. And after talking to 6 people in the gym (including the owner), signing a contract in Portuguese, and another paper in Portuguese that I understand the conditions of the paper that I just signed (!) I'm a member of Virgin Activity now. The gym is very nice and has a swimming pool and a sauna. On Monday I have a meeting with a personal trainer, that will be depressing ;(

Oh, and I've been trying to find a place where I can fix my lash extensions. That seems to be harder than I expected. A Portuguese friend is already working on that issue, but today at the gym one woman just randomly said that she liked my lashes. I asked her where to go fix them, she said maybe they do it in one beauty salon close by. I went there but they didn't have that service there, but they gave me another adress that I need to check tomorrow. Pheww. Portuguese women are so pretty that they don't need fake (but beautiful) lashes.

Things you don't see in Finland 1

On Saturday when we went to the concert, my friends left their car in a parking place near the centre. Quite an old place, not busy at all. You go in, press the button and you get a card that you need to keep. Just like in Finland.

But then when we left at 2am, instead of paying for the parking in an automat, there was a man working and collecting the money for the parking. How sweet.

Other stuff

Although I spend a lot of time sleeping and eating (I'm really enjoying not having to wake up early to go to work) I do a bit of other stuff, too. On Friday I went to a very nice Erasmus-party, and yesterday I went to a concert of Old Jerusalem (http://www.myspace.com/oldj).

But now I need to study, I have to develop a business idea for tomorrow. Maybe a clinic for foreigners that come to Portugal and eat too much.

1989

Most of my classmates are born in 1989.

Food, again

This is turning into a food blog now, but I think I spend 50% of my time here eating. This is a typical lunch in the school cafeteria: 2,25€.

Great that the lunch break is 1,5 hours. I'm still the slowest eater in the world.

Finlandês

I found this poster in my faculty, I wonder how many students there are in the Finnish classes. I might just email the teacher and ask if there is a student there that would like to do some language exchange with me once I start my language course in a week. As long as the Finnish is not in a too advanced level, because I wouldn't be able to explain the grammar. Finnish is a way too difficult language.

Francesinha

In addition to Port wine the other speciality of Porto is francesinha, or “little French one.” Though there is nothing little about it. Nor French. Well there is a story of a French guy and his ham and cheese sandwich but I really don't know what that has got to do with this heart attack on a plate.

So basically it's two slices of bread around some combination of steak, sausage and ham (I guess normally it's at least five different kinds of meat inside the sandwich). It's then covered with melted cheese and tomato-beer sauce. Adding fries and/or egg makes it “especial.”

This is half portion: 

It's not something I'd eat too often, but it's good. Very meaty. My photo doesn't do any justice to the meat part, check in Google for better pictures. This time we went to a place that was a bit touristy, next time I'll find a more autentic place to eat it. And there are a lot of places to try in Porto. They even have a webpage for it, http://francesinhas.com/.

Today's class 2

I went to attend the practical class of Information Systems, just to find out that in the Office 2008 for Mac there is no Access application.

So if anyone knows how to install a Windows to Mac so that I can get MS Access, call me.

Today's class

Today there was a guy sitting in front of me in the class. For three hours I just wanted to pull out the one gray hair he had sticking out from his otherwise black hair.

Food

I need to start doing some sports, because the food is just too good here. And it's very heavy.

Now I don't know if I just got back my appetite after being sick for a week, or was I extremely hungry, or did I had the best burger of my life yesterday?? I let my Portuguese friend choose the restaurant, when she said "burgers" I was a bit suspicious but it was perfect and I'm going to take all the visitors there.  What was so special about it was the topping of the meat: oninon confit in port wine, topped with traditional Portuguese Serra da Estrela cheese. I was so happy about it that I took a photo. Really, a photo of a burger. Here:

The Great Pretender

My flatmates are so nice, I cannot believe my luck. We went to IKEA together today, they carried my stuff (which was a lot, as usual), and then they made food for me. I tried to wash the dishes, but I was told "just go and relax, you're sick". I wonder if I should just go on and pretend to be sick for some time  longer, the service is just too good.

Neighbourhood

Downstairs, on the other side of the street from the prostitute, there is a homeless man. But he has made some effort to make himself comfortable: he has a matress and a blanket, yesterday when I passed him he had hung his socks for drying, and he was sitting on his bed, chilling and reading the newspaper.

Super Bock

They serve beer in the school canteen <3

Survivor

I survived the first 12 hour schoolday. Though I wanted to escape half-way, because this flue is really getting me tired, but the professor of the second last class didn't have a break in 3 hours (omg, the 3 most boring hours of my life, where 60% of the lecture was in Portuguese) and I was sitting in the middle of the row so I just didn't dare to leave. So once I had to stay there until 5pm anyway, I went to the last class as well. Luckily, the last class of the day was really interesting and the professsor was really good. And funny.

And my Portuguese classmates seem very nice as well. After they gathered some courage they were very chatty. Once I get over the flu I might talk back to them.  I have 5 courses and all of them require at least one group work. Good way to meet people.

But now: painkillers, allergy medicines and sleep. Tomorrow, if I'm feeling better: a party.

Supermarket Sweep

I wanted to make a nice goat cheese salad for dinner. Out of the seven ingredients I wanted to buy I could't find four. My dinner was finally a yoghurt :(.

MasterChef

I live with two MasterChefs. They're going to be so disappointed when it's my turn to prepare the dinner.

Speak me Portuguese

Inspired by todays nightmares I just signed up for an intensive Portuguese language course. 3 hours a day, 5 days a week, 4 weeks. Intensive indeed.

Welcome to the circus

I went to my faculty today to register and get a student card. When I arrived, it was like a circus. The entrance  hall was full of people, I took a queuing number to the academic services, there was 120 people before me. I saw the people working there and was hoping that it wouldn't be that older lady who would call my number, because I was sure she couldn't speak any English. Well, of course it was her. And she didn't speak English, when I said "hello" she panicked a bit, tried to call somebody that didn't pick up and then...she disappearred. Sweet. But because I'd been already waiting for 1,5 hours I just waited the poor thing to come back. So she explained me stuff in Portuguese, I got the idea that I couldn't get a student card from there. Finally, there were three people explaining me in Portuguese where to go, and at that point I wasn't really sure anymore where they were telling me to go and what for.

And btw the Portuguese tend to wave their hand to some direction, and you never know if the place is 50 meters or 5 kilometers away.

Well I went to the direction they were pointing at, and by a miracle I found the place, they spoke excellent English there and I got my student card (after queuing, of course) and a bunch of passwords and PIN-codes that I'm not yet sure what to use them for.

After that I had a meeting with the professor who is responsible for my master's programme. He was mainly showing me where the shopping centres and the cinemas are, nice man. Tomorrow I'll have my first lectures, we'll see what kind of classes he gives.

Tomorrow I'll be queuing in three different offices.

Now I'll sign up for a Portuguese class.

Crazy Fridays

Who says the Portuguese are lazy? On Fridays I have classes from 8.30 am to 8pm. One hour break. Later I'll have some classes on Saturday morning 8am.

Well, from Mondays to Thursdays I'm mainly free.

Home

My buddy and his friend picked me up in the middle of the night from the airport, very sweet from them. When we arrived to my new home, the first thing I saw when stepping out of the car was a prostitute (which is quite funny if you think of the finnish word portto, heheh).

My new roomies were here, they seem both very nice. I got a beer and a delicious welcome sandwich. The flat is very nice and cosy, the location couldn't be any more perfect.

I slept like a baby here, today I only went to the supermarket, made quite safe choises there. Before I'll learn some Portuguese going to a supermarket will be a small adventure each time, just like it was in Poland when I was living there.

Tonight I'll eat codfish with my roomies. Life is good in Porto.

Lufthansa

I managed to smuggle my extra bag in the plane, they were being very strict about it, announcing that only one hand luggage is alloowed and measuring the sizes of the bags. I looked so innocent that they didn't check mine.

In the first fligth from Helsinki to Frankfurt they were serving nice Thai style vegetable wraps. I thought they were nice. After I had finished eating I saw the expiration date. I refuse to believe it's true.

Waucher

My cute friends got me a voucher for a massage in Porto. Hope they didn't spend too much time finding this, since none of them speak Portuguese :S Sweeeeeet crazy friends they are.

 

I also got these post-it's so I can leave messages to my roomies :D

Now. last night in Helsinki.

Last day

I'm cleaning my desk, admiring my Office calendar and planning a great out of office message.

Portugalilainen kimppakämppä

This is where I'm going to move to. In the other room is an Irish guy and downstairs a Portuguese guy. It's right in the centre of Porto and it all sounds good. I hope it is in reality as well. Come visit me!

Photo by C. Pinto.

Couchsurfing

I've been surfing on my friends' couches for 1,5 weeks already.

Why haven't I done this before? It's just perfect!!

This morning one friend made me a beautiful breakfast, which was far better than an average brunch in a restaurant in Helsinki, and in the evening when I returned to stay with another friend she had prepared a nice evening meal and with a delicious dessert from apples she had picked herself.

If I'll find people in Porto that are even half as lovely as my friends are here, everything will be just fine.

It's here.

Now it came. Panic. I'm feeling sick to stomach. I was alone for a whole hour and had time to think, and this is the result. Have to keep myself busy for six more days so that I won't have the time to worry about things.

Accommodation is still work in process, I have outsourced it a bit so hopefully I'll get some good news tomorrow evening.

I'm pricey

Yesterday I spent around 950 euros on insurences. It's expensive to be this accident-prone.

OD

My bags are so full so I probably cannot take much salmiakki with me to Portugal. So I'm eating it as much as I can these days, today maybe a bit too much, I'm feeling awful.

Homeless

I said goodbye to my beautiful home on Wednesday :(. On Friday I read in the newspaper that in the supermarket that is downstairs of my flat, there was a man raging with a drug needle, and the police caught him with a Tazer. I miss Kallio already.

But now I'm in Töölö. It's very nice here actually, beautiful and quiet. Today I'll move to Ruskeasuo. I'm lucky to have my amazing, bold & beautiful friends who host me, so I don't end up under the bridge.

Engineer

Greetings from our meeting with the production. I'm sitting here with 10 engineers. I was just thinking how boring it was (they were) and how I wished the meeting to be over already, when I realized that in 3 weeks I'll be surrounded by thousands of them. And in 2 years I'll become one of them.

From an accountant to an engineer, did I really think this through?

Buddy

So I got a buddy! A guy named João ( I can write it here, because seems that half of the people are called that. The other half is called Nuno). He seems to be a very nice and helpful guy, he said he could help with finding a room and stuff, apparently his duty is also to pick me up from the airport. What he doesn't know yet, is that my flight will arrive to Porto at 11.35 PM on a Saturday night. He would be the most devoted mentor ever, if he wants to show up there at that time.

My life in 20kg

Well, almost. One big bag of 20kg and six small bags that I don't know what to do with. I'll have to polish my strategy a bit, how to smuggle all of those into the airplane.

Sauna

Spent the weekend in a place called Rilax. It was very nice to get something else to think about. I went to a PERFECT sauna and swam in the see, that I'll definitely miss in PT.

Now I'm back home, no more messages from my neighbours. I'm cleaning my flat like crazy, from Wednesday on I'll be homeless.

Pen pal

I'm exchanging notes with my neighbours. This one is really friendly, let's see if there is more when I get back from the forest tomorrow.

(some idiot has put his stuff to my attic closet and put his own lock there. I'm super annoyed)

Moving, part 2

Pile number three needs to be brought to the attic. It's s spooky place so I'm waiting for some reinforcements.

Moving, part 1

I'm sorting out stuff to five different piles:

1. Things I want to take with me to Porto
2. Things I will bring to my parent's, so I can take them to Porto when I get back for Christmas.
3. Things I don't want to throw away quite yet.
4. Clothes to be donated.
5. Trash (well this is like 7 different piles, recycling a lot)

I should be done by tomorrow. Now it's 11.30pm and I'm not quite there yet, the flat looks if I was robbed. And it's going really slowly, because I'm having too many emotional moments saying goodbye to shoes. And t-shirts. Handbags. Postcards. Hairpins. You name it.

Portto

Hehehehhehehehe.

Already heard about 20 jokes about this.

Still nothing close to the amount of jokes that I've heard about my last name. If you have a new one, do share.

Cats

Every nice room that I find in Porto, there is a cat in the apartment. Can't do.

Patience

I finally got my Certificate of Registration in English. That only required around 20 emails and calls to the student services office and one strongly-worded email to the head of the programme.

The email was so efficient that now I have his private mobile number as well.

Erasmus wannabe

Since I'm not an Erasmus student, it's a bit trickier to organize everything (especially when I don't know what all I should organize). There is a ESN (Erasmus Student Network) office in Porto, I saw in their webpage that they organise local students to be mentors or "buddies" for Erasmus students, helping out with all kinds of stuff in the beginning of the stay. I asked if I could get one even if I'm not Erasmus but a normal degree student, the reply was (after congratulating me of choosing FEUP which is "really good faculty"): "We don't really care about those formalities we are here to help students so it doesn't matter you aren't an erasmus. Register for a Buddy and we'll award you one :)"

Cool.

Of course I haven't heard of them since, but the thought was nice at least.

Flat 2

Ah, not going well with finding a room in Porto. Maybe I'll just do something very not typical of me and worry about it once I get there. Very Portuguese of me.

Ummikko

The result of my ad in the housing webpage resulted to many emails in Portuguese. Now I have emailed one (in English) and I'm waiting for a reply. But actually the perfect deal would be to live with some Portuguese people who don't speak a word English. I would learn the language super fast. Or become silent, fast.

Flat 1

So my beautiful flat is kind of rented now. The new tenant is not exactly a student of Theology (what I was secretly hoping for)  but hopefully he'll take good care of my precious little home.


The first one to end up after-partying at my place during the next year wins a special price.

One-Eyed Emilia

Today I've been awake for around two hours, I've got an eye inflammation and I'm feeling like a vampire staying indoors with the curtain closed and the lights off. Maybe I'll get something done during the night.

This reminds me that I need to pay a visit to my insurance company and get my travel insurance fixed.

To-Do 2

Today I went to get the moisturizing facial treatment, I can check that off the loooooooong list. Now there is only annoying things left there.

My friend Panic, where are you?

One month

I'm useless here at the office. USELESS.

And I'm a bit sad that I'll miss all the budgeting drama in October. That's the only time when there is some action at the accounting department.

Dear fellow students, I'm so sorry!

"The MESG programme will be in English as there will be a few students attending it that cannot speak Portuguese. Some elective courses may be in Portuguese if there are no foreign students attending them (lecturers know that they must teach in English if there is at least one student that is not fluent in Portuguese)."

I'm going to be SOOOOOO popular.

Gémeos

I'm planning to organize myself a flat or a room in a shared flat only once I arrive to Porto. But when I was browsing through some ads for flats I thought I would leave there my own "searching for a room" ad as well. Cool that you can choose the horoscope as well. I'd rather have the opportunity to choose "a normal peroson" as a criteria.

Family Affair 2

...and there she is. Moi äiti!

Family Affair

My blog has two followers. Both of them are my sisters. My mom is supposed to join as well.

UFF

These are the clothes from my first wardrobe that I'm going to donate to charity. Now I know what you're all thinking: "OMG. She has some colourful clothes." And it may seem that I'm getting rid of all the coloured ones now and keeping the black ones only, but that is not correct: I saved one red and one green shirt.

P. S: women in Helsinki: If you want to go throught the pile and see if there is something you'd like, come over and dig in.

One-way ticket to Porto and back

Another item on the To-Do list was to "book flights". I used all my creativity yesterday when searching for good and cheap flights, but seems that the connection between Helsinki and Porto is not the most popular one. No direct flights, but I managed to find something. So on Saturday 10.9. I'll be on my way.

It's a little bit strange with one-way flights though, I wanted to buy one-way only but that didn't make any sense. I don't understand the logic of return ticket costing 300€ and one-way ticket costing 450€. What are those people supposed to do, who cannot plan that much ahead to know when they return? How about those ones, who cannot find an English version of the Academic calendar in the University webpage, and don't know when the Christmas holidays begin?? Just asking.

To-Do

Yesterday I wrote a To-Do list of all the things I must take care of before I leave. It's five pages long. So far I have managed to cross off one item: I booked an appointment for a moisturizing facial treatment. With massage for face.

Challenger 1

I'm assuming that if in the programme description it says "Languages: English and Portuguese", it means mostly English. Otherwise the studies will be a bit more challenging.

Long story short

I needed an adventure so here we go: in September I'll start my studies in the Faculty of Engineering in the University of Porto. I started this blog to save my Facebook friends from overdosing on my fb-statuses about Portugal (there will still be some), so the ones who want to read what's up in Porto can come read about it here. I've never written a blog before - don't exactly how this will turn out but I'm assuming it'll be about traveling, cultural differences and the freaks of Porto. They'll find me, sooner or later.