1st Day of School

It snowed overnight!

16th January marks my 1st lesson in HUT. As Finns are particular about punctuality, we arrived there 10 mins before class started. It was Finnish 1A (Suomi), and the class was already full. The lesson was like primary school lidat, teacher says a word, vowel or consonant, and you repeat after tr.. after 1.5 hrs of such stuff, we went to buy the course material ... 10E for the finnish notes!! So expensive.. in spore i think the 50 pages would cost only like 3 dollars? and that is only for one module, i wonder how much more the others would cost.. i would be taking 6 other modules here (AS-74.2112 Digital Control , Kie-98.7011 Finnish 1A, S-38.2188 Computer Networks, S-72.3320 Advanced Digital Communication , T-61.3010 Digital Signal Processing and Filtering , TU-53.1100 Basics of Work Psychology and Leadership) . We then went for lunch b4 me and xz went to Tapiola to purchase the NRJ awards tickets for this thurs.. although the prices a bit steep.. 49E but its a once in a lifetime chance to see shakira, westlife, TATU and hopefully green day... its the 1st time in 7 years tat the nordic awards are held in finland.. tats y must see.. anyway kaizhao saw oasis in concert lor.. i finally saw snow for the 1st time today.. as i mentioned before, it has been relatively warm so far.. normally i wear 2 layers then add one more outer coat.. and only at nite then wear beanie n gloves due to wind chill but today it snowed over night.. everything is white! so i wore my thermal wear for the 1st time!

Communicating with other people here is pretty hard.. i have to speak real slowly and my slang has not developed yet, therefore i m forced to repeat myself most of the time.. i think maybe i mumble too much heh.. but even in msn with the pple, i have to use proper english, no 'la's leis.. and must spell out everything.. so bothersome..

Update on prev days: went the welcome sauna where u r supp 2 heat up until 80 deg then jump into the freaking cold ice water.. we juz sat in a corner and had our own singapore gathering plus a few other exchg students like marika, aya and kei.. this dutch gal came to 'pick me up' as ivan put it.. yar but more or less must get used to the drinking culture since beer is the cheapest drink here.. half of wat a coke costs which is abt 1.40E.. n they haf lotsa parties over here.. i went to open my bank acct the nxt day at nordea bank.. shop for groceries then went back apartment for zm to cook... weekends are normally parties on sat then sun is spent hangover at home.. we watched soccer on sat on pplive.. then i completed desperate hsewives season1 on sun.. no shops are open on sun!! its like family day... we went to leppavaara only to find no shops so i ate the famous kebab.. Stadin Ateris.. a must-try in finland but so ex tat u try only once.. 7.45 euro.. its a huge portion.. think me, wj and another person can share
after tat went to check out ivan's apartment for the 1st time.. his lift very cool.. its like a [ and there isnt any door and u have to open the door when u reach the lvl... yar tats abt all.. we juz went to the sports hall to see if we could play futsal but we couldnt as the hall was used for some fair.. so we went to the coast n found the sea had already frozen and there was this guy walking on it!.. kk now watching new police story again.. update another time

Frozen lake