Week 7 14/02/11-20/02/11

This week a few students and my self attended and ice hockey match between Turku and Helsinki.  Ice hockey is a huge sport in Finland and there is always a strong rivalry between Finland and Sweden during international games, such as the Olympics.  The Team from Turku (TPS) were the league champions in 2010 however this year they are not so good.  The North American leagues, the NHL and AHL, know Finland produces great ice hockey players and send scouts to bring their best players to their teams.  Turku has suffered from this; going from league champions to being bottoming of the league in one season.  Being a fan of ice hockey I noticed that the game is more tactical here whereas in the UK league is a lot more physical (and violent).

Turku is a city which is much more multicultural than most other Finnish cities.  There are a lot of Swedish influences (all the street names are in Finnish and Swedish) and there is a high English speaking population.  This week there was an English speaking comedy show.  There were performers from the USA, UK, Australia and even a Finnish act.  There were a lot of Finnish and Scandinavian references in their jokes, which, although I have only been here for seven weeks, which I understood.  I was surprised by the amount of native English speakers in Turku.  It was also nice to see the Finns opening up and even bantering with the comics, which was the last thing I would expect from Finnish people as they are usually very quite and reserved.

This week I started a new class.  There are classes ending at the end of February and others starting in March, it is almost like the semester is divided into two halves.  This allows for the focus to be on one or two classes for two months and not five or six classes over 5 months.  The new class is Evaluating the Effectiveness of Education.  The class is in a rather small room but it allows for greater discussion amongst students and a very relaxed atmosphere.  Many lecturers wear slippers in the faculty which seems bizarre but it makes the attending class a lot more enjoyable.  There is not a lot of pressure placed on the students and everything is taken at a steady pace.