Culture shock? Nah.

Dear Internet,

You've all probably heard of a phenomenon called "culture shock". Supposedly it means the initial shock that you get after the "love at first feel"-phase when for example moving abroad to live within a different culture. During my two-and-a-half-or-so years of studying International Business in Finland we have been going over the infamous culture shock and its effects countless times, and the culture shock is supposed to include symptoms such as home-sickness, rejecting the local customs and the general feeling of loneliness and anxiety. I have now lived in Canada for one full month, and supposedly I should have experienced to shock in its full effect by now.

Canada, of course, is one of the most developed modern societies in the world. When it comes to technology and living standards, Canada is pretty much at the top of the list along with U.S.A and most of Western Europe. Yes, we even have electricity in Canada, and even though bears and wolves are a constant danger, the local infrastructure is very sophisticated. Of course, there are some things that are just different, but not always in a negative way. Below are a few examples.

-Sidewalks are basically nonexistent. Usually sidewalks are only on one side of the road, and some roads have no sidewalks at all. They are usually quite narrow and slippery, a far cry from the constantly maintained sidewalks and cycling roads in Oulu. Not many people walk on them anyway; most people drive a car or take the bus instead.
-Tap water tastes different. Unless you run the water for a few seconds, you will get a mild chloride taste. I already got used to it, but the first times drinking local water was strange.
-You cannot find quark anywhere. This high-protein/low-cost dairy product is a Finnish favorite, but In Canada it seems to be nonexistent. Well, at least cottage cheese is sold in jars of 1 kg!
-People talk a lot. The common stereotype is that Canadians, just like Americans, talk a lot, and this is very true indeed. It is not extraordinary that random people just start chatting to you in a grocery store and if you happen to bump to someone, people always apologize and let you know they're really sorry (another stereotype confirmed, Canadians say sorry a lot!) This is of course only a positive thing, but as a silent Finn, it threw me off in the beginning. Well, it still does. Sometimes I prefer silence over small-talk.
-The local chewing gum sucks. They are all sweetened with artificial crap such as aspartame, and most of the people don't even know what xylitol is.
-Peanut butter is everywhere. And it's awesome. Why don't we have it in Finland?

I honestly couldn't think of anything that could be truly classified shocking. Sure, I occasionally miss Finland, my friends and family, and Finnish foods such as proper Finnish ruisleipä, Fazerin Sininen and salmiakki, but other than that, all the new experiences are just great.

So, I suppose culture shock does exist, but it didn't hit me very hard.

The past week passed by way too fast. Aside from school I had some time to do the occasional weightlifting, swimming, rock climbing and rugby, and I'll tell you; I was so tired on Sunday. Five workouts, a couple of rugby sessions and the climbing and swimming really pushed me to the limit! We also went to the movies, had some dinner in a Portuguese restaurant, went for a few tankards in the Outpost and generally had a good time.

For the next post I'm thinking of listing some of the greatest Canadians of all time. There are a lot of famous Canucks out there that some of you might not even know!

Thank you for reading and have a great week!

Yours sinceriously,

Teemu

Silvercity cinema

Some sweet arcade game consoles!

This is The Bar in Canada, the famous one. It is old because it is not new, and there is beer inside and people drink beer and become happy and that makes it a good bar.

Finally had some KFC! So greasy, so good.

Awesome peanut butter. Just like Guile's theme, it fits with everything!

Dinner at Churrasquiera Galo, a local Portuguese restaurant!

I received a package from Finland :) Thank you!

Having a couple of beers at The Outpost. I only had three (three liters, oops.) Picture by Mette (IG: @jagmette)


I watched Scarface last week, and this song has been playing in my head ever since.
Push it to the limit!

Thunderwolves Howl!

Dear Internet,

Yet another week has passed, and as they say, time flies when you're having fun. Last week was full of activities and school and I got to try out a lot of new things!

I had a day off on Monday, since all my classes were cancelled. The other class' instructor was ill, and the other one was cancelled because a water pipe broke down in the building, bringing the fire extinguishing system down, so they had to evacuate the whole building. A water main also burst near the Sanders Fieldhouse (gym-building) and they closed down the gym as well for a short time. The cold weather is taking it's toll, it seems. This week has actually been pretty nice when it comes to weather, the average temperature being somewhere between -5 to -10 Celsius.

On Tuesday I went on a dog-sled ride! It was a great experience and definitely worth trying! The person who owns the dogs told that sometimes the dogs go through races that are up to a hundred miles long in total! Of course it includes breaks, but still, must be tough for the doggies!

Who needs a car when you have a dog sled?

In the evening we went to see a movie at the local Silver City cinema. The cinema itself was actually pretty cool; it looked more like an amusement park of some sort with bright neon-lights, statues and several restaurant desks in it. Unfortunately I didn't bring my phone, so I don't have pictures from there, but I will take some shots the next Tuesday when we go again; tickets are only 5,25 bucks on Tuesdays! (that's about 3,7 €) So, it's basically a waste not to go there! We saw The Imitation Game, which was honestly one of the best movies I've seen in a while. It tells the story of Alan Turing (played by Benedict Cumberbatch), a British mathematician who broke the German Enigma-code used to encrypt their communications during WWII.

On Wednesday I went on a skiing trip to Loch Lomond, a nearby ski-resort. It only cost 29 bucks and included equipment rental, ride on the bus back and forth and the skiing ticket as well. It wasn't the biggest place, but there were practically no other people other than us LU students, and there was plenty of room to ski! 

View from the bottom of one of the slopes.

The mountain had two sides to ski on, but some of the routes were closed.

On Friday and Saturday we went to watch some hockey. The Lu Thunderwolves played against UBQTR Patriotes (which my friend referred to as a "bunch of French faggots") on both nights. The games were really fast-moving and intense, and the general quality of the games even on the University-level seems to be really good, despite the players being young. We lost both games, but it was still loads of fun! On Saturday we got to sit in the VIP booth with free beverages and snacks and of course the best view of the game.

Friday was also the day that LU kicked off it's 50th anniversary celebrations. There were lots of activities and free stuff at the campus, and we got to try the Canadian bonfire treats, S'mores. A S'more is made by assembling a roasted marshmallow and a piece of chocolate between two graham crackers. It's actually a really nice treat to make over the bonfire, try it out! They also had some surprisingly impressive fireworks in the evening.

Selfie taken by Z, our very own designated driver from the International Office :)

Wolfie!

Like I said, the players are young. Nah, just kidding, just some amusement during the break.

School's also starting to pick up, and the first assignments are well on their way. I've been trying to do as much school stuff during my free time so that I won't have to panic with it at the end of the term.

I'm just going to finish this post with a couple of pictures from along the past week.

Have a good one!

Yours sincerely,

-Teemu

My way of spending a Friday-night at the bar

The Wolves Den, my second home.

Reino, the national hero of Canada and Finland. Torilla tavataan!

GAY BACON STRIPS!

Sunset over Lake Tamblyn

Dinner with Cajsa and David

Winterfest celebrations on Lake Tamblyn.

Reach A Higher Ground

That Reveals The Realm

Under Your Might

White Kingdom Of Frost And Ice

Sweater Weather

Greetings from Canada!

Last week has been full of sunshine and cold weather, and the temperature has been as low as -30 C, But of course, as a Finn I really don't give a shit about the cold ;)

By the way, Canada beat Russia in the U20 Ice Hockey finals and became the new world champion. Go Canada!

My first actual week as a student in Lakehead University has almost reached it's end, and here's a quick recap of what I've been doing.

The first week has mostly been getting to know the course outlines and how the school's internet systems work. For some reason I wasn't visible on any courses on Monday, but luckily it was easily fixed by dropping by the registration office. After that I also got my student card, which is used for various tasks such as identification, school gym, library and you can also buy a bus stamp to use on the card.

A view of the Agora, which serves as the main lounge for the university and most of the offices are located here.

I chose five courses, of which I decided to drop one (since the lectures were at 7 PM to 10 PM on Tuesday nights, no thanks!) and it was an elective course anyway. I also replaced one of the courses with something which is more relevant to my curriculum in Finland. So far the courses seem really good! My courses for the semester are Canadian Business Environment, Business Intelligence, Human Resource Planning and Business Presentations.

I was really surprised how deep into the topics the professors go into, and they really know the subjects. Textbooks are, pardon my french, fucking expensive. A new textbook usually retails for 100-200 dollars (that's around 70-150 €) and even the used ones, if you manage to find one, are quite expensive. Luckily I ended up not having to buy any of them, since the teachers had extra copies reserved for exchange students and I found one of the books as a PDF-file.

Took a photo while doing my homework at the university. Not a bad view, eh?

As I only have four courses in my schedule, it is quite easy, and for example my Fridays are totally free. On the other hand the amount of individual work is quite a lot bigger from which I'm used to in Finland, so it's good to have enough time off.

There's a lot of these fellas running around campus. I never have to walk to school alone when I have some little Bambies with me!

On Tuesday we went to The Outpost, which is a bar/nightclub located in the campus, with my roommate and his friend. There's a theme for every day: the best days are Tankard Tuesdays (when you can buy a 32 oz, or 1 L tankard of beer for 6,75 $, which is less than five euros) and Thursdays when there's a club night. Mondays are wing nights and Saturdays are country nights with live country music. The domestic beer here in Canada is not too bad, and to be honest it's not too different from US beer such as Budweiser, which is popular in Canada as well. Pricing of alcohol is a bit cheaper than in Finland, especially when it comes to bars.

On Friday I went to the international student orientation held by the LU International Office. We had a chance to meet up with other international students and various organizations gave us a lot of information about the local services and such. We also had a little competition, from which I managed to get a ticket to the VIP booth in a hockey game next Saturday against the UQTR Patriotes. I hope we do well! There's a game on Friday as well, and we're going to see that as well.

The orientation also included a city tour in an old-fashioned School Bus, and I managed to take a couple of pictures from the trip as well. Take a look at them below!

Why don't we have buses like this in Finland? They're so cute :D

The LU School of Law. Looks like Hogwarts to me.

Some older houses located in the most expensive area of the town.

A church. It's old. I don't know its name :(

On Saturday morning I went to do some Yoga. Yes, I voluntarily went to a Yoga class. And it was really lots of fun, and a totally new experience for me! After 1,5 hours of connecting to the earth and the heaven and stretching myself into different positions and releasing my inner energies and all that other yoga stuff, I went and did a workout at the school gym, which is by the way quite nice! The machines are of course a bit old, but they all work properly, and since I'm a morning-person, I was relieved to find out that the gym opens at 6 AM on weekdays! I'll try to get some photos from there at some point as well. There's also a swimming pool and a climbing wall at the gym, both of which I'm going to try out soon. The amount of sports and recreation available at LU is really amazing, and it's something that I wish the Finnish Universities had as well!

Me in a proper Yoga attire, happy as ever!

In conclusion it's been a great week. Despite the cold weather I've had some great new experiences, met new people and learned lots of new stuff! I'm looking forward to coming events such as the Chinese New Year, winter camping trip, skiing trip to Loch Lomond, dog sled riding and of course countless nights of drinking beer and having a good time!

As always, thanks for reading, and see you next week!

Yours truly,

Teemu

Täällä, tänään.

Vai nyt?

Year Zero

Dear internet,

Happy new year! I know it's a bit late, but anyway; 2014 has come to its end, and what a great year it was! Here's a list of some great things that happened;

- I had some great time with my friends and family at various events; for example, the Qstock-festival in Oulu, Sonisphere-festival in Helsinki, Sotkamon Syke-festival in Sotkamo, skiing trip to Ukkohalla and visiting Linnanmäki and Korkeasaari. My friends also threw me a wonderful send-off party before I left for exchange!
- I finished my internship and eventually got employed by Manninen Nutraceuticals Oy, and the seven-or-so months that I spent working at the company have been extremely fun, interesting and educative!
- Great things happened in the family as well: my brother had a baby girl (whose godfather I became, yay!) and my little sister graduated and became an Ylioppilas.
- Also, I finally managed to begin writing a blog! I've been considering the idea for a long time now, and finally I got the initiative I needed.
- And last but definitely not least - I scored a position as an exchange student in Lakehead University and traveled to the other side of the world, all the way to the Great White North, beginning an adventure that might very well become the best experience I've ever had - or ever will!
- Bonus: yesterday evening I was just chilling in my dorm, when suddenly two deers - yes, actual, wild deers - casually strolled by my window. That's some solid "Only in Canada" -shit right there!

I also met some awesome new people on the way and had the chance to rekindle some older friendships as well. I would like to thank every single one of you for making 2014 perhaps the best year of my life so far. Thanks for being awesome! Let's make 2015 even better than last year!

By the way: Thunder Bay is still awesome. I'm doing quite well and fortunately getting over jet-lag (which is quite annoying by the way) and I'm of course quite excited about next week already, when school begins. Today I went for a walk in downtown area and visited the Intercity Shopping Centre as well, which is the largest shopping mall in the city. 

From now on I'll be posting a bit less frequently, probably every Friday, so see you again in a week!

I'm also eating healthy! Wendy's Double Baconator with Poutine. Delicious calories!

"The Hangar", a large fitness centre for LU students.
The gym, which I hopefully get to try out on Monday, is on the left side.

A small stream running by the University. Notice the "No Fishing!" -sign on the left
 - what a disappointment! I was hoping to catch my meal from there :(

As always: thanks for reading!

Yours sincerely,

Teemu

Count down together now
and say the words that you heard:
- - Welcome Year Zero!

First day in Thunder Bay

Dear internet,

I have finally arrived to my destination. The trip began on monday at 14:20 UTC +2 at Helsini-Vantaa airport. My first destination was the Keflavik airport in Reykjavik, Iceland. The check-in line at the airport was enormous but luckily I had done the self-service internet-check-in the previous day, and I didn't have to wait at all but instead checked my baggage in immediately. The connection from Reykjavik left almost immediately, and the flight towards Canada could begin.

Iceland Air operates with brand new Boeing Jumbojets, which are quite modern and comfortable. The flight took a bit less than three hours, and during that time I watched through three movies, one of them which was the infamous The Interview, in which American journalists assassinate the North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. The movie was hilarious, and I suggest you take a look at it! I also met a Swedish exchange-student during the flight, who is going to study for the winter in Toronto. We exchanged contact information, and in case I decide to visit Toronto at some point, I have a contact over there as well. 

After landing at the Toronto Pearson International airport I checked myself in for the connecting flight to Thunder Bay, my final destination. So far everything had been very smooth and easy. However, when I was checking the airport screens my connection, I noticed that the flight had been delayed by almost three hours. Luckily I had packed a few books and magazines into my carry-on baggage and even though the wait was over six hours, it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. I also managed to squeeze in about an hour of sleep at the airport. I also exchanged some money at the airport. One Canadian Dollar (CAD, $) equals around 0,6 euros.

Even the screen says that my flight is retarded.

Canadian dollar bills. They are really huge and barely fit my wallet! The coins available are 1 c (penny), 5 c (nickel), 10 c (dime), 25 c (quarter), 1 $ (loonie) and 2 $ (toonie)

At around 01:00 AM UTC -5 (the time difference between Finland and Canada is 7 hours) the journey on a Westjet Encore -operated Bombardier Q-series (an older rotor-plane) could begin. I arrived at the Thunder Bay airport at around 03:00 AM and called the LU (Lakehead University) international adviser, who then picked me up and took me to my dormitories. At 4 AM, after around 22 hours of traveling, I finally went to sleep.

My room. Small, but comfy!

Kitchen and living room of the dormitory. The dorm is shared by four people.

The dormitory itself is located just a couple of hundred of meters away from the university, and it has all the necessary appliances and the rooms are quite modern. There are two bathrooms, one of which has a bathtub and a storage room for cleaning equipment etc. The fridge is big enough and there's a huge freezer next to it as well. All of my roommates are away at the moment, and the university area is almost empty because of the holidays. The first school event is the campus tour on next Saturday, January 3rd.

The next morning I woke up at around 09:30, took a shower and headed towards downtown. The sun was already up (the day is quite a bit longer here than in Finland!) and the temperature was about -20c. The walk to the downtown area takes around 20 minutes and most of the shops are located at the same street called Memorial Ave. I first shopped for groceries at the Real Canadian Superstore (what a great name, huh?) and then went to the Future Shop (an equivalent to the Finnish Gigantti-chain) to buy an electricity converter and a WiFi-station for my dorm. All my batteries were dead at this point, so unfortunately I couldn't take too many pictures at this time. In retrospective it would have been smarter to already buy at least the converter back in Finland, although the prices here are a bit cheaper. On the trip I also had a meal at A&W, a local fast-food chain serving burgers, fries, onion rings etc. The meal was affordable and good. I especially loved the A&W's root beer that the salesperson recommended for me. After the meal I also had a coffee at Starbucks and found out that my name is probably quite hard to pronounce, as my cup said Deamu :)

Talking about pricing, the price-level in Canada is generally a bit cheaper than in Finland, depending on the products. Food is definetly cheaper, and especially stuff like soft drinks are dirt-cheap. A 12-pack of soda cans costs around 3,5 $, which is less than 2,5 euros. The picture below shows the groceries and other stuff I bought on my first trip, and the total sum was about 30 $, which is a bit over 20 euros.

The yellow no-name products are the cheapest ones available, and they are the Canadian equivalent to brands in Finland such as ES, Pirkka and Rainbow. The A&W's Root Beer shown in the picture quickly became my favorite soft drink.

A Reese's peanut butter cup. These things are awesome!

The selection at grocery stores is really good, and you can find for example ready-cut salads at very cheap prices. The 400 gram packages shown in the picture cost about 1,5 $ and there are lots of alternative sizes and types of mixes available. Canadians seem to like their food easy, and the range of ready-cooked products is huge. One curious thing about Canadian shops is that even though the prices are of course displayed at the shelves, a harmonized sales tax, HST, is added at the counter. I'ts quite difficult at first to try to make out the price of the product; I automatically convert every price to euros in my brain by taking about one thirds of it off, and then I have to remember to add the 13% tax as well. The amount of HST may also be different in other provinces. I really have no idea why a system like this is used instead of a VAT system like in most other economies.

The main university building. As you see, there's not a lot of snow, which is uncommon at this time of the year.

So far Canada has been awesome. The city is really homely and the people are very kind and open. I was almost shocked when a regular grocery store clerk casually asked me how my day was, and after she heard I will be studying at the university, she started telling me about her daughter who is also a student. In Finland you generally survive an encounter with a salesperson with one word, kiitos (thank you) and because I'm used to this, all the small-talk seemed really weird at first, but when you think of it, its really great. This is how things should be! I also noticed that people don't walk around that much around here, and most roads don't even have a sidewalk! People use buses and cars to drive around, and during my shopping trip I only saw like four pedestrians and one cyclist!

This concludes my post for this time. I will have new one for you tomorrow where I'll be going through all I've done in 2014, and what to expect from 2015. As always, thanks for reading! If you want to ask me anything you can leave a message for me at my Facebook!

Yours sincerely,

Teemu

Don't stop me now,

I'm having such a good time

I'm having a ball!

It's time

Dear Internet,

The "D-Day" for my great journey is finally upon us. In just a couple of hours I will already be sitting in a Boeing Jumbojet and on my way towards Canada. This post will be my last from Finland in a while. Here's just a few photos for you:

My hobo/deadbeat/homeless-person-inspired travel look! Fashionable, eh?

Carry-on back-bag. Lil' Ezio's gonna see the world too!

"Packing is so much fun" - No one ever

Yesterday I traveled to Vantaa by train (which was about 30 minutes late, thanks Obama!) to stay at my friend's place overnight, and he agreed to take me to the airport as well, sparing me from an expensive cab-ride. Thanks Miika! At the moment I am loading my laptop full of movies and series to keep myself occupied during the 15 or-so hours trip that's ahead of me.

The next post will be published in a couple of days, straight from Canada!

Yours sincerely,

Teemu

It's time we begin,

Isn't it?

Stay a while and listen!

Well hello there, reader! It seems that you have stumbled upon my blog. I suppose it would be appropriate to introduce myself and what this blog is about.

Please, stay a while and listen.

My name is Teemu and I am a twenty-two-year-old student from Oulu, northern Finland. My blog, titled The Great Escape: A Canadian Adventure will be a series of stories, tales and photographs describing my everyday life in Thunder Bay, Canada and my exchange period in Lakehead University. I will be staying in Canada from the end of 2014 to at least the end of April in 2015, when the final exams are held.

The application process for the exchange program began in early 2014. For some time I had been trying to decide between different options of universities and countries. My initial plan was to travel as far away as possible; sure, Europe has its fair share of interesting countries with high-level universities and numerous places of interest, but I have plans to travel through Europe at some point of my life anyway, and it could wait. So I began my search for countries and that are more remote and which I would not likely travel to otherwise; South Korea, Japan, USA and Canada, to mention a few. A couple of my classmates were already applying for the South Korean university, and as I didn't want to compete, I decided that Canada would be my first choice.

As every exchange student knows, the amount of bureaucracy and paperwork can be quite intimidating; just when you thought you'd filled out the last necessary form, you'd get ten more and most of the time you have to get your paperwork signed and scanned as well. While filling out the seemingly endless stream of paperwork and forms can get very annoying, I understand that it's necessary and I appreciate how helpful the staff of both my home university (Oulu University of Applied Sciences, School of Business and Information Management) and Lakehead University in Canada were in helping me with the preparations.

Traveling to Canada itself is quite easy. As a Finnish citizen no Visa is needed if your stay is less than 6 months and the only documents necessary are the original letter of acceptance from the university and of course a valid passport. The prices of flight tickets from Helsinki to Thunder Bay vary from around 350 € to over a thousand euros. I managed to purchase my tickets well in advance, and my ticket prices were quite cheap. The journey can take from 13 to 20-30 hours depending on the flight schedule, and while it can be tiresome, it's nothing nobody could handle. However, be wary of flights that touch down on U.S soil; if you don't have a ticket back home at the time you are boarding the plane, you will not be taken on the flight. Even if you have a connecting flight to Canada or any other country straight away, the U.S immigration laws dictate that you can't board the plane. Thanks Obama. Fortunately Iceland Air offers flights from Helsinki through Reykjavik to Toronto.

I have to apologize for the dullness of my first post. The future posts will include more interesting tales and of course photos. I actually bought the new Nokia Lumia 1020 phone, which is famous of it's "monster camera" to better document my adventure with hundreds of photographs! My initial plan is to write a new post at least once a week and keep them quite brief to make it easier for you to read.

As you can see, two full-grown men fit under the towel! Also, totally not gay. 

I managed to include at least a few pictures in this post! The first one is a photo of me and my friend Joni in our last Saturday's pre-christmas/housewarming/going-away party. My friends gave me an awesome, custom-made Tom of Finland towel, that is one of it's kind! So cool! I will surely miss my friends and family during my trip, but I am also certain that the next four months will probably be the best four months of my life! The photo below is pretty much my expectations about the trip. As you can see, I am quite skilled with Paint (Photoshop is for pussies!)

No comment.

I will arrive in Canada next Tuesday 30.12 at around midnight, and I will try to update my blog as soon as possible. You will probably hear more from me by new year's eve at the latest!

Thank you for reading and enjoy your holidays!

ps. You can also follow me on Instagram @teemuhaat, or check http://instagram.com/teemuhaat/!

Man the oars!

Out to the seas!

Bid farewell and say goodbye!

Because gentlemen, we are heading home!

Turisas - The Great Escape