First steps in Varkaus

Amandine and I on our way to Finland

Hello, we finally arrived in Varkaus the 18th of January! We were at Varkaus airport at  7:30 pm and it was a very long day. We left from Nice at around 6 am and we had two layovers, one in Amsterdam for one hour and one in Helsinki for about four hours! We were both exhausted but also excited to be in Finland. At the arrival in Varkaus, two of our teachers were waiting for us (the airport is 30 minutes away from the university by car), the temperature was -29°C, so no need to say it was really cold, we were frozen! The hair in our nose got hard and one of the cars of our teachers broke down because of the cold (even if in Finland, they have free power that they can use for their cars on the parking lots), we were in Finland!

I still don't know why two teachers came to pick us up, but anyway we left with the car of Mr. Salkinoja (the car almost broke down too on the way to our dormirtory). We arrived around 8:30 pm and some French students were waiting for us, they explained some things about the life here and then we met a spanish boy and a finnish girl, it was fun. We will explain later how the life on the campus is.

Outdoor studies

During our trip, we are obviously going to study at the university but we're also going to investigate about Finland, we chose to study:

• Finnish movies and/or literature

Writers like Arto Paasilinna or Kari Hotakainen are worldy famous and we hope to discover them and many others. Besides movies can show a lot of the history of a country. So we expect to find interesting Finnish movies and analyze them to understand more things of Finland.

• Activities of Finnish youth

Young Scandinavian people are known  to be very good at languages and we would like to know how they are raised, what makes them having a different mind and a different education, that's why we would like to know what activities in general they're doing, what sports, what activities at home...

• Enterprises and the way they consider the environment

Varkaus is surrounded by forests, hence it is skilled in forestry and paper milling, energy production and high technology. Besides, Varkaus has got an experimental biodiesel plant and a lithium battery factory that started production in 2011. We will try to compare their organisation with the french one and we will try to understand their point of view about the environment.

• Finnish way of life

Living in a foreign country is always complicated and we will have to understand how Finnish people live, how they think...

Of course this is just the beginning of our researchs and these will  probably slightly change.
Anyway, we are very excited to discover Finland and Finnish people.

Finland, Varkaus, Savonia

FINLAND

Finland is a Scandinavian country located in the north of Europe, here is some basic information about it:

Capital: Helsinki

Population: 5.3 Million

Total area: 338 000 km²

Official language: Finnish

Currency: Euro since 1999

Year of UE entry: 1995

Schengen area: Member since 1996

As seen on the picture, Finland is a country full of lakes and famous for its unspoiled nature, wonderful landscapes and the northern lights. It is also known for the terrible weather! Indeed, during the winter, the sun may show up to only a few hours a day, and the temperature often reaches -20°C.

VARKAUS

Varkaus is a small city, in the mid-east region of Finland, located 320 kilometers away from Helsinki. There are only 23,000 inhabitants and it is possible to reach Helsinki by plane (1 hour long) or by train (around 3 hours). It is surrounded by lakes and forests. We've heard you would be bored in Varkaus after awhile because it is a small city with few activities. Our hopes are also to discover Finnish food like some good reindeer meat.

SAVONIA UNIVERSITY

Savonia University of Applied Sciences is one of the largest universities of Applied Sciences in Finland. Savonia UAS campuses are located in three cities in eastern Finland: Kuopio, Varkaus and Iisalmi and there are about 6,300 students amongst the three campuses.
We are going to study there for 13 weeks and we will have theses take the following classes:

• Introduction to Manufacturing Technology and Work safety
• Project Work
• Process Technology
• Intercultural Business English

Our dormitory will be 300 meters away from the university and we will both have 4 roommates.

Sources: europa.eu , varkaus.fi , portal.savonia.fi

Introduction

Hello and welcome to Amandine and Thomas' blog! We are two French students from ESAIP in Grasse and we're going to study abroad in Varkaus, Finlande. This blog is going to follow us for a bit more than three months during our trip to Suomi (the Finnish name for Finland) and we will often share our feedback about our new life with all of you.