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Country comparison

I found a website with a very interesting comparison between any country and Finland, as I´m Spanish I chose Spain to see how different we are, in general terms, in these six points: power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, long term orientation and indulgence.  Power distance:  the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organisations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally. Individualism: t he degree of interdependence a society maintains among its members. Masculinity: t he fundamental issue here is what motivates people, wanting to be the best (Masculine) or liking what you do (Feminine). Uncertainty avoidance: t he extent to which the members of a culture feel threatened by ambiguous or unknown situations and have created beliefs and institutions that try to avoid these. Long term orientation:  h ow every society has to maintain some links with its own past while dealing with the challenges of the
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The end of the Erasmus

I have more days here in Turku, but a lot of people started leaving and it´s sad because you realize that the end is coming, and we have to don´t waste our last month (less than one month..) here, I have a lot of things that I want to do before leaving so I´m doing a list with one friend to don´t miss anything. In one hand I want to go home because I miss my family, friends, the good weather (the sun mostly), and the food of course, also the lifestyle, but...on the other hand I don´t want to leave at all!! Here I can live my life, I met new people, I´ve learnt about other cultures, other meals, other customs, and I am happy here, I know I will miss a lot of things when I go home. I will miss the friends I made here, of course, I will miss Unica restaurants (at home I have to cook every day), I will miss the landscapes and the peace you can feel here, I will miss the safety, I will miss my room and the city, and being discovering and travelling.. I have one more trip before leaving, I´m

Shoe tree

This post is maybe not that interesting but for me was something which surprised me. I don´t remember if I said it before but here I live in Student Village west, is a residential place for students, there are different buildings with letters and numbers and three floors in each building (at least in the zone where I live); so there are 12 rooms per floor and one common kitchen for them. We have our private room with a private bathroom, so it´s really good that point. I live in one of the buildings of the "exchange students buildings" so most of the things happen here, like the parties. In the middle of the four 3 buildings (3A, 3B, 3C and 3D) there is one big tree, in that tree, there are a lot of boots, shoes, trainers from the exchange students who were living here. I don´t know how it started but it´s like leave something from yourself "forever" here. In winter those shoes are covered by snow and now they are in the sun, I don´t know, for me, it´s a fun fact. So

Vappu II

Today I want to talk about the Vappu day because now I lived the experience. It was a wonderful day, everyone was in the streets and Turku was very crowded. The 30th of May is celebrated this 'party', but it´s also funny because is not just university people, but also families and old people. They were wearing a white cap, they get this cup when they graduated at university, and since year every year they wear it on this day and the 1st of May, and they feel very proud wearing it. It was very impressive seeing the old people with their old caps. In the morning there´s free punch at university (University of Turku mostly) and there are different stands from different organizations or degrees offering this punch (I have to say that one of them were really good, but others...), you only have to take your own cup and then you can take punch as much as you want. It´s a very good way to start the day. Also, there was a band playing some music and free balloons and some staff. After

Vappu

Vappu is the most important student party in Turku (and in Finland, I think), the main day is the first of May, but this week there were a lot of events going on. And the best part is the weather because there was incredible weather, so everything was better. Also, I was sad because at least two events were cancelled, and one of them was really interesting for me, even my tutor had suggested it :( So, this week I have Lost in Turku (last post), then this event which was cancelled, but I cooked tortilla with some friends and then we went to play pool, another day we went to the river just to drink and chill and it was really nice, there was an attraction park also (I didn´t have entrance) but we went to see how it was and it was very crowded and after that I went to a concert of Finnish bands and then I went out. There is also an event today and then next week is coming with a lot of parties and the Vappu day! Finally people are in the streets!!

Lost in Turku

Lost in Turku was the last event I did for my 'Get Finternational' course and it was one of the funniest events I have done in this course. We had to form a team and then we had to find 10 points painted in a paper map and we had to do an activity at each point. They were activities related to the finnish culture mostly. I found it very interesting because also people who are not studying the course could go with us. We were a team of six and we really had fun. Finally, you are a bit tired because it´s four hours walking all the time but it was a good experience. I learned new things in some of the points and it was very dynamic. I really liked that in some points there were candies or pastry, it was very nice considering that it was the time for lunch (at least for me). I think I wouldn´t change anything of the activity, it´s good to try to understand a paper map nowadays again, feeling lost in the city you had been living for 4 months. And also the activities related to Fin

Stockholm

Most of the Finnish people recommended me to visit Stockholm, so this Easter I had a visit from a friend from Spain and we decided to visit it with two more friends from the Erasmus. We were there on Thursday morning and we came back on Sunday morning, but it was time enough to see the most important things. We visited four of the 14 islands that Stockholm has, and we are totally in love with the city. It´s a very lively city (compared with Turku there is a big difference) with a lot of beautiful buildings, it´s bigger than I thought and I think it´s a place you can visit more than once and you´ll always see new things. There are also a lot of parks and places to have a picnic or just chill with your friends. The only thing I don´t like about it it´s that it´s very very expensive, and also they use a different currency so it´s difficult to calculate some times how much are you paying and also I had a fee when I paid with the card. We also did a free tour in Spanish and I have to say