paper or plastic?

This first week in Finland has been extremely busy between running errands and trying to get acclimated to the cold, dry weather. Every morning we attend orientation sessions where various campus representatives, such as Student Health and IT, come and give a presentation; sometimes they’re helpful and sometimes they’re not. We normally eat lunch in one of the Cafeterias where the student discount gets you lunch (salad, bread, entrée and drink) for 2,60€, quite a deal. Afterwards we either have more lectures or our tutor, Laura, takes us around town to run errands.

I have to say, we couldn’t have made it this far without Laura. She has been our guide and go-to person for every question we have. We’ve gone to KOAS to sign our lease, the bank to open an account (a very complicated process), dna to buy prepaid cell phones, the travel center to purchase bus passes, and various offices around the University (a solid 20 minute walk between the 3 different campuses) to pay student fees and complete paperwork. We also went grocery shopping Wednesday afternoon and that was an ordeal. Most days by around 4:00 (when the sun goes down) we’re ready to eat dinner and go to bed (this typically results in us waking up around 4 am, ready to go), but on Wednesday we went to the market to stock up on groceries. Jaime and I made our list ahead of time, but as soon as we stepped in the store we had to hand it over to Laura. Jaime and I would wander up and down the aisles until we reached a section we recognized, take milk, for example. We would consult our list and see that we wanted either half percent or skim milk. Laura would then explain about the various types of milk and Jaime and I would make our selection. Repeat process for everything on our page-long list, meaning around 50 items. By the end of the trip Jaime and I were totally exhausted and just ready to crash, having both woken up at 5 that morning, walked through the snow for half an hour to campus at 8:30, sat through the orientation sessions, walked from the Mattilanniemi campus to the City Center, and finally gone to the store, but we still had a 15 minute hike in the -15°C weather back to our flat. This is all uphill. A steep hill. But the trip was a success as I was able to find pepper and this morning when I made scrambled eggs they were quite tasty.