My home in Espoo

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So here's my home. I'm living in Espoo which is a smaller city than Helsinki, but still 250 000 people. Despite the amount of people, the city has a rustic feel. Most (maybe all?) people live in apartments so there are dense apartment buildings surrounded by treed areas. The apartment I live in is across the street from a public beach which is on the Gulf of Finland off the Baltic Sea. There's a beautiful view and the beach looks like it's a party place in the summer. The area is full of birch and redpine trees and and reminds me a lot of Nolalu. For some reason I have not quite figured out there are people everywhere walking around with ski poles as though they're skiing. I don't know whether it's a normal thing here or they're just waiting for snow so they can put on the skiis too! Note the position of the sun in the pictures of my neighbourhood... this is not the evening, this is noon! This is the height of daylight here in the winter, it gets light around 9 and dark around 3. The days will be getting longer slowly until the summer when we'll have 20 hours of sunlight.

I visited the school a few times to register and have orientation. The main building was designed by Alvar Aalto and houses the main library as well as the architecture building. International students are located in the second architecture building along with the metal and wood shops. This building is a lot newer and as you'll see in the pictures, brightly coloured inside the stairwells. The buildings were quite empty so far because everyone's on holiday still, but I'm sure it'll be busy before long. There's a large architecture library which has about 10 times the architecture books as Carleton's. Studio starts tomorrow for me so I'm sure I'll be busy now for the rest of the term.

I'm planning to save my Saturdays for sightseing and picture taking so I'll probably do a weekly update from now on to show you all what I'm up to. Hope everyone's doing well at home or abroad... stay tuned for more excitement from Finland!

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Photos

Arkkitehtuuri
Entrance to the architecture building. note the bright stairwells.

Comments

[mom and dad]

looks like you are camping
Where do we park the camper?

[Liz and Lar]

Akknollegmentti from Nolalu
Hi, Jessie. Thanks for sharing your adventure with us via the blog. Glad to read you survived the "flu flight". Nothing worse than being sick on an airplane. Looks like you're at the start of a great year. Lar says keep him "posted" on the things that make you beam. The pics are great. Cheers, Liz and Lar.

[Laura]

Where's the snow?
Shouldn't there be snow? I think the ski poles are for the mountain walks (today's walking sticks). Be careful - if they invite you on a walk they are very serious about it and climb like mountain goats.