Hills! Hills everywhere!

Why hello there everyone! I assume you long to hear about my great adventures in the UK for the past month?

Well then, let me treat you with a few stories from Scotland and lake district!

We visited Edinburgh with the Interlink (community for international students) group at the end of October. It was a fun, walk filled and surprisingly expensive trip to the heart of Scotland. We stayed there for two days and walked around the city for hours while not visiting any paid tourist attractions.

 I took a few photos of architecture I thought I could use in my school work. Needless to say I haven't utilized them at all. ;)

 The buildings are pretty old in Edinburgh and our hostel's window was ridicilous. Even when closed you could get a cable under it.

 

Paid Edinburgh Castle, "Totally not worth it!" said the guy with the camera to the left. As such we only had a peek to its front yard.

The view from the yard was nice though.

 

Ditto

 

 

A park we crossed. There was some weird yoga (?) session in front of the museum at the end of that road where people laid on the street without shoes or socks while somebody was yelling at them with a megaphone. There was also a group of orange shirted jolly guys who spontaneously singed "Hakuna matata"!

 

The Edinburgh castle surroundings was probably the most real and authentic area of Scotland! We saw many real medieval plastic tools and even William Wallace wanted to take pictures with people. Apparently he had been doing that at least for a year according to my friend who visited Edinburgh a year back so I guess William gets paid decently. After walking around the town for a day we had a small halloween party at the hostel where people continued to a club. I almost went with them but turned back at the last minute after hearing that I needed to both pay and have a partner to get in. Afterwards I heard there was a real golden shower in the club at some point which made me smirk and feel better about not going there.

 

Someone is determined to not let old trees fall. <3

 

On the day after we went hiking on hills next to Edinburgh. Climbing hills for several kilometers is all fun and dandy but I hate the fact that you sweat buckets. Note to self: always wear a tank top and shorts when hiking. No matter what time of the year it is. I wore my normal shoes which caused a nasty strain to my legs but the view from the hill was worth it. 

 

 

 

 

What you can see: me standing on a hillside. What you can't see: 3 litres of sweat covering my T shirt.

After getting back down we went to eat some delicious but not so healthy food at the local pub and bought some damn expensive fudge. We left back to Middlesbrough at sunset.

 

 Part of our group after conquering the Edinburgh's largest (I think?) hill.

Next week I participated in horror society's halloween pub crawl where we were supposed to dress as zombies. I tried to use my fake scar only to discover that "self adhesive" means two small pieces of very, very weak tape that couldn't hold a piece of paper on the wall let alone much heavier piece of plastic on my neck. Luckily the face paints worked as intended and to better fit in I ripped my shirt to look more like a zombie. Others had bought cheap white T's but that didn't cross my mind so I just destroyed my perfectly good T-shirt.

Trip to lake district is the most recent trip I've been to. The name was misleading. It wasn't about lakes but large hills and hiking! The hill range we walked on was shaped like a horseshoe and the highest point was about 800 meters. The views were pretty spectacular.

 I'm not fat! I just happened to have ton of stuff in my pockets!

 It wasn't too windy at the top. I can imagine myself staying there. ;)

 Seeing your shadow cast on a cloud with a rainbow around it is pretty awesome. :)

 

 

 This is like from Lord of the Rings!

Everybody was high.

 We didn't manage to get back before the sunset. Let me tell you, descenting a high hill in the dark is actually pretty scary. There was some difficult terrain and high drops here and there. This particular picture was taken after we got down the actual hill and was lighted by my camera's flash. We had only one small flashlight with us.

Our trip back home was delayed by good 2 hours because our tyre broke on our way back.

 

Apart from these few events I haven't been doing much. I've generally just worked my ass off (while still lagging behind). The deadline for our huge assignments is closing in quickly and I still have so much work to do that it's not even funny. After October I decided not to do any school work at home since it was driving me insane. I had only like 1 or 2 hours of free time each day with the old "work at school & work at home"- setup and the work was very inefficient. Now on my average weekday I drag my lazy ass to school around 10:30 and leave about 21:00. This way I get much more work done and I have about 6 hours of free time every night.

I am disappointed in myself for reverting back to the same behavior I had in Finland, which is to work when you need to and sit quietly in your room in your free time. I am way more active than in Finland but I still get pissed when I hear how active and super duper extra fun student life is because I feel like I'm missing out, but if I participate in things I rarely enjoy them. I am currently thinking about changing apartment. I feel like an outsider in my current flat with 4 Chinese flatmates. :(

I also turned 22 a few weeks ago. I feel so old... they don't even ask my ID in the pubs anymore. Not every time at least. One time the barkeeper didn't accept my Finnish ID and asked me to leave. He said I looked like 19 which was probably just an educated guess instead of honest opinion. Improvement! Guys in Finland say I look like 14. :3

I guess that is all. This "quick blog update" turned into a three hour monster update and I want to get going now. Cya later ya'll!

Interlink Events & School Work

Hello again every one of you on the other side of the screen! It is time for another update after a good while!

Things here in the UK have been OK so far. Okay, maybe I slacked a little bit during the first week at the school but apart from that the BBQ's and next to free trips have been nice. I signed up for a few societies here in the uni in order to get to know more people and to see more places. First and foremost is the Interlink community (ran by an incredibly fast speaking French guy) that arranges different parties, trips and whatnot for international students. Naturally I don't have time to attend to all of them (there's something going on almost every other day) but the ones I've been to so far have been great. We had a barbeque two weeks ago during the last sunny and warm day of the autumn. We had some great grilled cheese with chicken and sauce while just laying on a grass in a sunshine of 23 or so celsius. Last week we went to Whitby for a day long trip. It was the first time I felt a little cold but I blame the strong wind and me not having gloves with me. Whitby is a cute little town built in the middle of hills and we had some of the World's best fish'n chips there!

 BBQ (see the tiny grill around the middle of the picture!)

 A nice bridge (forgot its name...) crossing the river that flows past our apartment.

 A view next to our student accomodation.

 Ditto.

 Pretty good view over Whitby.

 It was windy in there!

Many of Whitby photos are in the Facebook, so I don't bother reuploading them here.

The school started very slowly. During the first week I had only like three lectures each lasting about an hour. We were simply given introductions to the courses and  descriptions of what we need to do. I presumed that the school would get more intensive the week after but who am I kidding! My final timetable shows that I have only 8 hours of school per week. On Wednesday, Thursdays and Fridays. I have a long weekend. We have done a lot of independent studies in Kajaani UoAS, but the studies here are still very different from those because we work alone instead of teams. So far I've found it difficult to do the required amount of work at home and I don't really feel like going to school to work because I have no idea which classrooms are available, on which days and for how long and I don't want to jump between rooms.

About the courses and tasks themselves: We have three different courses that last until Christmas: Character Production for Games, Environment Production for Games and Mechanical Asset Creation for Games. We need to create a high quality 3D asset for each of these courses. The environment production course will probably end up being a bitch for me because we have to learn UDK in the process as well so I can't just focus on the asset itself... The production of character and mechanical assets suit me much better. Those two courses are combined so that we have to design some kind of mechanical asset and an operator for it. I am going for some kind of WW1 era doctor/inventor character with a large tank/steam engine/car hybrid vehicle. We have 10 000 polygons to use for each.

  The very first quick concepts of the vehicle I was thinking of. I have more of those pencil drawn doodle pages but I'm ashamed of them so you have to do with that one. D:

  

We have an online forum where we have to keep a diary about our progress, watch others' works and give them feedback. From a social point of view I am disappointed that I study with the second year students because they all know each other very well already so I'm just working silently alone all the time since they don't seem very interested in talking to me about anything even if I open a conversation. :/ 

Oh yeah! And I checked my weight yesterday while at the gym and for the first time in 4-6 years I weight under 80 kg! That called for a celebration so I bought chocolate milk, eggs and bacon!

That's all I can think of for now. Goodbye for now!

24.9. - 28.9.2011

Helloooo!

I have soon spent one whole week in Britain and this post contains some of my experiences, overall feelings and events we've had.

It's been warm and sunny all week. People asked me to sit in the middle of them so that my skin could reflect the sunlight to all of them.

 We spent the last weekend with different kinds of enrollments and official university stuff (which still continues). Freshers (2 week long welcoming event) for the first year students started on Sunday. During daytime students can pick up different leaflets and vouchers from the student union building in the middle of the campus which acts as the central hub for freshers. My best catch so far has been a free pizza and a goodie bag with a slinky and some candies inside. :) During nighttime there is a party of some sort for (at least) the next two weeks. I was kinda gullible and bought a relatively expensive freshers pass which would grant me access to all of those parties. Two days after I bought it I realized that I would probably attend to only two or three of those 14 events. I tried to stay in one of the fresher parties on Tuesday to get my money's worth but eventually I ended up leaving early.

I've been feeling down a few times this week. Those moments are usually closely connected to the parties. I constantly feel like I should attend to them or else I'm not a good student and I just waste my time but whenever I go to fresher parties I just want to get out of them ASAP. This has made me gloomy a few times. I feel guilty for not liking the parties despite the massive hype they receive. Luckily I've found out that there's a lot of other kinds of activities here as well and I'm currently signing up to them. In addition I'm certain that the hypnotist and comedy club that are part of the freshers' nightly events will be great.

Few pictures from the university campus:

 It was a really sunny day! Again!

 And again!

And again!

We've been walking around the town quite a bit and it seems pretty nice. I haven't gone outside the central town yet but I'll do that in time. The shops close damn early which is my biggest complaint but apart from that everything seems nice and peaceful.

I still have only one flatmate in my apartment. At least I've met him now. The other 5 are either older students whose studies start later, or students of another university altogether. I'm really glad I didn't go and buy any kitchen utensils, because this student apartment's trash cans hide a beautiful treasure behind them! Old tenants can apparently leave any stuff they don't want to take with them behind the trash cans and the new ones can freely pick up whatever they want from there. I've snatched quite a bit of plates already for myself as well as for future flatmates and today I took a frying pan, kettle and some utensils. I don't even need to clean them myself. Just throw them into the washing machine and set the program to "intensive". <3

It's beautiful!

 Yes, they're pretty clean. ;)

 The electronic stuff is not as clean though. I haven't taken any of those yet.

The kettles and frying pans look much nicer on the "right" side.

The common room is much cleaner now than it was a week ago. Still a bit dirty IMO but good enough for pictures. :)

 View from our common room.

 Our actual course hasn't started yet so we haven't done any school work. We met our international coordinator and few other important guys (whose roles I can't remember) just a few days ago and they all seem very relaxed and cool guys. We don't have any personal student tutors like in Kajaani and we've had to find our ways around the campus by ourselves. People are nice and will always help when asked but we don't really have any guidance. Getting the best grade here is very easy. You get A if you receive 70-100% from the modules. Lower grades have a 10% slot each. Studying is very independent. We were told that there are very few lectures and workshops and that most of the work has to be done during your free time. The course leaders were scaring everyone with this while me and the other Finnish guy attending the same course were simply changing "Really?" looks with slightly raised eyebrows. After doing more or less independent studies in Kajaani from 8:00 to 16:00 every day for 1,5 years I really don't feel like stressing from any independent work they throw at us here.

This will be enough for now. Until next update everyone! \o

Signing off.

22.9. The Journey & First Impressions

Greetings ladies and gentlemen!
I didn't sleep very well the night before the departure. Only a few hours of bad, abrupt sleep. The flights to Stockholm and Edinburgh were on time and I was never in a hurry to anywhere. I got slightly uneasy during a taxi trip from the Edinburgh airport to train station since I felt like I should be small talking with the driver as she opened a conversation a few times. I wasn't completely silent, but rather a basic Finn who answered questions and said a sentence or two after that for the sake of a dialog.

Edinburgh train station was a little... strange. After a good half an hour search I came to a conclusion that there were absolutely no trash cans at the station. The paper bag and empty water bottle started to really annoy me but luckily I managed to spot a cleaner who let me throw my trash into his bag. After I found the platforms and received my tickets I realized that the tickets or the info boards didn't say anything about the train numbers or any other kind of codes so I had no idea which of the trains was mine (the info board showed only the final destination which didn't read on my ticket). When I asked about it I was simply told to "watch the boards". Really helpful considering that the boards didn't tell me which one was my train. A local elderly lady asked me about her train and ranted how she was told to "watch the boards" too. I did find the right train after showing a station worker my ticket and asking him where the train leaves.

 It was a really sunny day!

I almost fell asleep several times during the train trip. I jumped off one stop earlier since that particular stop was only 200/300 meters away from my apartment so I didn't need to take a taxi. I was surprised while I was waiting for my turn in the lobby. One of the employees asked me what my name was and after I told him my name, the guy in front of me turns around and tells me that he's from Finland as well. Talk about a coincidence.

I was shown into my room which appeared to be just as big as the pictures in the website promised. The common room was a massive let down however. It was completely trashed and looked like there had been five messy tenants living in there. The mess turned out to be doings of only one guy who had been living here alone (I was the second one who arrived here). The employee who showed me around told me that he would send a note to that roommate right away and come check how the common room looked later. I still haven't seen my roommate so far. Five of them haven't arrived yet and the one who has been living here is apparently away (kind of him to leave me old half eaten food though...).

 The view from the window is really depressing: I live in the second floor (1st if you count the floors in Finnish way) and all I can see are windows of neighboring apartments. I can see a glimpse of the river but it's on the other side. </3

 Apparently "extra large" room I got simply means a larger hallway. I don't mind though. In the contract my room is described as "superior room" which makes it so worth it.

Newsflash: England has upgraded its taps to this century! It takes a while for the warm water to come out though. I hope it gets better once more people move in (there are very, very few in this entire student apartment at the moment) and water starts moving more frequently.

I spent my first night hanging around with the guy I met in the reception and his three English roommates. They offered me a beer and we sat in their common room a few hours before I went back home to sleep. My first night was unpleasant. There weren't any quilts or pillows when I moved in so I huddled under a small towel for the first night. The room is cold (could be under 20C) and there is only one radiator which must be turned on manually and which stays on for one hour at a time. I woke up shivering after three hours of sleep, put some heavier clothing on and hugged the radiator for about 15 minutes. I have a quilt and pillows now, but damn the first night was cold. :(