Finland = snow

This morning was a true blue and white Finnish winter morning. It was cold, and there was plenty of snow everywhere – ground, tree branches, even on the trunks of trees (quite a blizzard last night). The sky was a pale blue where you could see it, and the clouds were a dark greyish blue. Absolutely beautiful..!

It is this kind of weather that most foreigners in Finland are looking for. “When is the real winter coming? “ asked one exchange student from me a few weeks back. I would love to have been able to answer that, as I was just as much looking forward and waiting for the true winter weather. Of course, everyone living south of the Ring III road might not think the winter weather is here, but you do not need to go further than Hyvinkää to experience it :) Snow in the winter is as important as the sun in the summer. It really lifts up our spirits and brings more light into the busy lives. Less need for coffee and chocolate!

I consider myself an open minded, unreservedperson who gets along with nearly everyone. But I keep constantly running into cultural differences that make me uncomfortable or that I don’t seem to be able to understand. For example, I recently talked over the phone with an African man. He politely asked how I am and how my family is doing. Asking “How are you” really is such an everyday thing that it’s not even personal, but asking about my family’s wellbeing when I am at work, working, and dealing with work issues.. for some reason I felt that it intruded my privacy although the person asking surely did not mean it that way and was merely being polite in the custom way of his own culture. Am I going backwards in the process of internationalising myself? Am I becoming more conservative? (I sure hope not or somebody save me quickly please!) Maybe I should travel to Africa, Asia or South-America (all of which I’ve never been to) to internationalise myself.. (Or to save the environment and my money, simply study or get to know people from these continents who live in Finland.) Or is it also good development to simply recognise these limitations of myself and to try overcome them? I will hopefully get loads of practice on that next week when several international quests come to a conference I’m attending. So looking forward to it!

Oh Blog.

It’s been HOW long since I last wrote..?!? Wow.

When I started this blog my plan was to write once a week, perhaps every Friday morning. A nice idea – but when ‘the going got tough’ I could not keep it up. Instead of reflecting my experiences on internationalisation I have been experiencing a lot – in a way doing ‘field research’ on internationalisation. But, since the New Year is here, my resolution is to catch up with writing this blog and indeed write once a week.

This year kicked off with the new exchange students arriving to Finland. It is amazing how you can sometimes tell a person’s nationality by the way they look. Not everyone’s naturally, but the Polish girls looked Polish and the American girls looked American, and the Brit – he definitely looked British. Everyone seemed to have an open mind and be exited about being here. It is easy to please the ones that come with low – or reasonable – expectations and a sense of adventure, the ones that are not too fussy, do not mind waiting for a bit and are genuinely thankful for the help they receive. That’s when it’s also nice to provide help and advice. The expectations are of course largely dependant on personality, previous experiences etc. but I believe a lot of the expectations are formed during the period before the exchange, when students surf the internet, talk to other students, read books on culture.. well, maybe just surf the internet, chat to other students and read discussion forums, blogs and facebook pages.

So is it possible to influence the expectations a student has about his / hers exchange in Finland? At least we are trying. Totally not in a ‘big broterish’ way though! No, it’s more about trying to give the arriving foreign students a truthful picture of what to expect of and in Finland, and about giving advice, explaining cultural issues etc. We are using an e-learning workspace with different kinds of documents and pages, and discussion forums to do this. And we are involving the current and former students in it too. Sounds good, eh? Well, it is good – but could also be better, more active and talkative. But it’s not always about cultural differences related to nationality, nor differences in language skills, but cultural differences in using virtual tools, the internet and chat/discussion forums. And all that is whole other story..