The few years after COVID, I put a hault on most traveling, except to visit family in the US. Outside of US trips, in 2023 I went to Berlin and a town outside of Stockholm with work. Besides our honeymoon in Rhodes, in 2024 we traveled to the US to attend two weddings, and I …
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Honeymoon in Rhodes
One year after our wedding, Linnea and I traveled to Rhodes, an island belonging to Greece but closer to the coast of Türkiye. Since we went to the U.S. a few days after our wedding to have the reception in St. Louis, there wasn’t time for the traditional honeymoon right afterward. Observations Before digging into …
Wedding Bells
Linnea proposed to me the day before Valentine’s Day in February 2022. Before this we already knew that we wanted to get married in July since this is the holiday month in Finland, meaning almost everyone is off on holiday (yes, for a whole month!). This would make international travel much easier. In July 2022, …
Two Jobs Later
After returning from the U.S. in June, I began officially working as a Sustainability Research Trainee at the UPM Research Center in Lappeenranta, where I had started as a language trainee during my intensive Finnish course. Though I continued chatting with my boss in Finnish as much as I could, I gradually spoke less and …
Five-Month Intensive Finnish Course
As an unemployed immigrant who had been living in Finland for less than three years, I was eligible for integration training. For me this meant a full-time, five-month Finnish course, which I began during the second week of January. Unlike the first language-culture courses that I participated in during my first summer in Finland, the …
First Time Home in a Year
Due to the pandemic and working my summer job, I wasn’t able to go home during the summer as usual. Previously, the longest I had been away from home was 6 months, so this 11 months was quite a stretch. On Sunday, December 20th we began our travel. You read that right: we. For this …
Graduation and Beyond
On June 1st I submitted my thesis after working on it for approximately seven months. Prior to this year, I never thought that I could develop such a high-level work, so to say that I’m proud of myself is an understatement! If interested, you can check out my thesis here. About three weeks later I …
A Different School Year
It has been a while since I last wrote about my time at the Finnish summer cottage, and the atmosphere could not be more different. Swap blue skies and sun for grey skies and snow, +20°C for -20°C, and 0 to 5 COVID cases per day for 10 to 25. It is definitely a different …
Finnish Summer Cottage
This has been a long summer. From the United States to Finland. From working remotely to working in the lab. And from endless summer nights to the gradual darkening of the days. A lot has happened. In mid-July I experienced my first Finnish summer cottage. We visited one for an hour or so during the …
Returning to Finland
My original May 30th flight was cancelled and the rescheduled June 8th flight was as well. For weeks I endured the emotional turmoil of waiting, calling, and constantly checking the Scandinavian Airlines website. After the second cancellation, I discovered that my best option was a 23-hour, 3-layover journey on June 11th. Otherwise, I’d have to …
Fulbright Adventures in Finland 