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 …
Tag Archives: COVID
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 …
Fulbright Adventures in Finland 