some special events for 3 months in Finland

It has been long time without seen you and keep in touch, I ‘am very sorry to not be able to write to you frequently but telling you the truth I have been so much busy for last two months. There have been so many things happen and I feel like I have changed (both physically and mentally) so much since i met you all, never to mention I really miss you all. But it’s ok since sometimes we have to get apart to make things work out. What i mean to say is that unless we are not far apart, we really don’t know the real meaning of that thing and always to be with yourself so close. Being far away from you so long, now i really want to be back with you all. Also I wish to meet new first year students.
As I sent sms to most of you when I was leaving, 01/18/2009, it was wonderful trip which took about 24hrs to get here (Finland-Joensuu). I was really lucky since I didn’t get any problem on my way. Everything worked out as was planed, I get in Joensuu around 12pm (midnight) and I found 4 people were waiting for me including Matti, Merja, Barun (as most of you already might have known him) and one guy from Kenya. I was so much happy to get here fine. One interesting thing was that although it was midnight, there was still light like a day. I was amazed to see sun still at around 11pm at night and sun already coming out already at 5am again, so no darkness. I know it sounds strange but its truth. It was wonderful, although it was summer; the temperature was still low that I had to wear my pullover most of time.

Here are some of things I have been doing from the first day I came here in Finland. The second week of August, I attended Summer School Course in class of Prof. Paul De Bra , about Platforms for Stories-based Learning in Future Schools. It was great time for me to meet many friends from different countries all over the world. The Joensuu University, Department of computer science and statistics was the host of the whole event; they organized good social program and other Finnish traditional things like sauna and some Finnish games like Mökkyl. We also had some other sports like football, basketball, volleyball etc.
The third week of August I was cycling around the Joensuu , its really beautifully small city. I was going to about 10-25 km far from home and coming back each day. It helped me to know different places as well as how to read map and going any place. At beginning it was problem for me since I couldn’t be able to read map (bad geography background ;)). The forth week I spent most of time in Joensuu centre and university campus to make everything ready before starting my classes on 01 September. It was bit hard and bored time for me since there were no many friends to talk like in Tanzania.
So, on September 1, it was the first day of orientation week, it was great time for me to meet more than 600 international students from different countries around the world but most of them were from EU (European Union) countries. I felt bad because we were only 4 black students, one from Nigeria, and another from Somalia and another one from Cameroon. New good life with many fiends started with so many parties every weekend and some of weekdays. There were also barbecue parties commonly called BBQ, sports and games as well.
My classes began on 07/09/2009 and I started to take 3 classes, Object Oriented Programming (OOP), scientific methodology and Design and Analysis of Algorithms (DAA). After one week, I figured out that I was overloaded with classes. My intention was to understand OOP from scratch so I decided to drop DAA to reserve more time for OOP. Normally, a semester here divided into two periods, each period with 8 weeks. So, many courses are just last for one period but some of them last for two periods (one semester). I had so many exercises per week so time for parties and sports starts to decrease and spent most of my time in studies. I managed to understand basic concept in OOP which made me to feel more comfortable in Java oops. I finished with these classes last week after the first period of the semester to end. I have good understanding of OOP java now, m so much happy for that. Don’t worry, when I will come, we will arrange for how to make it clear for all of us.
This week I have started some other classes which are requirement engineering, Pattern Recognition, Image Analysis and Finnish Education system and Organization. I’m not sure if I will be able to take all these classes because my plan is also to take third years classes at Tumaini online. Finnish Education system and Organization is a course in Education department so I liked to take this class so as to get some information about Finnish system of education. My plan is to write an article which will tell something about difference between African and European students and I will use Tanzania and Finland as case studies. I will use daily experiences to get to this difference so I will use Ethnography research method.
Another great information I would like to share with you (not official) is that I was talking with Prof.Matti at begin of this week and he said to me that he has got wonderful research about *IT in developing countries which will be sponsored by Finnish government. He was so much happy because its really rear to get this kind of research, he said. The research will start on January 2010 and will run for 3 years, so he will be back in Tanzania Tumaini University specific in September 2010 as head of program but that time there will be another teacher from US who will do most of administration works, Matti will be giving classes but he will use most of time for his research. I think that’s great, isn’t? ;). I think second year student will get more advantage from this wonderful professor. But also, he will be instructing us (third year students) for the next semester in the BSc.Thesis online. Note; this is not official, so don’t take it into public.
So, now here is autumn, and it has been snowing a little bit, I was so much excited to see the first snow. The funny thing is that when I was wondering for 3cm snow and ice on the ground, others were just like there was nothing and asked me to wait for really snow which can be more than 30cm (rula) depth from the ground. . Damn, I can’t wait for that crazy time. When I came it was really green and beautiful but now there is no green any more or may be just on some portion of the land. All leaves are falling from the tree and it’s getting colder and colder everyday. Now when I’m writing this sentence its +1 but last week it gets to -3, Its really cold but it will get to -11 and more on December according to statistics. But you can just imagine how the situation now is with comparison to Tz; it’s already too much cold for me.
I have been in different place in and outside Joensuu. I went to Koli national Park, which is 70km from Joensuu city and we were hiking in the forest for one day. It wasn’t really interesting for me because I expected to see many animals that day but I didn’t see even the single animal. It’s funny that there are many rabbits near to where I’m living but in Koli I didn’t see even a rabbit. I know its sound strange for you but that was the situation and national park here. I know the next question will be “what I saw then” but even me its hard to answer it, at some point I thought that our guide was taking us to some places where finally we will see some animals, but we ended up in good view on small hill in the forest. Then when I came back I supposed to find out what does national park means and I got the following results. So, national park doesn’t mean only animal reservation. I was mshamba, wasn’t I? 
After Koli national park I went in Estonia’s capital (Tallinn), its one of the beautiful city with old but good buildings. So, it was three day trip and we started the journey at 10am and at 6:30 we were in Helsinki (Finland capital), then we went direct into the big ferry (meli) big than ever I have seen in my life. From Helsink to Tallinn is about 3hrs in ferry, but we had to sleep in ferry that day. All the night we were just drinking and dancing, it was really beautiful night. Alcohols are cheaper in ferry than in Finland. So, the next morning we were in Tallinn. It was raining throughout the day but it was ok for me because now I have already used to it. So we went through the city and taking some good picture. At evening we had to come back into the ferry and we were back in Helsinki at 11pm and started another long safari back to Joensuu. I really liked this trip because in Tallinn, things are very cheap compared to Finland, good friends I met and nice views in Tallinn.
On 14-16 November, we have planned to have another trip to Stockholm (Swedish capital). I hope it will be even more interesting…lets see, and I’m thinking to celebrate Christmas in German to one of my friend home, but still I’m not sure about it.
Apart from those trips, I have also managed to make some parties(sherehe) in my flat and invite some of my friends. I made Ugali with cabbage and chicken, and another party I made chapatti with beans. I also had one drinking party in my flat. Ugali and chapatti made me to be so much popular here and find myself to be invited in almost every party which taking place by international students. Crazy!!!
Now I have many friends from different places around the world but mostly from Poland, German, Spain, Lithuania, Russia and Netherlands.
I’m really tired today, and I think will be too much for you to read since you have some other things to do, I heard that this is one of the hard semester for you, but it will be even more harder for me. What we need to do is to have goals and to have faith to those goals. But really we have to work so much hard to be in the same track with European students. I have been writing about this in my blog for those who are follower but I will be writing more and more as possible. And also as I said at the beginning I will write an article which will tell difference between African and European countries/students, so I will discuss a lot about this.
Pictures of all above events are available in Google web album (Picasa ) and I will add you so that you can see my photo soon.
Also you can find most of my photos and updates in facebook if you open your account and you add me as friend by searching (fadhgeor@gmail.com) and then click add ad friend.
Also some of other information are found in my blog”Safari ya Finland” I will also add you soon but if you see delay, just remind me because I can be busy with some other things and forget this.
I will also write my final report about my exchange program and I will discuss advantage, disadvantage and problems of this program which I have experienced. I hope it will help to improve this program for the future.
Thanks very much and good lucky to your studies.
See you soon.