Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Ok, so I don't want to brag and I certainly don't want to rub it in, but with the weather dropping to minus 20 and apparently the coldest part of winter yet to arrive (February) I feel a certain level of excitement over my most recent assignment here at the EFFC.
My task for the next few days on the job is to figure out the schedule for the Cannes film festival so that we can plan our trip to Rome around our trip to Cannes. Not too shabby of a task, but aside from the glamour, it is a pain in the ass. If all goes well, we will spend the May 8 - 16 in Rome and then in Cannes and then K and I will be off to Dallas for another vacation. Never in my wildest imagination would I have thought that coming to Joensuu, Finland would lead to sudden trips to Rome and to Cannes. I knock on wood every time I talk about my job just to make sure that I realize a good thing.
I had my first Finnish lesson yesterday. I can't really say that much was accomplished, but from personal experience, the idea is to create an environment that is conducive to speaking a foreign language and I think we are on the right track. There were 5 people in the class, and 8 are needed to keep the class going (hopefully more will show up, they are giving it a two-week trial period to see how many people will join).
Of the 5 there were 2 Americans, myself included. The other was an older man from Rhode Island, Richard Aber, who moved here a few months back with his Finnish wife. However, Richard did not move to Joensuu, but to a small village 70km outside of Joensuu and has given up his career as a diplomat to become the woodsman he always wanted to be, interesting dude.
The other guy is Emeka, from Nigeria - or nigerialainen - he is the second Nigerian I have met and the other was a buddy of mine from school and his name was Meka - go figure. He seemed like a nice enough guy.
There were two girls in class, one Juli is from Austria, she says she will only be here for 6 months and the other girl is Lauma, from Latvia who said she would only be here 6 months when she first arrived and has been in Joensuu for 3 years now. Lauma speaks close to 6 languages and has already picked up Finnish in a way that I can only hope to.
We spent the class learning introductions and other nonsense. There was no textbook, so learning will be a little slow. Slowly but surely is fine with me.
Gotta run, 4pm and time to leave. And since the temp dropped a lot in the last few hours, hb cold again.
My task for the next few days on the job is to figure out the schedule for the Cannes film festival so that we can plan our trip to Rome around our trip to Cannes. Not too shabby of a task, but aside from the glamour, it is a pain in the ass. If all goes well, we will spend the May 8 - 16 in Rome and then in Cannes and then K and I will be off to Dallas for another vacation. Never in my wildest imagination would I have thought that coming to Joensuu, Finland would lead to sudden trips to Rome and to Cannes. I knock on wood every time I talk about my job just to make sure that I realize a good thing.
I had my first Finnish lesson yesterday. I can't really say that much was accomplished, but from personal experience, the idea is to create an environment that is conducive to speaking a foreign language and I think we are on the right track. There were 5 people in the class, and 8 are needed to keep the class going (hopefully more will show up, they are giving it a two-week trial period to see how many people will join).
Of the 5 there were 2 Americans, myself included. The other was an older man from Rhode Island, Richard Aber, who moved here a few months back with his Finnish wife. However, Richard did not move to Joensuu, but to a small village 70km outside of Joensuu and has given up his career as a diplomat to become the woodsman he always wanted to be, interesting dude.
The other guy is Emeka, from Nigeria - or nigerialainen - he is the second Nigerian I have met and the other was a buddy of mine from school and his name was Meka - go figure. He seemed like a nice enough guy.
There were two girls in class, one Juli is from Austria, she says she will only be here for 6 months and the other girl is Lauma, from Latvia who said she would only be here 6 months when she first arrived and has been in Joensuu for 3 years now. Lauma speaks close to 6 languages and has already picked up Finnish in a way that I can only hope to.
We spent the class learning introductions and other nonsense. There was no textbook, so learning will be a little slow. Slowly but surely is fine with me.
Gotta run, 4pm and time to leave. And since the temp dropped a lot in the last few hours, hb cold again.
// posted by Howard @ 3:59 PM 
