First week in Finland

I had the time last week end to discover a very very interesting place : a supermarket ! I stayed at least 2 hours the first time I went in alone, with my dictionnary, cause I needed to translate every single word.
The best exemple is the nutmeg, that I couldn’t find, because the name wasn’t in my dictonnary and it wasn’t really obvious to find…

I also had time to  ride the bike that Christina gave to me (a German studient who is flying back to home in few weeks), who has no gears, no brakes (coaster brakes only), and of course you have to ride on the ice and dense snow, it is quite funny !

You have to imagine that all the roads and streets can’t be without snow or ice here : First of all, they don’t use salt on the road, its not good for the environment and neither for the cars, shoes, bikes… So they just clear what they can clear, put a little bit of gravels and that’s it, they have to leave few centimeters of ice on the road.
It looks beautiful, everything is white everywhere, specially because we also have a little bit of snow everyday.
I had my first try to drive a car with my work, that was pretty funny, but you can’t really feel anything cause there are spikes on the tyres !

To start my first week at work, on monday morning, I realised that everybody at the office was speaking german… (except 2 other people that I met after) Wooo that feels weird to not understand anything !
But the best suprise was the second one : when I turn my computer on… I almost ran away… everything in german too !! Windows, Office, Softwares… it sounds maybe not too bad, but imagine that everything on your computer is in chinese one day… same for me here ! But, it is a good point to learn german 😉

The other funny thing at work are some the Personal Protective Equipment : specially for feet : the usual safety shoes have been exchanged with safety warm huge boots ! And we have here some small other equipments… (behind my shoes)

My safety warm boots and the "heel stops" (spikes to not slip on ice when you walk outside)

After that I met a lot of people, I went on the construction site… I don’t have any personal pictures to show because cameras are not allowed without a permit and the pictures can’t leave the Nuclear Island.

But here actually what it is :

This was in fact last year, the dome is over and some buildings are bigger... but you got the idea !
This one was last week... (the red building is one of the 2 fonctionnal units)

And the view from the top of the buildings is really nice, you can see a lot of islands around, the frozen sea…

I have been really tired everynight, because we had long days on site (10 hours or more) so I went to bed very early everyday and woke up quite early too ! I will manage to be better in the next weeks, but I have to get use to work again 😉

The last topic for this week is my new friend, I needed someone to share my week with at home, his name is Bruno !

Bruno and me

See you soon for the next stories !

5 thoughts on “First week in Finland

  1. First, welcome to Bruno, i hope he will take care of you :p
    A good idea to improve your German is you should write this blog in in this language and we should answer in German as well!!! :p just kidding… i don’t understand German and i think i’m not alone in this case 😀
    At least it seems that everything is new for you over there but i’m sure you’ll be quite quickly use to.
    Enjoy your week-end ^^

  2. alors là je compatis, on perd vraiment ses moyens quand on ne comprend rien: je me souviens de ma première rencontre avec Mirek, le pauvre devait penser que je n’étais pas finie…Incapable d’aligner deux mots compréhensibles en Allemand, que j’ai quand même “étudié” 8 ans…J’espère que tu seras opérationnelle plus rapidement! Dis donc, tu peux mettre de côté une paire de bottes fourrées en 43? tu vas faire un jaloux en la personne de Walter, tu as un équipement “pro”. Sans rire, ne commence pas à accumuler de la fatigue, écoute ton horloge.

    1. Euh oui pour l’allemand j’espère que ca va aller vite aussi…
      euh pour les bottes c’est pas vraiment possible là… désolée 😉
      Aller zou j’écoute mon horloge et ben je vais dans le sauna pis après, au lit 😉
      bisous

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