Yteri

Well it is definitively summer time, the nice hot weather and the sandy beaches of Yteri have proven to be quite the weekend getaway. Yteri beach is located around 15 km away from Pori and it is the only white sanded beach in Finland. The beach lays there next to the forest and it is quite a view indeed. As I got to Yteri I saw so many people leaying around soaking the sun as if it were the last day of summer. It is not really surprising that it seemed that all of Pori was there, since it is the best beach around and it's the weekend.

One curious or maybe a normal trait in beaches like Yteri is that it is mainly a local venue. Ok there is some people from other cities and maybe some internationals yet it remains a local hangout. In Mexico and even the US most beaches are crowded with resorts, hawain tropic, corona and budweiser publicity stands and crazy inflatable things. Yteri seems like a nice place to relax even on its most crowded day and its refreshing to actually not have to hear to a VJ yelling that its wet tshirt contest time every 15 minutes. I have nottin against commercial beaches and I do enjoy the crazyness but when summer is such a precious commodity as it is here in Finland it is nice to know that the beach is actually a nice place to go and relax.

Juhannus Eve

Here in Finland summer is like christmas, its the same kind of great atmosphere. Summer is usually a break for students back home where you just try to do as little as possible outside because of the hot weather.

Here in Finland they have the perfect temperature on summer it never gets too hot and never freezing cold, yet its not only the temperature or the long days with barely any darkness its the attitude that people have that makes it awesome.

People have come alive since the sun started to shine and the snow melted away, now you can see they are in summer bliss planning boat trips, nature treks and even picnics wherever the sun hits the ground. On summer it is a little bit more quiet than it regularly is and that is due to the fact that school is out and students are working or the lucky ones traveling.

It is so nice to see how everybody is so happy about Juhannus, oh yeah, Juhannus is the name of the summer festivity. This weekend here in Pori there is everything from concerts, a rock festival, and of course the traditional bonfires. It is also a great advantage to live so close to Yteri, because for what I have heard the bonfire there is going to be awesome, according to my friend Yannik.

Think the summer spirit has hit us hard already so me and the remaining international crew will most definitively take advantage of this holiday and enjoy the finnish take on summer!

The Forest

Yesterday I had the opportunity to go to the Kullaa forest in the Satakunta Region as part of the recreation day in the office. It was a lot of fun, I am not particulary the nature tipe of guy Im more of a city dweller, yet I liked it and think I might change my city ways.

It was a 7 km trek, it was quiet interesting to see wat our guide told us to be land mass that was underwater just 2,000 years ago. Finland has amazing landscapes and it is great to have the chance to trek through them because it is indeed a whole different world. Im kind of excited about going back there later on summer because they told me that its filled with color and people go there to boat and swim. Part of the experience was to deal with mosquitoes, yeah annoying yet not as bad as if you were in the jungles of any central american country for sure.

For lunch we had barbecued sausages and boy they were great after walking so much, the nice couple that served as our guides also made the best fire cooked crêpes i've ever had, oh ok these were the first ever but still amazingy good. And to top it off we ate in a Tippee, yeah a tippee in the middle of the Finnish forest, real cool right?

Well here at SAMK you can seriously take advantage of nature and do things like this, which I seriously never ever thought i would do or even think i would love it!

Yeah, yeah nature is real cool and yeah I should have probably done something like this before, but i'm glad I started here in Finland on my internship at SAMK.

So globalization is a phenomenon that has undoubtedly changed the way we live, or it at least has done so for my generation. There is not a time where I can actually say that I havent been in contact with people from other parts of the world, and right now during my internship at SAMK its no different.

During this past two weeks the International Summer school has been under way. People from the US, Japan, Taiwan, Nepal, Holland, France and of course me have been living under one same roof and have learned so much from each other. It is not easy to have many nationalities, temperaments and beliefs under one single roof, but here at SAMK it has proven to be interesting and rewarding overall.

With experiences like the one I am living here in Pori as an intern for SAMK you realize how important it is to actually to interact and learn from others in situations that will be foreign for you. These experiences will determine the way you learn to relate to different cultures, and maybe even do business in a future if that is what you want to do for a living.

During the summer school here in Pori we had the chance to interact in school organized activities as well as in day to day things like watching movies, cooking and even making crêpes in the common kitchen. On sunday we had an outing, we went to the beautiful city of Rauma, it is one of the oldes cities in Finland and according to our guide it is special because it is still a living city, meaning that the downtown area is a fully functional cartier. It was fun running around with americans and a french dude around the city, it was all pretty much closed because it was a sunday yet that didn't stop us from having fun.

Later that day we went to a small creek where we had the opportunity to tan! Yes tanning in Finland. The temperature reached the 27¤C mark which made it totally enjoyable. It was a nice outing organized by the University and the visit to the Rauma Maritime Management SAMK campus was really interesting. We got to go to the ship simulator in which we cruised the waters of St. Petersburg (until Brian crashed the simulated boat). Right now everybody has left for the second part of the summer school in Rovaniemi, but new people always arrive and as summer is closer and closer I know that my adventures here will be as rewarding and cool as the ones before.