Crazy week

Well, this certainly has been an interesting week: I finally got to see an apartment, Tom's car got hit by a deer/baby elk on his way home from the plant, and my brain hurts from trying to learn Finnish and carry on conversations in French.

The apt. is on the top left corner

On Wednesday, we finally learned that there was an apartment available for us to look at. Tom had a late meeting, so I met with Satu from Areva, who showed me the place. The good: It's in a nice, quiet location (very close to our current hotel), it's on the top floor of a seven-floor building, with a balcony and great views, has two bedrooms, kitchen, large living room and lots of storage.

The bathroom

The bad news: The bathroom is TINY, the shower looks barely big enough for half a person, the washing machine takes up most of the space, there is no dryer. Oh, and there was a woman sitting in the living room when we walked in. It turns out that she and her boyfriend (who works at the power plant) had to leave their apartment because of a water problem, and they were told to move into this newly-vacated apartment for three weeks while their place is repaired. So, if we take the apartment, we have to spend three more weeks in the hotel.

We did find out Friday that a "very nice" one-bedroom is available, so we are going to try to look at it Monday or Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Tom was leaving the plant about 7 p.m. It was dusk, which we later learned, is the prime time for all the wild animals to go out and menace drivers. Tom was driving along the long road from Oikiluoto to the main highway, when he saw something charging toward him at full speed. He laid on the horn, slammed on the brakes, but the animal hit him smack on the driver's side. There were cars in front of him and behind him, but the stupid critter had to hit OUR car.

Tom called me and said a moose had hit his car, so of course, I was freaking out. You know, there are all those moose crossing signs along the roads. It turns out that it actually was a deer or baby elk (although people say that deer aren't very prevalent around here). It dented the side of our rental Mazda, completely tore off the side mirror and shattered the driver's side window. Tom was covered in glass but was not injured -- he was very, very lucky. 


Okay, the really weird part is, a man drove past, stopped his car, and pulled an ax out of his trunk (kind of scary that there are people driving around with axes in their cars, but, hey, obviously it comes in handy), and chopped the dying animal's head off to end its suffering. He also dragged the animal off the road, and told Tom that people would pay good money for the meat!

Glass inside Tom's car

Some of his co-workers who stopped to help took these pictures. There were some photos of the dead animal, but they were just too bloody and icky to post here.
 
The police came, made Tom take a breathalyzer test (!), wrote up a report and followed him back to the hotel. Hertz was great -- they came and got the damaged car that evening and brought us another one.

Welcome to Finland!

Thursday morning, I had my second Finnish language course at the local Adult Education Center. I really like the class and my teacher (whose name is also Satu). I am the only American in the class, and the others, including the teacher, are always asking me how to say things in English. The other students are from Germany, China, South Africa, Bulgaria and France. It is such a difficult language. Finnish has no prepositions, Rauma has its own dialect, and there are tons of endings that are added onto words to change the meaning, serve as prepositions or make new words. Not to mention that you pronounce every letter, and many of the words are 20 letters long...


Tom signed me up for a spouses' dinner that was held Friday night at an old church in Old Town that is now a banquet hall. It was lovely. There were about 50 women there, and, just as I was afraid of, I was the only American. The vast majority were French, which was fine. There also were a few women from Germany, Finnland and Poland. One of Tom's co-workers, a very nice French engineer, Severine (sorry if I misspelled her name), had invited me to attend, and she even picked me up and drove us there. 


The event started around 7:30 with champagne cocktails; dinner didn't start for another hour (those Europeans like to eat late). The appetizer was a salad and excellent pureed vegetable soup. The entree didn't come for another hour; it was roasted pork tenderloin with pureed yellow turnips and a cabbage mixture; dessert was yet another hour later; unfortunately for me, it was tiramisu, my least favorite dessert in the world. On second thought, it was good it was tiramisu, since I didn't need dessert anyway.

Enjoying dinner with other expats

My dinner companions were very nice and welcoming, but they spoke French for the most part. Which was good, because the more I listen, the more I learn. They actually all spoke pretty good English, but they asked me to speak slowly and, just like in my Finnish class, asked me questions about English. I think the worst thing about English for foreigners is all the contractions we use. When I am talking to non-English natives, I try not to use contractions, but it is really difficult because we use so many in our conversations. They kept apologizing for forgetting and speaking in French to one another, but I really didn't mind. Lots of times they would translate for me what they were talking about, and I could understand a bit here and there.


Tom stopped by after he ate dinner alone at a restaurant. I think he wanted to make sure I wasn't miserable. What was funny was after he left, my French table mates all said that they thought I sounded British while Tom definitely sounded American. I think it is because I was trying to talk without using contractions...


Didn't get home until 12:30 a.m., which is waayy past my bedtime. But it was fun, and I enjoyed getting to meet some other people.