Feelings before takeoff

I'm waiting extremely excited for my exchange year since I've been looking forward to having such a chance for many years already. During the upper comprehensive school I spent with my parents 3 years in Germany and after that I've known that I wanna live outside Finland in the future too. And now I have the chance to do it, so I'm pretty stoked! I've been asked several times in the past few weeks if I'm anxious or scared about moving to Shanghai. No I'm not, I don't know if I should be afraid or whatsover but I'm just excited of experiencing a completely different country and culture from that what I'm used to.. 

Of course there will be some issues that might cause problems for us at the beginning but I'm sure we'll handle those things well, and we're not alone there. There will be around 50 students with us who will need help just like us in managing some regular arrangements like getting a mobile subscription etc..Our study program is starting at the beginning of February and we don't have a accommodation in Shanghai yet, and it looks like that we have to wait until we get there. Fortunately, we've been in contact with a agency which is able to provide some apartments for us to look at and hopefully we find a decent crib to live in for the coming six months :) We were also told that we should receive a list of all the participants on this program by mid December - Nothing yet - but since the university is a French one, there's no need to be worried about some delays related to compromised days and deadlines :) but that list would certainly help us because there are many other students dealing with the same problems and roommates are always welcomed! 

But now it's time for Christmas and the New Year's celebrations, so we'll see us again next year.. Happy Holidays from rainy Finland!

Visa & Vaccinations

The journey has still not begun but I’m writing again since I’m having pretty much free time and there are so many things which need to be done before the plane takes off.. Well, I’d use this free time also by reading for my last exam which is in about two hours but I felt writing a new blog post is more useful. I might think otherwise in couple of hours :D Going to China for a long period of time means a lot of vaccinations as we are planning not only to hang around in Shanghai for the six months but also travelling around China and hopefully around Thailand and Malaysia etc. too. Necessary vaccinations are for example hepatitis, Japanese encephalitis, cholera, typhoid fever which are certainly not cheap. I’ve paid over 500 euros in total for all of these but I wanna travel a lot in the coming months without having to have any concerns about my health.   

Another not too easy mission is to get the Chinese Visa. The Embassy in Helsinki is open only 2,5 hours per day, so for people not living in Helsinki it's quite difficult to deliver the Visa application, especially as the embassy doesn’t accept mailed or e-mailed applications for some reason. Luckily for me, my mother was very helpful and not only was able to deliver my application but she’s also going to pick it up once I get the Visa approval. For some reason they don’t allow any Visas for multiple entries to China in Finland, so we have to continue dealing with our Visa affairs also in Shanghai before our first trips outside China. And by the way, we had the exam in our Chinese course on Friday - nailed it! Having studied Chinese for around 3 months now, I must admit that it's the most difficult language I've ever tried to learn :) but motivation is the key and I hope I'll be capable of speaking and understanding some simple sentences when we get to Shanghai..

USA Trip

I caught the blog fever! Can’t wait until I could actually write about something interesting and relevant issues but I’m gonna tell a bit about our plans in the States. We’re flying with Air Berlin from Helsinki via Berlin to JFK and from there it’s time to search our almost five star penthouse suite. We booked a double king size bedroom from Howard Johnson Express Inn Hotel in Queens. The only criteria we had when booking the accommodation were cheap price and a decent location near the subway. 

As you can see, it’s not the best possible hotel but it fits to our needs pretty well. We also bought the New York City Passes in beforehand, as they were $25 cheaper when buying those via Internet in November. With those passes we have free entries to most of the must see sightseeing places for tourists and what’s even better is that we don’t have to stand in the queues that long as without the passes.

As already mentioned from NYC our journey will move on to the West Coast. We have rent a car for the 14 days we’re going to travel there. If we get what we were promised when making the reservation, we should get a fancy Chevrolet Impala which hopefully is big enough for us 4 and our luggage. Besides the car, we booked a hotel for the first 3 nights in LA and also tickets to the Ducks vs. Coyotes NHL game in Honda Center. I’m really hoping that the Ducks will improve their game compared to what they’ve presented so far during the season and of course we’re counting on our countrymen Selänne, Koivu, Lydman and Hagman! After 3 or 4 days in LA we’re driving down to S.D. for a couple of days to hang around and after that it’s gambling time! Off to Las Vegas :D It might be a wise decision to skip the casinos but hey, once we get there we have to give a shot and experience the casino lifestyle! Since our accommodations in other cities aren’t any 5 star hotels, we allowed us to book a little bit better and more luxurious hotel in Vegas. We ended up with booking a room from the Stratosphere Hotel with a hopefully awesome view to downtown Vegas! 

Nevertheless, compared to the prices in LA or S.F. the hotels in Vegas were pretty cheap, so we’re paying only around $25 each for one night despite the pretty decent hotel.. But we’re not gonna hang the whole time in the casinos cause we all want to see the Canyons and we’ve got one day booked completely for that.. After Vegas we don’t have that many plans, most certainly we’re going to drive to San Francisco with a one stop strategy and spend a night somewhere between these cities, maybe in Reno, the little brother of Vegas.. But I will definitely keep you informed about our adventures and hopefully with some cool pictures too..

Time to start blogging

Okay fellas! Time to start writing a blog about my journey as an exchange student in Shanghai. Maybe I’d begin with a short introduction of who I am. Originally I’m studying in Lappeenranta University of Technology in Finland. It’s my 4^thyear now and my major is Industrial Marketing and International Business. Since the begin of my studies I’ve wanted to spend a half year minimum somewhere outside Europe as an exchange student. At first I was planning to go to the States but during last year I increasingly started to consider China as my potential target country and eventually ended up applying into a French Business school called ESSCA, which has a campus in Shanghai focusing on Marketing and the Supply Chain in the Asian environment. If you wanna find out more about the program, here’s a link to  ESSCA Shanghai Program web page. At first I planned to write this blog in Finnish but since we live in a international, multilingual global world I’m writing in English. At least for the most part…

Because the Finnish semester ends already in December and the studies in Shanghai are starting in the early February I’ll be travelling around USA with three friends of mine in January. One of these guys, Ville, is also coming to Shanghai and the other guys will spend the next six months in Kuala Lumpur and Auckland. So the coming blog posts will most probably deal with our journey in the States. We’re going to visit New York first for around 8 days and from there we’re flying to L.A.where we rent a car and travel around California and Nevada. Some must visit places beside LA are San Diego, San Francisco and Las Vegas.. Maybe this is long enough for the first post, so let’s see how our little adventure will go:D