Hei Ja Hola

Buenos Dias de Barcelona increíble–the artful city that nuzzles the Mediterranean and where you can find guitars propped upright in sandy beaches while their owners siesta. I am enjoying people’s friendly, prolonged eye contact, cup after cup of rich and delicious café con leche, and the streams of light and laughter that pour onto 15th century streets from narrow restaurants that don’t open until 10pm. Soaring apartment buildings draped in drying colorful garments and sheets lean together and appear to almost touch over the tiny, winding streets. I’ve spent many happy hours following my nose through these cauldrons of streets as savory spicy air floats and bubbles and simmers between the towering stone flats where people from all around the world have come to live.

I’m on a siesta from Finland for a week visiting Sara Gashti, one of my closest friends from college. When Sara’s not working towards her MBA at Esade, she, her partner Antonio, his friend Bryant, and I have busied ourselves with a road trip a couple hundred kilometers out of the city on a climbing adventure, boisterous and sometimes heated games of pictionary, cooking superb food, and venturing out to meet friends. While Sara is working, I’ve thought about working some myself, but have frankly abandoned such ideas and chosen instead to take advantage of sunny warm weather and to just play outside.

It’s quite a change from Finland, where the onset of winter is quickening. The air is cold, dusk begins at around 2:45pm, and snow blankets the ground. My research project is progressing well despite my prevailing sleepiness that corresponds with the darkness! I’ve begun interviewing young women about the ways that they work through their sexuality when relating to others, relating to society and culture, and when processing their own thoughts and feelings. Spending many hours with each participant allows for trust and ease to grow and the conversations we have are mutually beneficial (at least I hope so!). I spend quite a bit of time doing outreach, which entails visiting schools and talking to principals and health teachers, who in turn present my topic to young women, some of whom choose to volunteer their time to my work. In addition, I’m coleading a group for young women with a Finnish therapist at Tyttöjen Talo (Girl’s House) about body image and sexuality. We’ve decided to use art creation as the main form of communication because of my dreadful Finnish. Väestöliitto, the primary agency I’m affiliated with, has been exceptionally helpful and generous with their time and resources. Midwives and clinicians who work with teens towards sexual health have shared experiences and insights during information interviews. Väestöliitto’s nationally recognized psychologists and gynecologists have sat with me and explained theories and perspectives of sexual human development, and its researchers Osmo Kontula and Anna Rotkirch are kind, encouraging, pushing, and help me get my head on straight. I don’t believe I could have asked for a more supportive environment.

As an enrolled post graduate student at the University of Tampere, I’ve been able to participate in the full-day seminars they have for PhD students who are doing research and working on articles. I feel inexperienced and shy at these seminars, but they’ve proven to be exceptionally valuable and helpful. On three occasions, I’ve been granted 2+ hours during meetings to share my research proposals, ideas, concerns, fears, and questions with a group of professors and fellow researchers. People in the groups (which haven’t outnumbered 12) are warm and supportive yet give extremely candid feedback and evaluations of my work. Discussing my project and motivation in such settings is a practice in receiving feedback, supporting and defending my rationale, staying positive, and being grateful for constructive help.

When Finnish locals apprehensively ask me whether I find the early Finnish winter tolerable or not, and when I gingerly step outside in the mornings, expecting miserable blasts of cold as I begin cycling to school, I realize that the winter here is just fine. It’s cold, and the early darkness can be disorienting. I’m learning from watching and talking with Finns about ways to avoid lethargy, however. Anna gave me the address of a nondescript building and suggested that I “go have a swim.” The classically-designed building was fabulously elegant inside, and as they just recently had a vote about whether to allow swimsuits, it’s still very possible to join many women delightedly and freely swimming and wandering peacefully between the several saunas and steam rooms. Sarita looks forward to staying home in the evenings and curling up with hot chocolate and a good book. Sonja invited me to join her ultimate Frisbee team and suddenly I find myself playing a couple times per week, and recently returned from a tournament on the coast. I had a marvelous time joining much better players than me on the field, watching European champions compete during our breaks, floating in a dreamlike state on waves of unintelligible Finnish all around me, spending time with lovely new friends, and continuously sipping a beer, which makes Frisbee players better athletes, I hear.

Many Finns don’t seem to let the cold and darkness banish them indoors. The forested walking paths are swarming late in to the night with bikers and joggers, as well as with mightily fit walkers sporting the popular Nordic walking sticks with vigor. Snow on the ground doesn’t deter robust bikers from bundling up and speeding through the formidable terrain on burly snow tires. I learn mental resilience from my favorite groups of people in Finland: old ladies and children. Elderly women are badasses here. They zoom around at lightning speeds on self-propelled scooters with shopping baskets in the front, hunched forward with their pushing leg suspended in the air. They are so astonishingly fast and graceful and hilarious that I’m forced to stop in my tracks when they approach to watch them dash by. Kids are vibrantly expressive and playful and it brings me enormous pleasure to watch them run around catching snowflakes on their tongues (just like I do) and sneaking through crowds of somber faced adults in grocery stores with dripping snowballs, hunting for unsuspecting victims. I think that perhaps Calvin was a Finn.

While I have therefore unavoidably wondered to myself, “Why didn’t I choose a place like Spain, which is crowded with palm trees and is simply drowning in heavenly coffee, to spend a year?” it is reassuring to feel grateful and appreciative of Finland and I find it fitting to live here. There is indeed a special energy and warmth there as well. I also don’t think there is a better place to examine a rather functional welfare system and to think and have conversations about young women’s health. I look forward to moving to Helsinki in late December, and I am tremendously excited for my sweetheart Josh to come and join me there until June. It’s difficult to believe that I’ve been here for over three months and that many of the European Erasmus students are all preparing to leave after their semester study-abroad adventures. There are certainly times when I yearn for home and the community that thrives there, and it can be difficult to be in the thick of the introspective season that gives rise to inward gales and swells. In many ways though, it seems as if inspiration and visions in me are stirring and that the action is just beginning.

I hope hope hope that this finds all of you wonderful people doing well and enjoying every day.

Love,

Alicia

View more of Alicia's photos: Barcelona sun and fun & strategies for surviving the severe Finnish winters. Both will open in a new browser window.