stressful registrations for trips

At the moment I’m writing my second blog I’m full of adrenaline. At 19:00 (I’m writing at 19:30) was the sign up for the ESN trip to Lapland. With around 1000 exchange students that all want to go and only 250 places, everybody is on facebook and clicking on the link for over 100 times. I didn’t count how often I tried to refresh pages and clicked on all links possible but it took me around 30 minutes to get me and 2 friends of mine registered. At 19:00 sharp the registration should be open. However, the opposite happened, the registration link disappeared fully from the website. The only option was refreshing and trying to reopen it again. Reading all comments on facebook from other people that did not manage to register either calmed me a little bit down, but still I was stressed. Finally I received another link of a guy on my floor and I managed. You cannot imagine how happy I am to be registered!

We have had some other registrations before this one and that’s why I knew that I had to be there on time. The most important one was for the cottage weekend. Within 3 minutes after the registration had opened there were 150 subscriptions and only place for 60 persons. I just behaved like everybody else (sitting in front of my laptop 5 minutes before the registration opens and refreshing the page constantly) and I got a place, I was number 27. How happy I was in the beginning, how sad I was soon after hearing that most of my friends were not going. They were not fast enough. However, a very good opportunity to meet new people and so I did. Last weekend we left on Saturday by bus to a huge holiday area with cottages, sauna and lots of nice people. At arrival we were divided into groups for the cottages and I was very lucky with mine. Not so much fun in the sense that we had a big party in our cottage but in the sense that we didn’t have to clean a lot the next day. After lunch we were again divided into groups to do some exercises/tasks. The most funny one was the following: one person had to say a category (for example colors or wild animals) and pick one thing out of that category (for example orange or tiger) the other persons in the group had to guess which the one person had in mind. If they guessed wrong a small amount of water was pored over their heads, if they guessed right it was a whole cup. Other tasks were drawing Finland, answering questions and making a play. After dinner the sauna was heated up for the next 10 hours approximately. We decided to wait until everybody got out and we started our sauna session at around 23:00. The Baltic Sea was never so cold since I’ve arrived in Turku and going inside the sauna afterwards was great. After 2 hours I decided it was enough and the party started! Not only the time at the cottage was great, also the trip to the cottage by bus was awesome. Although I’m sure the landscape can be much more beautiful, I loved it. It looks so natural, empty, quiet and peaceful. It just feels great.

This was the first ESN trip I made here in Finland and I met some great people. Some organizers still knew the names of UvT students that went here last year which was very good to hear. Next ESN trip will be to St. Petersburg in October and then Lapland in November/December. Trips I’m going to make without ESN are to Helsinki, Tallinn and Tampere. Travelling for students by train is quite cheap since we get a 50% discount on trains and long distance buses. Moreover I have so much time left compared to my life in Tilburg that I have been going somewhere for every weekend until now. Last weekend I visited Rauma, a place that is on UNESCOs world heritage list and the weekend before we rented our own cottage on an island (including a small motorboat J)

Next blog will be about the courses. I already promised it last time, but I just had to write about everything above. So, stay tuned!