Places

As usual, time seems to fly. Lots of things have happened since I last wrote and now there's only six weeks left before the semester is over. There are so many places I thought I would've visited by now, but now I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever make it to Lake Tahoe or Yosemite! Well, thanks to my great friends who have offered me a place to stay (and driven me around), I have luckily been to quite a few places already and thanks to the many people who have visited me here in Berkeley, I have managed to get a pretty good idea about San Francisco and the Bay Area. And the wine country of course!

Wine Country
My first visit to the Wine Country was in late October/early November when Mari and Jarno were here on a visit and with them we got a pretty good taste of the Napa Valley offerings. Since then I have been back to the Wine Country numerous times (no surprise I guess), but instead of Napa Valley we've been to Sonoma Valley a lot more often.

The wine there has of course been great, but what I like even more is the scenery and the atmosphere. The feeling, when you're driving from one vineyard to another surrounded by the hills, usually in beautiful sunshine is just so relaxing. To sit down on some terrace with an amazing view and a glass of champagne in front of you at ten in the morning just gives me one of those "elämä on ihanaa" (life is wonderful) moments that some of my readers are probably familiar with already :)


And then of course the learning about wine side is also interesting. I would not call myself a wine freak let alone a connoisseur, but it is a rather inspiring feeling when you get a tour of the manufacturing process and lines by a very excited and knowing guide; I wish I was as excited about something! And believe me, modern technology is a great thing, because if we still had the yeast at the bottom of our champagne bottles when we bought it, I don't think it would be considered as such a luxury!

Cities
Even though I do love the nature here and all the "natural" places I've been to during these past eight months in the States, I must say that the big cities are quite amazing as well! Even if cities basically consist of big and tall buildings and plenty of shops and restaurants, they all still seem to have their own feeling and atmosphere, and are in someways very different from each other.

In addition to San Francisco, the first (for me) new "big city" I visited this year was Seattle. I went there for a long Thanksgiving weekend with Derek, who drove me around the city and its surroundings very patiently. I got to see the Fremont Troll and the "flying fish" at Pike Place Market among other things. It was kind of fun noticing that I'm not the only one having a hard time coming up with touristy things to do and show in a place where you live or have lived permanently. I guess everything just looks so familiar and sometimes uninteresting when you're the guide, but at least I really enjoyed my time in Seattle. Probably unsurprisingly, one of my favorite places, after all the coffee shops, was Richmond Beach where you get a beautiful view of the sound and the mountains. I must admit though that the Seattle skyline after dark is pretty amazing as well. Walking among the fancy (five) million dollar houses in Queen Anne, imagining my life in one of the 10-bedroom, 7-bathroom homes while looking at the Space Needle was a lot of fun, even if it may not be the most realistic outcome of my life with my future plans of an unemployed ex-student...


Before heading home for Christmas I also got to get a little glimpse of the life in D.C. Me and all the other Fulbright FLTA's (Foreign Language Teaching Assistants) gathered to Washington D.C. for a few days in December. Our program was full of different workshops and sessions and workshopsessions and all kinds of educational things. The FLTA staff had obviously put a lot of effort into the planning and we had lots of speakers with various backgrounds (eg. government officials, CNN reporters, rap professors, etc.) so all in all it was a "versatile" three days in D.C.

Since our program was super busy and I didn't know any locals I can't say I would've got to know D.C. that well at all. My very superficial impressions are of a bureaucratic administrational city with lots of symbolic landmarks, but not that much "real life". This is of course because I didn't really have time to see anything else but the Lincoln Memorial and the White House, still inhabited by G. W. Bush. After the first two rainy workshop days we were however lucky enough to have sunshine on our only afternoon off, so me and Leevi tried to make the most of it and walk all over downtown before sunset. I did like the city, but somehow I left with no special impression of the place. I know the city is filled with controversies ("the chocolate city with a marshmallow center and a graham cracker crust of corruption" as Stephen Colbert once put it), but I guess as a three day tourist with no local friends to tell you stories, it's too short a time to get to know a place.



After Christmas however, I got to visit New York with an almost local friend. One of the other Finnish FLTA's, Leevi (already mentioned above), who is also from Turku, is performing her TA duties at Columbia University in New York City. The same day I arrived there was a little bit of "excitement in the air", because another plane had to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River, but luckily I didn't hear about this until I was already in the subway trying to find my way to Leevi's place.


My preconceptions of New York were mostly reinforced, but some things were different from what I had expected. First and foremost probably, that I didn't really get to meet any of the unfriendly and tourist hostile locals that I had so often heard about. I did overhear a couple of table conversations about how annoying the non-locals are, but for the most part I found people very friendly. Before I even got to Leevi's place from the airport at least three people offered me their help and asked if I needed help finding my way (and not in the mean "I'm going to lure this naïve tourist around the corner and take all her stuff" kind of way). Maybe I just looked so lost and pathetic with my back bags and silly beanie, that people felt sorry for me.


It was a very fun, eventful and COLD visit in every way. I got to see a play on Broadway after having queued for more than an hour in about -14 celsius. I don't know if I've ever been as frozen in my life! Well, at least I got to see Daniel Radcliffe in all his natural beauty in Equs, which was actually a really interesting play, even if I was a bit too jet-lagged to fully appreciate it. We also went to an absolutely amazing Gospel Service in Harlem, visited Ellis Island (definitely worth it!), had a pancake breakfast at IHOP (International House of Pancakes), got dinner and drinks in smokey jazz clubs and had coffee and cheese cake at Seinfeld's diner. The coffee was ok, but the service and cheese cake were, well..., you can just look at the link ;) So thank you Leevi and Hannu for having me there with you and taking me to all these places; I wish I could return the favor!