Cecilia Lintuluoto

Univeristy of Helsinki

Faculty of Social Science

2017

Hi everybody! Let's begin with a short introduction, my name is Cecilia and I am from a small Swedish speaking town in Finland. Yeah, you read right, Swedish speaking. Finland is a bilingual country, speaking Finnish and Swedish. However the funny thing is that I actually do not speak Finnish at all (which is not that funny when you think about it). I am studying social work back in University of Helsinki but I am now here at UTS as an exchange student taking communication as my minor (apparently you don’t have the same system here but it is basically one of my electives).

So how did I end up in Sydney, apart from UTS' good reputation and great range of subjects? Before I explain it, you need to know that Finland has winter 5 months a year and it gets as cold as minus 30 degrees each and every year. Now when I think about it, I don’t really need to explain it further, it is quite self-explanatory. Well okay, except for the whole weather situation, I wanted to go somewhere far far away. I wanted to see something different. You don’t just choose Sweden or Norway (love you both though), you have to go all in. This is how I chose Sydney, Australia, with a 26 hour flight from Finland.

I did not really have any expectations except the usual, kangaroos jumping around all over the place and hot life-savers likewise. Yes, I also heard about the drop-bears. I have not really been outside Sydney so I can’t tell about the kangaroos but otherwise I'm super happy with my choice of exchange city! I really love the school system, having three to four tasks during semester opposite to the one test (100% of the grade) in the end of semester that I am used to. People here are very friendly and sociable (but not too social for an anti-social Suomalainen) and the weather is great. Apparently you call this autumn? I call it paradise!

Let Cecilia know what you think about her experience in the comments below!