Madrid ...

Hello friends,
I know, I am a terrible blogger but these last days have just been crazy ..I will write about my trip later, I just wanted to share some pictures with you guys, I hope you'll like them ...

Touristic Madrid I

Touristic Madrid II

Madrid Parties I

Madrid Parties II

That's it for today ..

Roma, non basta una vista !

Hey there,

I have been in Rome for 4 days now, I am flying to Madrid tomorrow, to meet up with some friends from Finland and Nancy ... I will try to post later about my time in Italy,

Pics from Rome :

http://epita.facebook.com/album.php?aid=37614&l=6343c&id=728985575
http://epita.facebook.com/album.php?aid=37618&l=c494e&id=728985575
http://epita.facebook.com/album.php?aid=37621&l=fac0c&id=728985575

Foto da Firenze ...

Note :
- if indoor pictures are blurry, it's only because you're not allowed to take pictures in museums, so I had to sneak around to take some shots
if other pictures are bad, it's only because my camera sucks ... or because I am a very bad photographer .. whatever

http://epita.facebook.com/album.php?aid=36126&l=cc3eb&id=728985575

Sainte-Maxime

Hey there,

as most of you know, I'm travelling around Europe these days, so this is going to be the occasion to update this blog a bit ...

My first stop (after the usual Paris and Nancy ones) has been Sainte-Maxime, in the south of France. I spent a few days with my brothers and some of their friends, and I took the opportunity to pass my boat driving license :-)

A few pics :

Hope you're all doing well, I miss you guys !

Take care, some hot news and new pics very soon ...

Mille baci

-Matt, on the (non-smoking) road again ... in Florence.

Things you didn't know about Finland

• According to the PISA study, measuring the skills of 15-year-olds in topics relevant to everyday life, Finland has ranked at the top in education.
• Finland has been at the top of the worldwide press freedom ranking list every year since the publication of the first index by Reporters Without Borders in 2002.
• Finland has the highest suicide rate among GNP nations.
• Over 80% of Finnish families own a lake or island where they have a summer cottage. There are about 190,000 lakes in Finland and thousands of islands.

• The tango is very popular in Finland and most Finns know how to tango and enjoy doing it often.
• Most Finns have a sauna in their house or apartment. The most famous one, the smoke sauna, is a one-room wood hut where rocks are heated by a wood fire, the smoke escaping through a small hole in the roof. The bathers enter naked and generally take along a sheet of paper to sit on. Steam is generated by throwing water on the hot rocks. After about 15 minutes, the bathers rise up and run down to the lake for a dip in the cool water, then return to enjoy another round of sauna.
• Finland has the most mobile phones and the most email addresses per capita of any nation in the world. It is home to Nokia, which is named after a town in Finland where the company has been in existence for decades before becoming a cell phone leader.
• Both the president of Finland and the mayor of Helsinki are women. Well, that's not true anymore, but still. Finland was the first nation to give women the vote.
• Military service is compulsory for all young men, or they may serve alternate community service.
• Helsinki is the northernmost national capital in the world. About a third of the country above the Arctic Circle, with long months of darkness and the Northern Lights. In the summer, they have long months of midnight sun.

Suomi a.k.a. Finland

It was a Thursday morning. I can tell, all my adventures start on Thursdays. August 2004, at Charles-De-Gaulle Airport in Paris. Jim Morrison sang "This is the End". That was the beginning.Back in April of the same year, Manu, a classmate of mine came over to enjoy a last resort doobie. During the conversation, he mentioned his plan to go to Finland as an exchange student, instead of a 3-month work experience that is normally mandatory to graduate from our college. I didn't know much about Finland at this point, except the capital city and the taste of their vodka. That night, probably still under influence, I spent hours looking at pictures of Helsinki, Lapland, Norway, amongst others, starring at these unbelievable landscapes, lost right in the middle of the fifth biggest country in Europe.

Back in August. All the paperwork has been processed. I'm leaving. Three classmates are also going, we will share the first feelings about this Terra Incognita together. The very first thing that occured to me was the flatness of Finland. Flat. And green. Tampere is about 200 km North from Helsinki. The city, about 200,000 inhabitants, is the third biggest city in Finland, and the biggest inland city in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Norway and Finland).

I was going to study IT & Industrial Management at the Tampere University of Technology (Tampereen Teknillinen Ylipisto in Finnish, I love this language so much), located in a southern suburb of Tampere, called Hervanta. That was going to be the home of approximately 350 international students coming from all over the world (Mexico, USA, Canada, China, Japan, India, Hungary, Lithuania, Spain, Italy, UK, but mostly Germany and France).

The first days were part of the Orientation Week, where previous international students who decided to stay (a.k.a. tutors) organize activities for new comers. Therefore, we participated to :

• the traditional City Rally : the idea is to travel across the whole city, and do or ask a lot of different things ... From eating national dishes (trust me, I know why Finland is not known for its cuisine) to box-based races at 1 am... Of course, this really started by drinking vodka at 4pm and ended by going to a club (Kiva ...) after everything.

• the international barbecue : what can I say ? Nearly 300 hundred people having a sausage and a beer, next to a lake and confronted to a landscape that is way too awesome to be used as a postcard...

• the first night in Tampere ... Ok, that was not "part of the Orientation Week", but it was somehow supervised by the tutors ... Going to a club (Kiva again ? Maybe ..), filling up the bus for the very first (but not the last) time ...
  

The first contact with Finland was great. Not only for the country (not really actually, I fell in love with it a bit later), but for this international experience, this panel of different cultures, this mix of languages, accents, faces and so on.
At this moment, I had no idea how much these 6 months were about to matter in my life.

See you around

This is it. December 6th. Vince is going to leave in a few hours for Paris, to catch a plane one day later for Mexico, from where he will fly back, 10 days after, to Reunion Island with a few hours in Paris again (where he will come back right before New Year's Eve, but if you need more information about Vince's life, just have a look at his blog, you might get lucky).

Vince has been my cubicle mate since February. That is to say I know him pretty well (even though I'm sure people here know him way better than I do, I haven't shared an attic with him (yet) ). Anyway, I had the honor to spend between 4 (at the end) and 9 (during rush periods) hours next to this guy, and I can tell : he is awesome.

It is hard to find a nicer person than Vincent, I think our very best chance would be Major, but still, I'm not even sure (alright guys, you're as nice as each other). Always available when one wants to talk, laugh, cry, come or anything else. The first one to make parties, the last one to go to bed, the bartender, the musician, the show man, the invincible, the incredible and so on.

I have much more to say about this great guy, but I'll just tell him one day, between the time I get drunk, and the time I go to bed.

Feel free to let him know how the time you spent with him has been wonderful !

Matt, on his way to bed

Got to give it a try

I know. I shouldn't.

But here it is, the online tale of my adventures. It might look abandoned sometimes, and will be uninteresting most of the time, not to say all the time. Let's see how long it can last.

For this very first post, I will only suggest you to read Sam's great posts about The Appart' and being a party driver. Yeah, it's in French ... But it's probably now worth learning French !

Alright, maybe not ...

Have a good one

Matt