News of February

Hello everybody,

Some of you have had a skiing holiday last week, some of you on skiing holiday and some of you including me will go for skiing holiday next week. So, have a nice skiing holiday!!! I used to be very addicted to skiing some 12-15 years ago during junior age, when I was doing about 2000-2500 km in a season. Nowadays it is about 150-400 km in last years per season.

But let’s come back to the news of February. From CBU Forestry and Environmental Engineering the official call for Master programme has finished on 15^th of February. On 18th February 2013 the official call for applications for CBU FEE at the University of Eastern Finland was now over. All applicants will be informed about the selection results by the end of April 2013. This year as previous year there are 5 scholarship in amount 500€ per student available for 2 years period. Good to all of you, who have applied to the study period 2013-2015.

On 5^th of February it was 209 year birthday of Finnish national poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg. Many of his poems deal with life in rural Finland. The best known of these is Bonden Paavo, (Farmer Paavo, Saarijärven Paavo in Finnish), about a smallholding peasant farmer in the poor parish of Saarijärvi and his determination, "sisu" (guts) and unwavering faith in providence in the face of a harsh climate and years of bad harvests. Three times, a frosty night destroys his crops. Every time, he mixes double the amount of bark into his bread to stave off starvation and works ever harder to dry off marsh into dryer land that would not be as exposed to the night frost. After the fourth year, Paavo finally gets a rich crop. As his wife exults, thanks God and tells Paavo to enjoy full bread made entirely out of grain, Paavo instructs his wife to mix bark into grain once more, because their neighbour's crop has been lost in a frost and he gives half of his crop to the needy neighbour. So it was a little bit about Reneberg’s poetry!!!

And finally coming back to Forestry topics!!! Today Mr. Markku Ropo who is International Student Advisor and also teacher of forest pathology at School of Forest Sciences posted the news about “Day of Torsti”. So today the table in the lobby of School of Forest Sciences was full of tea, coffee and blueberry pies. It is exactly connected to the fact that today  27^th of February is in calendar the name day of Torsti. It is also the term of first year forestry students here in Joensuu and the tradition is that these freshmen celebrate this day with appropriate offerings to staff and older students.