Orientation week

I have now been in Latvia for  a week and it has been great! I was surprised how clean and beautiful it is here. The streets, trams, buses and stores are very tidy. Food and bars are very cheap and taking a taxi is ridiculously cheap. Yesterday my friend paid 2 euros for over a two kilometer ride from a bar to our house at 3 am.. Clothes, furniture and gyms cost almost as much as in Finland. A bus card that covers all trams, buses and trolley buses costs 16€ a month for a student.

About the orientation week.. At school we had informative lectures about the immigration process, culture, study process etc. and also team-building games in which my group got second place! At night we had parties and get togethers.

On Monday we got divided into study groups. There are about 250 new international medical students and we got  divided to 22? groups. In every group there are 10-14 students, in my group 11 students: 4 Finnish and 7 Germans. About 40% of all the international students are from Germany so there are quite many of them :D My group, Medicine 15 is awesome! We have seen each other a lot and developed a good team spirit. We are going to be studying together for many years so it is quite important to get a long with your group mates :)

The classes start on Monday and students have to prepare for the classes by reading articles and chapters from different books. I have tried to go over some of the reading assignments but there are so many of them :D I'll continue tomorrow when I am hopefully no more hangover..