I arrived in Turku two weeks ago tomorrow. The fog of jet lag has worn off. I’m less physically and mentally exhausted at the end of the day, so shopping for food and cooking dinner no longer seems out of the question. I do, however, still enjoy buying lunch, rather than packing my own. Lunch is clearly seen as a far more important meal than at home—many cafes are only open from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.; their main purpose is to serve "lounas,"often an elaborate buffet. (Finding an early morning coffee shop took some caffeine-deprived effort!) I love the lunch buffet at the little cafe next to the library. Now when I arrive, the owner pulls out from under the counter her homemade gluten-free crackers and mini desserts that come with the lunch. Every day she makes a different delicious soup; you get a bowl of soup, a simple salad, and coffee with the bread and dessert, for eight euros. We sit in a room with huge windows, and people seem relaxed and chatty—not quickly eating and rushing off, not grabbing food to go eat at their desks. People eat lunch early—often the other people in my shared office leave their desks at 11:00. And then there’s the 2:00 coffee break in our department’s “coffee room” down the hall, where anyone who is around brings their own mug, checks off their name on a sheet, and takes a cup of coffee from the pot. (Later somebody will collect .40 euros per cup). We’ll sit around the table and chat (more, I think, when I’m there—they try to meet my American urge for chit chat.) I’m enjoying getting used to the rhythms of the day here, and my body and mind are adjusting.
I’m also feeling more and more connected. I met the woman who lives down the hall from me with her little girl, and she explained how to work the washer and dryer in our apartment building. I joined a knitting group at the local yarn shop, where the friendly women kindly switched to English when I admitted that I didn’t understand a word they were saying. A few days ago I met three other women who are here in Turku on Fulbright fellowships. Sara Holdren and Michelle Paterick have been here since the fall, and they generously reached out to me and another new arrival, JoAnne Sweeney. Sara is a recent graduate from Elon University, and is here for a project called “Narratives of the NICU: Exploring Finnish Family-Centered Care and Infant Feeding.” Her qualitative, story-based approach to medical anthropology and public health mean that we have a lot to talk about in the coming months! Michelle, who has a BS from the University of Georgia, is completing a Master’s degree in education and learning, arriving here after spending several years in Honduras where ran a non-profit called Real LEDGE. JoAnne is a law professor at the University of St. Louis, and is interested in feminist legal scholarship, among other things. So you can imagine that we had a lively conversation at a local coffee shop—so lively, in fact, that I’m pretty sure we confirmed some Finnish stereotypes about loud Americans. It’s fun to have other Americans in town with whom to share impressions and experiences.
I have started to connect with other Finnish health humanities scholars in the area as well—in one case, almost by accident. Last week I presented the Southern Oral History Program’s Stories to Save Livesresearch project to a Culture and Health seminar here at the University of Turku. I had hoped that perhaps Marja-Liisa Honkasalo would be there. She is trained as a medical doctor and an anthropologist, has worked on heart disease in the cultural context; when I applied for the Fulbright, she was running the center on Culture and Health. It turned out, though, that she retired before I arrived, and I had yet to meet her. S
he was not at the seminar, but I did meet Anu Laukkanen, a post doctoral research who now organizes the Health and Culture seminar, as well as several other researchers and students. Sara Holdren was there too! Yesterday I was drinking a decadent “latte” with cardamom, chocolate, and whipped cream (how could I say no??) in my favorite new little café by the river, feeling a little guilty about not being at my desk. I heard a woman speaking Finnish in the next room—I couldn’t understand her at all, until all of a sudden I heard my name and “Stories to Save Lives” embedded in a long string of Finnish words. I got up and peeked my head around the corner—it was a young researcher who had been at my presentation, and she was telling another woman about it—that woman turned out to be Marja-Liisa Honkasalo! We all laughed, and agreed to meet soon. Goal achieved, even when I thought I was procrastinating! At the seminar, several people had also mentioned Jenny Paananen to me—soon I will have lunch with her. She is involved in a planning a new project with professor of general medicine, Päivi Korhonen, in which they will use both video-recorded consultations and ethnographic interviews to determine how possible heart-related symptoms are discussed and interpreted in doctors’ offices. They are interested in, for instance, why female patients’ coronary disease is less likely to be found, and are using these interviews to explore that. I am looking forward to learning more about their work, and sharing ours with them.
In the meantime, I’m going to explore ice skating at a nearby park and water aerobics at a local hotel. And hopefully soon the Baltic sea will freeze hard enough that we can go walking on it.