And the beat goes on...

So for music class, Gaby and I taught the class, Don't Stop Believin' and we will record it and the two of us will sing lead vocals! :) It is getting colder now. Especially in the mornings when I am riding to school, definetely a new version of the usual Roxy kissing my face wake-up calls. I will have school pictures taken and get a picture with my class, 2B as well. Just like we used to do in younger grades, but in Finland, they do not get yearbooks. Which, by the way, I am still expecting mine, mom! I went to a nearby cafe today with Emilia (my next host sister) and Maiju and had a chocolate and raspberry truffle and a Pepsi. Yummy! We went to the park and hung out. The air is similar to how the air is in November in Illinois. Everyone in my house is sick right now! Yikes! I need to stay away from them. I think my biggest fear while I am here is getting sick because literal sickness means homesickness. I.E. I want my mommy to take care of me and blow my nose for me! But it is all a part of growing up. I have been washing and ironing my own clothes lately. There is no dryer in this house so we hang our clothes up and iron them. I am getting very accustomed to the sauna, especially after a few chilly bike rides. The weather may be nice, but when you are riding on a bike, it proves very sharp and hard on chapped lips! OH! I got invited to go to a little football (soccer) tournament in Ruissalo on Wednesday. There is about 9 girls going and I am one of them. There will be about 6 schools there and we will play all day- and miss school :) And then on September 11th, we will have a welcoming party for all of us inbound students near the city of Turku on a beach, which will most likely be quite chilly. Homesickness has not quite settled in to me yet and I hope that it stays far away. The last thing I want to do is waste my time being sad. Luckily, my friends like to keep me busy and that I am okay with! :)

The Weekend

Blankets on the chairs. Turn your head to the left

The lunch at Ikea. Meatballs, potatoes, rye bread, and chocolate mousse!

My book (turn to the left a little)

So today I went to Ikea for lunch. Ikea here is so incredibly cheap. They also have an amazing lunch. I then went to Turku with my friend, Maiju and went shopping. We went to an asolutely amazing (and expensive) cafe and they had blankets outside on the chairs and tables because it was chilly out. I thought it was so cute :) So of course, I had to take a picture. The H&M's in Europe are so incredibly cheap it makes me want to cry. The Euro coins begin at 5, 10, 20, and 50 cents. It then goes to 1 Euro coin and they also have 2 Euro coins so it is very easy to spend..trust me...but I am a smart shopper! Converse are incredibly popular here. Along with leggings and sweatpants (yay!) There is also a Finnish store called, Marimekko. They sell clothes, bags, and home design things. A lot of stores here will have home things along with clothes which is unusual. The temperate is varying day to night around 40-50 degrees farenheit, which is nice to have cool nights. We will have a fire in the fireplace tonight. We also went to a mall called Mylyy today (prounounced MooLoo) and I got a children's book of Finnish to English- with pictures! Yay!! Only €10 and my host mom got it for me! How nice :) Hopefully that and the things I have learned from Karkku will help me. I have writted down important verbs and I am learning family members right now, well, trying. It will get easier...I hope!

Ikea! And I dont know what is says underneath...

My new book! :)

Normality

Things are starting to settle down now. Not so many stares and a few girls have actually approached me. Today, I gave presentations to first and second year students and I think they somewhat understood me. They learn British English so my English is a little bit different from what they are taught, but someone told me that through music and TV (they have American Idol, America's Best Dance Crew, Biggest Loser, and dozens of other American TV shows) they can understand what I speak. Lakes is so much different than their high school and I think they were surprised at a lot of what I had to tell them about Chicago and in my town and about my school. I may also be taking Spanish courses to help with my Finnish. Just a basic Spanish class that would count as a class credit even though it is at 6:30 at night since it is open to the public. My school would pay for the class. I will also be starting Finnish lessons soon which are intended for foreign exchange students so I am looking forward to that. Being with exchange students is a breath of fresh air because not only can we connect mentally through learning Finnish but also emotionally because we are going through the same things. Despite minor differences, we will all at some point miss home, mom and dad, boyfriends or girlfriends, or even little things such as food (I MISS TACO BELL SO MUCH!) Not having a car has proved inconvenient and I feel limited to what I can do. I did, however get a bus pass yesterday with 44 trips on it so that will help very much when traveling to Turku and back. Turku is to Lieto as Lindenhurst|/Lake Villa is to Chicago. Takes about 20 minutes to get there except there are only about 170,000 in Turku, but Turku is the oldest city in Finland, lots of cool buildings and connects to the Baltic Sea. Anyways, it is amost 10:30PM here and it is about 3:30PM back in Illinois. I will try to keep adding more each day, but I can't promise anything =P
 Much love,
Christina

Berries!

pictures cannot do Finland justice

Today went very well. Started my school at 10:30AM which means I have to ride by 10 then I left at 2:30 and went to Subway...a Finnish Subway, yes, and met up with my host mom, sister, and grandmother and went back to my host grandparents house to eat crepes which were delicious! Then I went home, did some homework (English homework, of course, level 1) and went blueberry picking in the forest with my host mom! It was beautiful! They have this cool little toy to take the blueberries off in a very convenient matter. Then I came home and went on a chilly walk with Maiju. Now I am off to bed! It is very tiring listening to Finnish and trying to understand. I hear Spanish, English, and Finnish all mixed together. Ahhh!

my bucket and tools. notice the boots, too. nokia boots. very popular! yes, nokia, the phone company

 i am so little compared to the trees! looks like i am in the middle of no where...oh wait...

(random) but this is my school of 270 students. lots of trees! and mopeds and bikes

Just some pretty pictures of the forest! Note the berries everywhere! :)

 

 

Finnish life as of now

The Baltic (Canadian geese....)

Now on to the nitty gritty of my stay in Finland. After being sauteed in Finnish information, it was time to put our knowledge to the test, separate from all of our foreign "family" and become real exchange students. Our families picked us up from camp and took us home. A friend of mine, actually living close by, went straight from camp to a family member´s wedding, no pressure! My family was talkative in the car and on the drive home, we stopped at Hesburger (the slightly healthier version of McDonald´s in Europe) for a late night dinner. I arrived at my house to find a 10 month old long-haired daschund Urho, jumping at my feet to greet me. The house is quite basic, very Scandonavian, but beautiful at the same time. I took  a walk to a friend of mines´house down the street with my host mom. Gaby, a Mexican exchange student, lives right down the street from me

. Anyways, in my house there is 1.5 bathrooms (Finnish families usually only share 1), 4 bedrooms, a sauna, deck, porch, and beautiful forest of a backyard where we will hopefully pick berries soon! When I walked into my room, it felt like a dream. A queen bed with a lighted closet, couch, flatscreen, and my own computer with desk. The room is beautiful and I could not believe it was my own personal haven (and trust me, it is!) I had a 2 day grace period before I started school and I got quite homesick along with the culture shock because I had nothing to do, really, but sit and read or go on the computer. However, my host parents took me to an island which is the coast of the Baltic Sea. Quite beautiful! But the second or third night I was here, a friend of mine, Maiju had come over. I had been talking to her and a few other girls over Facebook before I came and they all sounded so excited to meet me! Maiju and I get along great, we really do. Finnish people truly are very quiet, and thankfully, Maiju does not fit in with that stereotype (nor do I). 

My backyard and deck

The living room

My room! Bed is to the right of the white shelves :)

Now on to school. I was quite nervous because Maiju had told me that I was the "buzz" around school; "The new American girl!" I didn´t want to crush anyone´s hopes of America, now.

The first day of school I followed two friends of mine, Roosa and Anniina around and most teachers didn´t know who I was so they handed me all of the schoolwork...I didn´t touch it...Anyways, basically this is how my day went- walked to class, got pointed at, whispered about, smiled at, but nobody talked to me except for my friends, of course. I had anticipated this. And even in my second week of school now, many people are still scared to talk to me. The lunch was delicious. And free! All schooling, hospital and health care, dentistry, and school lunches are free in Finland! People are scared to talk to me (including adults) because they are afraid that I will correct their English or tell them they are wrong. Especially guys, no guys have talked to me since I´ve been here, except a select few...quite the opposite side of the spectrum compared to American boys.

After the first day, I set up a schedule with my English teacher, Sari. I now have 3 English classes, 2 music classes, a sports class, and an art class. Very nice, yes? The English is British, though so some things are different and odd to me, but Maiju told me most people want to learn American English. Things such as "w´s" are pronounced as "v"s. A major difference in our languages, which is why I think people consider it so hard to learn is because the Finns do not use pronouns. Everything is an "it". There is no he or she. It. So instead of saying "he left" it would be "left it" with an ending attached to the verb (which I do not know right now) My Finnish lessons start soon, though, I believe, so hopefully I will be getting better! The kids at school are surprised even now when I say "Moi!" (hi) because they know that their language is difficult. I ride my bike to school every day and it takes me about 10 minutes and I go through the center of Lieto (which is quite small) in sun, rain, or snow...which is why I am not so open to welcoming winter this year! There is even a big hill before I get to school which is the icing on the cake- and hopefully not the ice that my bike tires will slip on!

One thing I have noticed is that the Finns, as quiet as they may be, are very genuine. They will talk to me even though they are scared of me (sad to say) but their sincerity really shows through and how they will take time out to help me, which is different in America. I have been telling my classmates that in America, everyone swarms around the foreign exchange kid the first week, then they literally become old news and get put on the backburner until it is convenient to be their friend again. This however, proves untrue in Finland. Some of my friends took me to Turku, the big and oldest city in Finland to have lunch (Subway!) and go shopping! Everyone I have talked to still notices me and talks to me, even if they are with their other friends. I have a rotary meeting today at 5 (quuite nervous) and I present a project I made to my English classes about myself, which will be nice considering their town has 15,000 people and I come from a city near 9 million people! Wish me luck! :)

My friends and I ate lunch by the river L t. R (Emilia-next host sister, Petra, Roosa, Maiju, myself)


Oh! And I am now addicted to Finnish chocolate (Karl Fazer milk chocolate to be exact), German mineral water, and rye bread. That is all.

Welcome to Finland!

Try and find me! (Peace!)

I arrived in Finland about 3 weeks ago and have been taking in new information like water into a sponge every day so this blog may be quite lengthy, as I have much to tell.

I began with a week long language camp in Karkku, Finland (similar to the Waukegean of Illinois) at an Evangelical High School Camp. There was about 150 of us students from all over the world. At the camp, we took lessons about 4 hours a day, two before and 2 after lunch.  We were by a lake and got to go rowing but there was awful algae that was supposedly toxic, but the dare devils swam in it, anyways. The food there was amazing. We also went as a group to a big city called Tampere. Compared to Chicago, it was quiet, people did not say excuse me when bumped in to or thank you when a door was held for them. It was a drastic difference. Plus there was no room to walk on the sidewalks, unlike Chicago, also. Another difference was that everyone was Finnish. And I know this sounds quite blunt, but even in a town of 17,000, Lindenhurst has quite the diversity of people for being smaller. Literally, I cannot count on my hands or feet how many people with blonde hair and blue eyes I saw! Going to Tampere during the camp showed me truly how diverse Americans are. 

Another thing during the camp was that we were allowed to go in the sauna with our bathing suits on (very rare)! There was separate boys and girls saunas and the last night a few of us went completely naked, which is widely accepted in this country, so it was not a big deal. It is funny to me, though. Finns will not speak to people they don´t know, nor will they say excuse me if they bump in to someone, but they will sit in a room sweating until their skin falls off (actually happened to a Finn during a recent sauna competition) completely naked! It is quite strange. The people at my camp were spread throughout Finland and only a few of us went to District 1410 (my district). But during trips such as Lapland in December, all of our districts will get together to travel to the land of Santa! The camp was definetely beneficial in the fact that it opened all of our minds to a completely new culture and filled in some color on our foreign and blank slates.

A market in Tampere

The lake at camp with.....

Toxic blue algae =( No swimming for us

The camp, main hall. My dorm was attached to this. Nice dorms. No Air conditioning but it was quite cool at night.