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