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.