tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51749874550659210672024-02-18T18:08:42.883-08:00Christina To FinlandA year of high school in a foreign country from an american exchange student's eyesAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-68728835422907153232013-04-29T14:14:00.000-07:002013-04-29T14:14:42.669-07:00Eurotour Part Two! So after Copenhagen, the tour headed south to Germany where we stayed the night in Bremin, without seeing anything and then made our way to the Netherlands.<br />
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The Netherlands was probably my favorite country we visited on the tour. I loved the country side, the people, the sights, and I loved Amsterdam. We stayed one night outside of Amsterdam, exploring a clog factory and a cheese factory, (which was like heaven for me, because I had eaten so much gouda cheese on exchange it was better than the chocolate factory) we tried many free samples of cheese and looking back, I regret that I didn't buy anything because it was so delicious, but it gives me a great reason to return to the Netherlands.<br />
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This is a wall of cheese, I am pretty sure that Heaven looks a lot like this. </div>
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So the day after that we visited Amsterdam, which I think is probably the most beautiful city I have ever been to. I loved all the canals, the water, the houses and pretty much everything about the city. It was my favorite city that we visited in the tour. We took a boat tour from the canals, which was beautiful and a great way to see the city. We also went to the Anne Frank Hus, which was incredible to visit. After visiting all these famous places where history happened, it is so strange to stand there and imagine that so and so many years ago, something big happened there. I have experienced this every famous place I have gone to.<br />
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Right before we visited every big city or place, we were able to watch movies about or taking place at the spots, which was really nice. We watched Anne Frank before Amsterdam, Moulin Rouge and Midnight in Paris before Paris. Marie Antoinette before Versailles, and Romeo and Juliet before Verona. It is always really cool to watch a good movie and then visit where it was filmed the next day. Although the Leonardo DiCaprio version of Romeo and Juliet was not filmed in Verona....<br />
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The night after Amsterdam we stayed in a city in between Amsterdam and Belgium. This hotel was the nicest that we stayed at, probably because it wasn't right next to a big city. I remember this being the best hotel from the trip, but not much else.<br />
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The next day we woke up, clambered aboard our dearest busses and then made our way south into Belgium. We stayed in Brussels for several hours, seeing the famous places in down town, and eating inexpensive but rich waffles that eventually made me feel like I wanted to hurl. It was really awesome that as we made our way south, the prices of things steadily decreased.<br />
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Nothing like being a total and complete tourist....</div>
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The best part of Brussels though, was seeing Manequin Piss, which is the statue of the little boy peeing, which I expected to be a lot bigger, but it was still pretty awesome. </div>
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After a guided tour and some free time to gorge on chocolate and fruit covered waffles, we boarded the bus again and left Belgium, traveling South to Paris. As sad as we were to have spend less than a half a day in Brussels, everybody was anxiously anticipating Paris. I was especially....</div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-35733353993948359152013-04-03T14:06:00.001-07:002013-04-03T14:06:14.372-07:00Eurotour Part OneThe Eurotour started with a night over in the ferry to Stockholm. This was a late night and early morning, mostly because all the exchange students wanted to spend time together. Fortunately I had been on the ferry once before back in November so it wasn't a new experience for me, so I didn't need to explore the entire ship. Getting up at five in the morning the next day wasn't a great experience but we managed to get up and get to breakfast and enjoy the beautiful view of the fjord into Stockholm in the morning.<br />
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I had been to stockholm in November, but it was very dark, so it was my first time seeing the city from a distance in the light, and it was beautiful! Unfortunately our tour didn't include much of Sweden so as soon as we got off the ferry our bus drove us south and we were at the southern most point by Dinnertime.<br />
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Sweden from the Road </div>
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After Dinner we took another ferry to Denmark, which was only about an hour, and enjoyable until the end of the ride when Monica and I got lost and well....I don't like to think about that...</div>
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We took the bus to Copenhagen where we found our hotel, then in the evening we went to Tivoli, the world famous amusement park. Our entrance to the park was paid for, but the rides were expensive, and I was a cheapskate. So I didn't go on any of the rides, but I had fun exploring the park and taking pictures with a fellow cheapskate. The park became absolutely gorgeous after the sun started going down (the sun going down actually shocked us because we were so used to the finnish sun setting very late, and we weren't even that farther south, but it sure seemed like it). We spoke a lot of finnish when we were going through the different shops, which was a lot of fun, because we knew nobody would understand us, except maybe the other exchange students in the park. </div>
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The next day we got a guided tour of the city in our buses. This was a great way to see the city, stopping and getting out at the famous places, and we got to see a lot. I finally saw the little mermaid statue, whose fake statue I have seen in the Copenhagen Airport every time I have had a layover there during summers I went to Norway. I was really happy to see the real one finally! </div>
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For some reason we decided to make a pyramid....</div>
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We found the statue that was a part of the latest season of the amazing race and we had a lot of fun posing next to it and realizing that the amazing race was here! We actually found a lot of places the amazing race was during our whole tour, and since we are travelers ourselves, everyone's a big fan of the amazing race.</div>
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We were in Copenhagen on June fifth, which happens to be their constitution day (kinda like our July 4) so all the danish flags were flying and everyone was inside at home enjoying their day off, so the city wasn't as crowded as normal. </div>
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Later we had some free time in Copenhagen before we drove in the bus some more and got on another short ferry ride headed for Germany!</div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-66325138615027928782013-03-26T19:25:00.000-07:002013-03-26T19:25:39.386-07:00Top Ten Moments of EurotourEurotour is a trip that Rotary Youth Exchange Finland offers to all the inbound exchange students, and there are about 90 spots open for first come first serve. But it is an optional trip and costs an arm and a leg. I of course could never pass up such an opportunity so I paid and signed up as soon as I could. So at the start of June I set off with 87 other exchange students, two buses (with two bus drivers), two chaperones and four rotex (former exchange students from finland that actually did the chaperones' jobs), I think the chaperones just went along because some people might frown upon sending 87 exchange students across Europe with hardly any adults, so Rotary provided the bare minimum, two adults that didn't really do anything.<br />
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I was lucky because the actual tour started in my city of Turku. Other exchange students who lived on the other side of finland had to take ten hour trains before the tour even started, whereas I had to take a ten minute drive from my host parents. The tour started in the evening, so I invited some of the arriving exchange students to my house for the day, since the needed a place to hang out for several hours before the tour started.<br />
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The beginning of the tour was actually the overnight cruise to stockholm (which resulted in very little sleep for me that night), so the meeting place for the tour was in the ferry terminal, and it was such a great moment seeing all the exchange students that I hadn't seen since the Lapland tour in December. We had such a great time even in the first few minutes of fooling around in the ferry terminal waiting for the start of the tour.<br />
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The next two and a half weeks spent on a bus cruising around the continent was probably the best two and half weeks of my life. Before I get into great details about the whole trip I have created a countdown of the best and worst moments of Eurotour.<br />
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<b>10</b> The complete lack of sleep we got on Eurotour (worst)<br />
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Every morning we got up mad early, which was absolutely awful. It wasn't that we always got into the hotel late either, because we always had plenty of opportunity to sleep in the evenings, but of course we stayed up late nearly every evening. Both my roommate and I (she was Monica Weller, whom I have mentioned before, and I have a link to her blog on the side) had a lot of trouble getting up in the mornings and sometimes we would try and go back to sleep even after our wake up call. Once we did that and then I woke up in what seemed like a minute but I looked at the clock and shot up, saying "Monica, the bus leaves in ten minutes!" We didn't get much breakfast that morning... Fortunately, the bus rides were long and we had plenty of time to catch up on our sleep then.<br />
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Trying to catch up on sleep</div>
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<b>9</b> Spending time in Hotel Rooms (Best) </div>
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Every Night Monica and I would spend a lot of time our Hotel room fooling around, a common guest in our room was our friend from Mexico, Sebastian, who you see in the above picture. Monica and Sebastian were probably the people I spent the most time with on the tour and we had such a great time every night.<br />
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Our Hotel Room in Paris, Sebastian, Me and Raphael, and Monica is taking the picture</div>
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<b>8 </b>Getting Lost in Copenhagen (worst)<br />
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This is definitely a moment I would like to forget....While getting off the ferry in Copenhagen, Monica and I took a wrong turn and got lost, with nothing but a camera, no phone or numbers or anything. This was definitely one of the worst ten minutes of my life. We got yelled at when we finally found the bus, but I was more relived than anything, and when we finally got on the bus, everyone cheered and clapped for us, because we'd gotten lost (and been the first ones to do so, since this was the second day of the tour).<br />
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<b>7 </b>Things we do in Austria (best)<br />
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My three hours in Austria makes this list because it was one of the first times during the tour which I spent with Sam, the other exchange student from my school and we had become such good friends over the year, and throughout the tour we hadn't spent much time together, so we got separated from some others in Austria, and went off to have lunch, and we found such a good deal on lunch too! Three Euros for a gigantic Schnizel Burger, which was awesome!<br />
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The burger was seriously the size of my head!</div>
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<b>6</b> Getting Sunburned in Monaco (worst)</div>
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I hate sunburn...and since I have such pale skin, I always need to have sunscreen on if I am in the sun for even a few minutes. The day we went to Monaco, I didn't really think that we were going to be in the sun for all that long, and boy was I wrong...Advice for everyone..if you have pale skin and planning a trip to the french riviera, pack sunscreen, and never forget to apply! All of my shoulders were sunburn, except for the strap marks from my shirt, which were very clear...</div>
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It was horrible...</div>
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<b>5 </b>Speaking Finnish and Confusing Everyone (best)</div>
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Because Americans have somewhat of a reputation abroad, some of the other americans on the trip decided that we would try to speak finnish to each other sometimes, and it was a lot of fun, because it was basically a guarantee that nobody would understand us. Later on we actually used it for safety because in the big city of Paris, we didn't want people to understand us when we were talking about where we were going and what we were doing. </div>
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<b>4</b> The Paris Subway (worst)</div>
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Since Paris is such an expensive city, our hotel was somewhat cheap and not in a very good neighborhood of the city. The first night we were in Paris, it was our job to get back to the hotel on our own, using the subway. Since we went to the top of the Eiffel tower in the evening, it took us several hours, and we weren't on the subway back to the hotel until one in the morning, and this was before we had realized that we shouldn't shout to each other what stop we are getting off at in english, so there were some very suspicious people on the subway that caused us to start speaking in finnish, and eventually we had to get off at a different stop then we had originally planned because we were so paranoid that some of the people on the subway were going to follow us. This was moment was tied for worst moment of the trip with getting lost.<br />
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<b>3 </b>The Bus Rides (Best)<br />
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Some of my favorite memories from the trip are actually from the bus rides, which were spend talking, sleeping, laughing and every other great thing you can do with some of the coolest people in the world. The two buses on the trip had a great rivalry, which was so much fun, and in the end some of my best friends are those that I spent time with on that bus. The bus became our home and our fellow eurotourers became our family.<br />
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<b>1 and 2</b> Saying Goodbye (Best and Worst)</div>
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The last night everyone on the tour got together to say goodbye. It is a custom for the exchange students that are soon leaving (such as me) to give gifts to the australians that came in January and are only had-way through their exchange. Usually these are goodbye gifts and come with lots of hugs and tears. This time wasn't any different. In the end when we all sang a song to the Australians, I seriously burst out crying in the first line of the song and couldn't stop. This was followed by many more tears and hugs with my fellow exchangers. I knew that I wouldn't be seeing a lot of them for a very long time, if ever. Saying goodbye to these people is probably the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life. All these exchangers will always be my family. </div>
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I look back at Eurotour with so much fondness. Every now and then when I accidentally open my pictures from Eurotour, I get sucked into all the memories until I have looked over every picture twice. I love talking to all my friends from the trip because we could gab and gab about the trip forever and never run out of things to talk about, or even if we did run out of things to talk about, we would never get bored talking about it. I think that Eurotour has been the best part of my life and always will be. </div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-87397590130027624762013-03-14T20:19:00.000-07:002013-03-14T20:19:28.843-07:00The End of my Finnish School ExperienceI realize that I haven't posted in a long time, but here I am again, I have been meaning to post since I have been back in the US but I have been busy (I am also a member of the world wide Procrastination club!). After being back in the states for so long my english is most definitely better than it was when I last posted, but alas my finnish has dwindled! Which makes me sad to the end of the Earth. <div>
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I will start with where I left off. </div>
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The last several weeks of my time at Luostarivuoren Lukio were some of the greatest in my life. But these great weeks were draped in sadness of the knowledge in the back of my mind that I would soon have to leave all that I knew behind and return to that place I "lived" in before I truly lived. </div>
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There is nothing worse than a goodbye. </div>
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The last weeks of school I spent a lot of time by the river with my friends, enjoying the spring/summer, and admiring how green everything had suddenly become. I also became OBSESSED with Eurovision...To this day I am still disappointed that Sweden won...</div>
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I had to do a couple short speeches in finnish for my school and for Rotary. The speech for Rotary was long, but I wrote it all myself, and surely enough I had many grammatical errors, but I didn't want anyone to correct me, because I wanted Rotary to know that it was MY finnish that I was speaking and nobody else wrote my speech for me (because I know a lot of exchange students who did that in the past). I wore my beautiful (and heavy) Rotary blazer while I presented and I talked about everything from my trip to Estonia to how I though the rain was exciting when I first arrived. I was so depressed when I walked out of that door afterwards, because I knew it was my last Rotary meeting, and I was so sad at the thought of no longer being that club's exchange student. And of course I would miss the delicious food every Tuesday. </div>
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My speech for my school was a little different. Different in that I cried many times during the writing process. It was late at night and my emotions were high and I couldn't bare the thought of leaving behind all these wonderful people that I have met! I would miss everything about it like to the smiles I have gotten from people I barely know and the waves on the street from friends I talked to six months ago, but we still wave whenever we see each other. It hurts me to think about the idea of no longer being the center of attention as the strange and shiny toy from another country that everybody asks questions and is so friendly to. </div>
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Thankfully I managed to not cry during my speech, because that would have been a bit embarrassing...I actually made a lot of people in the room laugh with a couple of the jokes I made, which was a great moment because finnish audiences are the hardest to present in front of. </div>
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A bit grainy photo of the three exchange students in Luostis 2011-2012</div>
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Ykis paras asia tapahtuu minulle koulun viime viikkossa. Robin, Suomen Justin Bieber, mene luostarivuori ennen lukio (middle school) ja lounsassa yks päivä mä nähdän hän ja minä juoksin hänelle ja kysyäin englaneksi "Can I have your augograph??" ja hän sano "Mitä?" ja mä selitän että mä olin vaihto-oppilas, ja hän antoi mä hänen allekirjoitus! Best moment of my exchange right there...I set out from the beginning of my exchange saying to my friends "I am going to get his autograph or else I am not going back to the US". It was kind of symbolic that it happened in the last couple weeks of school. </div>
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One of my last finnish school lunches...My friends were embarrassed that day that I was taking pictures of my lunch..but that's what they get for being friends with the exchange student </div>
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I should also note how obsessed I was with the Finnish hockey when the world cup was in Helsinki. It was amazing watching Finland play, I loved it so much, and I died a little inside when they lost and Russia won...that seriously killed me a little. It was a bit scary when Sam and I were in town on the day of the USA-Finland game and we were wearing our american flags and everything, just to be trolls. But then USA lost and everything went as planned. My host father did threaten that I would sleep outside if US won that game...Was he serious? We will never know....</div>
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My host parents gave me the job of baker for my host brother's graduation party, which was the day after school got out. That meant 200 pulla. All before 12:00. Being the cook that I was, I demanded of myself they be fresh, so I would make them the same day. On top of that, it was the day I left for Eurotour, so I invited several of my friends from all over finland to come to my host brother's party (since we left in the evening) They came over and it was all a good time. Although it was one of the most busiest mornings, I really enjoyed making 200 pulla because in the end, I can say that I made 200 pulla in just four hours. </div>
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That was the day I had to say goodbye to my very good friend Winnie from Taiwan, who would be leaving for Taiwan when I was on Eurotour. It made me very sad to say goodbye, but I plan on making a trip to Taiwan in the not-so-distant-future, so who knows when I will see her again! </div>
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That evening I left for my Eurotour, which was, as I expected, the greatest two and a half weeks of my entire life.....</div>
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more on that soon.....</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-62254162173009286072012-05-28T07:40:00.000-07:002012-05-28T07:40:47.007-07:00Exchange in a NutshellI was making my presentation and was going through all the pictures from my exchange year. It has been making me very nostalgic, and depressed in a way, but they are all good memories, so here are some of the photos I have dug up from the entire year<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKCpaGn3DrfvELBj_KDV2ysDk_VxxRFSEAqF8Xoxv0GozNNwwY1h376cDvPKj7rOXxRfrQgqd_XMd5zL1K6p7hBi-R4TS8_6Dvltvn4vxjICH0CpNK4h3cBKHJOqpnk2QGXAtVqDqnN_g/s1600/DSC02210.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKCpaGn3DrfvELBj_KDV2ysDk_VxxRFSEAqF8Xoxv0GozNNwwY1h376cDvPKj7rOXxRfrQgqd_XMd5zL1K6p7hBi-R4TS8_6Dvltvn4vxjICH0CpNK4h3cBKHJOqpnk2QGXAtVqDqnN_g/s320/DSC02210.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-41148226495688106202012-05-12T14:18:00.001-07:002012-05-12T14:18:49.659-07:00Waiting for my Hair to Dry...Since I just dyed my hair the other day, and then tonight decided to take a shower at 10:30 at night, I can't really go to sleep with wet hair without some dye getting on my sheets, so I am waiting for my hair to dry before I go to sleep, and being an environmentalist, I don't really use a hair dryer often, so I am staying up...and that means I have time to kill, instead of doing a whole list of other things that I have to do, I am going to blog! Since I just uploaded a bunch of pictures from my camera anyways.<br />
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Having recently lost my camera in the picnics of Vappu, then being depressed about it for a week and then being the happiest exchange student in the world when I found out that someone had turned it in, I now realize that I need to take a lot more pictures, though I think I would have started taking a bunch more pictures lately, even if I hadn't lost my camera for a week, because this is my last full month in Finland, so I need to take pictures of every place that I go, in case it is among the last times that I see said places and things. So here are some pictures from my life lately....<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj8J5hWSYsb39MsBu6fbgHdr1NSGu5EbcBc-Lq0OmvCIO2KMdo1mMKpEc3mrksph2sUOvAI8RY-XJuEJ5P8jXgX2uFE5szWHINbdr9UvO_Il8BRmZ63EZUtn_aXXihOMWaNbxDnCqDQy8/s1600/295094_3122978120284_1439541787_32128776_1281744776_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj8J5hWSYsb39MsBu6fbgHdr1NSGu5EbcBc-Lq0OmvCIO2KMdo1mMKpEc3mrksph2sUOvAI8RY-XJuEJ5P8jXgX2uFE5szWHINbdr9UvO_Il8BRmZ63EZUtn_aXXihOMWaNbxDnCqDQy8/s320/295094_3122978120284_1439541787_32128776_1281744776_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Finnish pride...</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp3TIoSzOcUUZH2KChOQEFbV6kvvAI0E9IP5l0OW_2TTK8h0qllrp117ubf-266VdOxHFMn804wXZ5vu669rvscU71VQShoGTCZcmBPaKy3SAiMJVl8ER2xGuVbzSDZIlPbFJOAG6ElDg/s1600/301813_10150823605129475_756494474_9952274_2058792138_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp3TIoSzOcUUZH2KChOQEFbV6kvvAI0E9IP5l0OW_2TTK8h0qllrp117ubf-266VdOxHFMn804wXZ5vu669rvscU71VQShoGTCZcmBPaKy3SAiMJVl8ER2xGuVbzSDZIlPbFJOAG6ElDg/s320/301813_10150823605129475_756494474_9952274_2058792138_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Exchange Students</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgu04lnoHydyJpV37SSWkQpPuLzAaWfaH3qV_05MEHmZHEeZMxEq_4LaUT-TCkjExA4GO8HUpt2-PGfAO7ZcedqrWwXk7STrC1rA7pzOCeItF1g9sbcHF4Gnh5OIzC7bihZd6HBizhYqU/s1600/546643_3117550904607_1439541787_32127180_1632135993_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgu04lnoHydyJpV37SSWkQpPuLzAaWfaH3qV_05MEHmZHEeZMxEq_4LaUT-TCkjExA4GO8HUpt2-PGfAO7ZcedqrWwXk7STrC1rA7pzOCeItF1g9sbcHF4Gnh5OIzC7bihZd6HBizhYqU/s320/546643_3117550904607_1439541787_32127180_1632135993_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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We are spelling out "Finland" I am part of the "N"</div>
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Go Finland!</div>
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At School</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOUbKoPm3QJT-QK-i6gwl0jtaHPFOvjYMhsd1ItkDeyAapOxJCupBmFl6IAYr3TGdlGME9zrqZzk6Drc-H7kdTo6kb09LC_WkBsaWkla_m__Nb_ILJgeI6UaM-9DO4d1V-qt3Zo7snXz8/s1600/DSC05644.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOUbKoPm3QJT-QK-i6gwl0jtaHPFOvjYMhsd1ItkDeyAapOxJCupBmFl6IAYr3TGdlGME9zrqZzk6Drc-H7kdTo6kb09LC_WkBsaWkla_m__Nb_ILJgeI6UaM-9DO4d1V-qt3Zo7snXz8/s320/DSC05644.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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My street...Summer is coming! It looks a lot more green than it did when I arrived!</div>
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My computer</div>
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My desk..a bit messy...but I finally cleaned it today! But the main thing is that I still have my gift bag from Fazer</div>
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In my room, my computer again, an important part of life!</div>
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My school, unfortunately ALL of my classes are on the top floor...</div>
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During art class</div>
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My boyfriend is Karl Fazer...</div>
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Trying to journal...but the internet distracts me..</div>
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And so does this chocolate....</div>
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You know where my priorities are...</div>
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Turku Symphony Orchestra building</div>
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Finnkino..the only movie theater in Turku</div>
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Good news! My hair is dry now! Which means I can go to sleep!</div>
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Stay tuned for next post! </div>
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Seuraava posti tulee pian! </div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-50302570265516392782012-05-11T10:38:00.000-07:002012-05-11T10:38:14.766-07:00Lately....<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It has been forever since I last blogged!!!!! I know! But in my defense, I have been busy, like really busy! But I know I have to blog, so I am just going to go through some things that are going on. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It is May! Which is awful! Because that means that I only have two and a half months left of exchange, which is a thought that is looming over me like crazy! It sucks that I am leaving soon. I really don’t want to go back, though some times I find myself thinking that it isn’t all that bad, but most of the time I think that going back is bad. School is ending soon, which is terrible! Especially because usually May is one of my favorite months of the year because school is wrapping up, and now I hate it for exactly that reason! But oh well, Eurotour is coming! Which starts exactly the day after school ends, but I will tell you more about that later on! </span></div>
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This was a actually from a while ago, I haven't imported all my May photos yet, this one is from April sometime</div>
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On the first of May it was a holiday in Finland, so people got off of work and school. It is international labor day, and Finland is one of the many countries that celebrates it. But Finland's tradition on May Day is very different from other countries. It is called Vappu in finnish. On the 30 of April, every one goes to the city center, and there were many people there when we went. There was at least 30, 000 people there. They completely covered the square and the hill next to the square, and then at exactly 6:00 in the evening, everyone who has every graduated from High School puts on their graduation hats (it is very traditional to keep your graduation hat here) and the graduation hats are different from american hats. They almost resemble sailor hats. So they are all white. It is really cool to see all those people with white hats in the center, wearing them. And it is tradition for you to wear your graduation hats for the rest of the night on the 30 of April and all of the first of May. So then after everyone puts their hats on in the center, people make their way to parties and party hard for the rest of the night, and late into the night. Many many people get drunk, and everyone always has a glass of champagne at all times. I have come to the conclusion that Vappu in Finland is by far the greatest day in the world's champagne industry. </div>
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So then the next day, people spend the day in the parks, in picnics, and the parks were crowded! I went with some of my finnish friends and one of my exchange friends from a small town outside Turku, who came for the day. After the picnics my exchange friend and I went to the carnival that was in town and that was exciting. </div>
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This doesn't even begin to show how many people were in that park! But my camera disappeared before I could take any more pictures..</div>
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Unfortunately I lost my camera in the picnics of Vappu, putting a damper on what would otherwise be a perfect day, but thankfully a week later we checked with the police and someone had turned it in!!! Which was just incredible and I was so thankful! I still find myself staring at it, thinking "is this real? Did I lose my camera there and someone actually turned it in??" Now I am taking a lot of pictures! Though this leads to tons and tons of eye rolls of my finnish friends, and even some of my exchange friends, I understand the most importance of the taking pictures, now that I have been without my camera for a week </div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Lately I have been baking Pulla, which is a very finnish bread. I now am baking it every friday, as to prepare myself for when I bake it in the states, and everyone will be at awe of the amazing finnish foods! </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I went to the Karl Fazer chocolate factory the other day. For those of you who aren’t finnish, Karl Fazer is a finnish chocolate, sweets, bread, and other delicious food company. The most famous of all their food is their milk chocolate, which I know I have mentioned in this blog as being something I spend a lot of my money on...and it is safely said the greatest chocolate in the history of the world. Period. No question. So it was amazing to go to the factory and see where the headquarters are. We were able to eat as much chocolate as our stomachs could hold, and that was amazing! Though, I was expecting more of a Willy Wonka thing, I learned that it is indeed just a factory...nothing all that magical about it..though when you taste the chocolate you think otherwise...</span></div>
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Om nom nom..chocolate...and even better, all you can eat chocolate! </div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The World championships of Ice Hockey is happening right now, and since Finland won last year, the games are in Finland. Finnish flags are everywhere and there is so much advertising and crazy Finland things around. It is very exciting! And Finland is very good! Hopefully they will win again this year! </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Nähdän mun paras ystävä Coloradosta huomenna. Hän on Monica Weller, sä voit nähdä hänen bloggi täällä. Olen onnelinen että nähdän hän, koska viime aika nähdäin hän oli Tammikuu! Hän on kuin mun sisko! :D Myös Eurotour:lle me olemme ydessä huonessa ja emme nukua koska me puhu niin paljon! </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Pian mul on esitys Rotarylla! On suomeksi....ja mul on pelkää! </span></div>
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See you all soon!!!!</div>
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Nähdään!!!</div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-58879881200392457562012-04-10T06:40:00.000-07:002012-04-10T06:40:23.187-07:00Koeviikko Update<br />
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It has been a while...I realize....</div>
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But I will try to post more, or at least some....</div>
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Lately I have been pretty busy. A lot has happened since last post. I have switched host families, which is great. I am now in my third and last family. It makes me quite sad that I am in my last part of exchange, but there is also a part of me that is quite relieved that I won't have to stress over moving again. Not that it is an incredibly stressful process, but packing is a pain, and there is always the fact that you are moving in with complete strangers. Though I have to say that it is quite an amazing thing that exchange students do, and that is move in with complete strangers, and most of the time, feel quite at home within a couple days. When you think about it, it is a bit strange. Now I have the shortest bus ride that I have had in all my host families. It is only 15 min, and 10 min by car, so very close to the city, which is nice. </div>
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Moving</div>
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Spring appears to be coming. I have stopped wearing my thick winter jacket, and I am now wearing my converse again. The snow is all melted, and it is starting to be warm again. I just started my last jakso (semester) in school. Which is incredibly depressing for me, and everyone else in school just loves it. </div>
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I just had test week, and I took two tests, and slept the rest of the week. The first test I took was spanish, which naturally I aced. The second test was biology, which took a bit more studying. But when I got to the test, the questions were a lot easier than I thought they would be, though I still don't know what I got, but I think that I passed. Both tests were in english, but the study material was in finnish....</div>
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This weekend was Easter, which was nice because in Finland they get off school Friday and Monday, and since I had only two tests during the test week, I had several more days of break than everyone else. On Monday we went and had a late lunch on one of the restaurant boats that float on the river in town. Eating on one of those was on my bucket list of things to do in Finland, so I am happy we went there. Also a finnish easter tradition is to eat Mämmi. Mämmi is one of the most finnish foods in the world, and most people hate it and think it is disgusting. Most finns even hate it. Everyone has told me that I have to try it, and I did try it (with tons and tons of sugar, at their instruction) and I didn't think it was all that bad...I was expecting it to taste really strong of crap, from everyone's descriptions. But it wasn't really that strong of a taste (though that maybe because of how much sugar I put on it). It is not my favorite food in the world, but it isn't really that bad at all. </div>
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Also on Monday, my host family and some of their friends and I, went to a movie called Iron Sky, which is a new finnish made movie. It was about Nazis from the moon, which sounds a bit stupid, but it was actually good. The actors spoke English and German, of course though, they had swedish and finnish subtitles, which got me through the german, alright. I thought that the movie's perception of americans really put it into perspective how americans are viewed by the rest of the world. Perspective that you cannot get from any Hollywood movie. </div>
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Iron Sky Trailer</div>
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<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-74489559406274265722012-03-30T04:55:00.000-07:002012-03-30T04:55:13.815-07:00EstoniaTwo weeks ago, I visited Tallinn, Estonia. Tallinn is a common weekend destination for many finns, since the ferry from Helsinki only takes 2 hours. I was excited to go to Estonia mostly for the sake of going, and I didn't really know what to expect, since I didn't really know anything much about Estonia, other than that it is full of Finnish tourists. When we got to Tallinn and started walking around in the old town, I was seriously amazed at how beautiful the city was. I think it was probably one of the most, if not, the most beautiful city I have ever been to. The old town was so beautiful that walking was almost difficult because it was cobblestone, and all I wanted to do was stare at the buildings throughout the old town, so I tripped several times.<br />
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We spent the weekend sightseeing in the old town, and eating in many restaurants. We went in celebration on my host mother's fiftieth birthday. </div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-35814796197153410902012-03-22T14:06:00.000-07:002012-03-22T14:06:00.075-07:00Vanhojen Tanssit Part 4Where I left off....<br />
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16.00-18.30<br />
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Everyone arrived at the place where we were dancing, we all admired each other's dress, got our shoes on, and then practiced some of the dances, and practiced how we would transition dances. Then we waited as families and onlookers poured into the stands surrounding the wooden stage.<br />
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18.30<br />
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Once the families were there, we all got into our lines and walked out on stage and then one of my friends, who was the host of the whole thing, said everyone's names in set of four and we would walk out into the middle of the stage with our partners and we would bow to the two crowds. Then once everyone's names were called we started our first dance, which we did quite well, and then onto the next one and the next one, and so on. I think we danced our best, more than any one of our practices. I mean I did make some stupid mistakes, as I always do, but overall it was good. Before I danced one of my friends told me that if you mess up a ton in practice that means you have no more mistakes to make when it comes to the real thing. Which I doubted at the time, but it turned out to be somewhat right! Hurray! There was a band there, they played the music to the dances, and it sounded good. After about two hours of dancing (and a break in the middle) we eventually danced the last dance and then it ended.<br />
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My partner and I</div>
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After that, some people went to parties, to clubs, to other people's houses, or back home. I went with my host family out to dinner, which was nice. Then we came home and I got out of my dress and makeup and went to bed (after several hours on Facebook)<br />
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Friday<br />
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10.00<br />
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I woke up this morning and got right back into my dress, which I remember thinking that it was a bit funny that I wore my dress for several hours yesterday and now I am getting right back into it again, kinda like this event just won't end (which is a good thing, because nobody wants it to end). I did my makeup, and knowing that I would be just going right back to the dance in the morning I had left my hair in last night, so this morning I didn't have to do anything more than spray a little hairspray on it. Then my host mother drove me to the same hotel as the dancing was at yesterday, and everybody else was there in their dresses and the boys in their tuxes. Some of the girl's hair and makeup wasn't as big as it was yesterday, because the main dance was yesterday night, and that was the most important part, whereas today was not as important. So the next two hours we seriously didn't do very much, other than hang around stage. There was a photo shoot going on for professional pictures, and we also took a group picture. But that only really took a couple minutes. But we hung around taking pictures with our own cameras as well, and talking. It was fun, a bit boring after two hours, but still fun. I kinda wondered why we didn't practice some more of the dances, but we didn't because yesterday was the most important thing, and today didn't matter that much, so we didn't need to practice.<br />
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Hanging Around</div>
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During the group picture photo shoot</div>
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More hanging around (we did this for like two hours!)</div>
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With some friends :D </div>
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12.00<br />
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Eventually we stopped doing nothing and the students from the school poured in. All the younger students from the hugh school and the middle school came and watched us dance. So we danced all the dances again, and it all went pretty well. I was so sad to dance though, because I knew that it was going to be one of my last time dancing, and I really didn't want it to end, because I have been practicing the dances since November, and they are so much fun to dance now that I am actually pretty good at them.<br />
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14.00<br />
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So then the dances ended, and people left, I hung around on stage with some of my friends for a little bit and then after that I got a ride with a couple other girls to a local nursing home, where about sixteen of us went and we performed the dances there, for some of the seniors. We went there, and at first we chilled, the staff there laid out some snacks (candy bars and juice) which was all attacked when we got there because we were all starving (or at least I attacked them). There were about 8 boys and 8 girls who went and danced at the old people's home. We all were volunteers, most of the people didn't want to go there because they just wanted to go home and be excited for the weekend (the weekend after the dances is full of partying) I was actually the first one to volunteer to go to the nursing home, but there were others. We didn't perform all of the dances, only about five, but it was still really fun, and I was really glad that I went, because it was more opportunity to dance!<br />
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Chilling before we danced </div>
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Those of us who went to the Nursing Home and danced</div>
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After that I got a ride to the center of town (I would have walked because the nursing home was so close to the center, but there was a blizzard out) and then I took the bus home. This was the second day in a row that I took the bus home wearing something out of the ordinary (a huge fur coat and a prom dress) but I didn't care.<br />
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When I got home I chilled out and looked over all my pictures, and I was sad because it was all over, and I didn't want it to be over. But alas, I had no choice. Overall I think that the last two days were some of the greatest days that I have had on my exchange, the whole experience of the dance was just so wonderful! It was definitely one of the highlights of the year.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-75949191634616773002012-02-17T11:06:00.001-08:002012-02-26T05:49:02.852-08:00Vanhojen Tanssit Part 3The Vanhojen Tanssi was AMAZING! It was such a great time! I enjoyed it a lot! And so much happened in the last two days! It will be hard to talk about everything but I will try....<br />
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So let's start with Thursday morning...<br />
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9.00 Torstai / Thursday<br />
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Thursday we didn't have any school. But I woke up and took the bus to school where we had a kielojuhla. This is a Luostarivuoren Lukio tradition, where there is coffee and a commemoration for the teachers, second and third year students. There were a couple speeches and all the third year students gave gifts to the teachers. People dressed in black and it was a little formal. Some of the first year students served us drinks and food. This was held because now the third year students are done with their school and now are supposed to spend all their time studying for the tests that come in the following months.<br />
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11.00<br />
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Lunch. I also wandered around the school aimlessly for a bit, but that isn't special, I often do that on a daily basis.<br />
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13.00<br />
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Penkkarit<br />
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A finnish tradition, and also among my favorites, is that when the third year students finish high school they climb onto the backs of huge trucks and then ride around town throwing candy to pedestrians. I was lucky enough to join the third years on their adventure on the back of the trucks 2012. Many of the third year students dress up. The theme this year was world history, so there was a variety of costumes, and a lot of really good ones. My exchange student closet doesn't have a lot that I can really make a costume, so I just put my broncos' jersey on over my down coat, and wore a green sparkly hat that I had left over from Halloween. The third years hang banners from the sides of the trucks. The banners have stuff written and drawn about the school and about the abis (seniors). At one-ish most of the students and teachers in the school (expect for some second years because many of them had hair appointments for the dance later that night) gathered out in front of the school and the third years clambered onto the trucks. Our school had four trucks filled with abis. Soon the trucks took off from the school and drove to the city center. All the students in the school followed the trucks and went down to the city center. Along with the many trucks from all the other high schools in Turku, we drove around the city square several times. A lot of people came out to see the trucks. Most people were in the city square. The Abis threw candy to all the kids in the crowd and shouted chants. It was really a fun time and I wish that the states had this kind of tradition because it was super awesome!<br />
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I was in this truck</div>
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The Trucks and Abis outside school before we left</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/xziLQs-hhhA?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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This is a video from when we took off from the school, and when we drove around to the city square. The last 5 or so minutes of this video we are standing still, but the first parts are really good and you can see my school very well. </div>
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I didn't take this video, but it shows well what was happening, two of the trucks in this video were from my school, other trucks were from other schools. </div>
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Here is a video from when my truck was in the center. You can see how many people were gathered in the center. </div>
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Though, after we had gone around the square 3 times my legs started to get soar from standing there, my voice was starting to give out from shouting so much, and it got a little cold....but it was still such a great time!<br />
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14.00-16.00<br />
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After the trucks dropped us off at the school I took the bus back home, I might've looked a little weird, taking the bus home in my broncos' jersey over my coat and my green hat, but I am quite sure that everyone on the bus knew what I had just come from. Most people stared, but a few gave me smiles. So then I walked home and got into my dress and did my hair and makeup. Many girls go to a salon for their hair and makeup, or spend a lot more time on it, but I did mine myself and really simple. But I also went on the trucks, which is not something that the second year girls do. On this day the second years get the dance and the third years get to go on the trucks. I am an exchange student and so I am trying to fit three years' worth of traditions into one, so I got to go to both, but that also meant a lot less time for me to spend on my hair/makeup. So I came home, got ready, shoved a potato into my mouth and then my host mom drove me to the place where our dance was taking place, which was a hotel/spa in the city.<br />
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I will have another post about the dance up soon<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-31516398334053840502012-02-17T10:48:00.000-08:002012-02-17T10:48:22.870-08:00Life in Photos LatelyHere are some pictures from life lately:<br />
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Studying? </div>
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Luostarivuori</div>
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Dance Class</div>
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Turku</div>
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My nemisis: The stairs by my school</div>
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(They are basically a ramp now because of how much snow is on them)</div>
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Dancing </div>
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Hesburger</div>
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Art Class</div>
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And More Dance Rehearsal</div>
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<span id="goog_1511778728"></span><span id="goog_1511778729"></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-5877929115490252742012-02-15T11:55:00.002-08:002012-02-15T11:55:23.423-08:00Vanhojen Tanssit Part 2Hello Again! How soon we see each other again! It is a bit surprising, considering my lack of blogging for such a while and now you will get one right after I just posted! Hurray for blogging!<br />
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So this post is a continuation of posts in a series about the Vanhojen Tanssit. For more information on this event look back at my first post about it all that I did in November.<br />
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So tomorrow is the big day! It is really exciting! Everyone is talking about the dance! We only have one more rehearsal left until we perform for a crowd, and that rehearsal will be right before the dance starts. The dance classes continued through December and January and finally ended last week. In short: I suck at the dances...I missed several classes in december, so I missed when we learned several of the dances and then I showed up and felt really mentally retarded after I had missed classes. But I caught on really quickly. The dances are pretty easy once you practice them a couple of times. It was a bit difficult because the teacher only spoke finnish, but I understood enough and watched others dancing so that I learned the dances. Dancing got a lot more fun once you knew the dances.<br />
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After the classes ended, we have had two big rehearsals with all 100 of the kids dancing in one room. Those have been a lot of fun, and a little confusing. But all is now in order. The last couple days I have been dancing with several people who do not know the dances all that well, and it makes me feel like I am not so mentally incapacitated! But it is also bad because I suck at the dances and when my partner sucks, I forget parts of the dance and we both suck badly together....it is unfortunate...But as I told my partner today "we just have to look like we know what we are doing..." maybe we actually have to be doing it right..but oh well, we will get more attention when people see us messing up all the time. Though not necessarily good attention...<br />
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I'm in this one! Look for the red hair</div>
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I finally met my partner today! I have not known who exactly it would be until now, for a while I thought I was going to get an Abi (senior) as my partner but then during last week's rehearsal we danced together and he was so tall, and I am so short that it didn't work out, and so I switched with another girl and now I have a boy from the finnish navy, which is what I wanted from the beginning! Yay! The boys from the navy are so handsome! They wear their uniforms, and are so good looking! Mostly all of them graduates from my school and are based here in Turku. They are awesome!<br />
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You can see the height difference of my first partner and I </div>
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So I finally have everything ready! I have my dress, my shoes (both from my host sisters) I have a fresh manicure and pedicure (complete with the spelling of Vanha Tanssi written on my hands) I have my makeup ready for tomorrow afternoon, I have a hairstyle chosen and practiced, and I am charging my camera battery for tomorrow since I know it will be a day of many pictures.<br />
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Tomorrow is going to be an exciting day! Stay tuned, my next post will be up soon!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-91950537788116463682012-02-14T13:07:00.000-08:002012-02-14T13:07:42.690-08:00Koeviikko UpdateMoi Taas! On koeviikko taas tai oli koeviikko viime viikko. Minulla oli yksi koe. Koe oli uskonto kurssissa. Uskonto kurssi oli englanti kielissa, sitten olin hyvä tuo kurssissa. Oli kiva kurssi. Tykkäin se. Ensi jaksossa minulla on englanti, kuvataide, biologia, ja espanja.<br />
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Joku asiat tapahtuu:<br />
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Nyt on uusi australialainen vaihto-opilaat suomessa. On jännittava! Vielä minä tarvitsen tavata eniten uusi vaihto-opilaat mutta olen pian.<br />
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Nyt olen KUUSITOISTA! Mun synytpäivä oli 24. Tammikuu. Nyt voin kertoa ihminen mun ikäva ilman outo näyttää! Yippie! Oli mun "sweeet sixteen" mutta kuustoista ei ole suuri asia suomessa. Tykkään mun synytpäivä nyt mul on vaihto-opilaat kaverit, koska olen kertoo hyvää syntypäivää kuin kymmenen kielissa!<br />
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Saain tanssi kurssi koulussa. Oli ihana! Rakastan tanssit kurssi! Nyt tiedän tanssit. Yllätys että minä oppin tanssit nopea! Koska tanssi opettaja ei puhu englanti, ja oppin tanssit koska katsoin. Niin mun tanssit on paska, mutta oh well! Minulla on lisää tanssit kanssa mun ensi postissa.<br />
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Minä menein kaks jääkiekko pelit. Oli ihana pelit. Yksi oli TPS-Rauman Lukko. Mun isäntä perhe on raumasta, niin he haluai Rauma voittaa, mutta peli oli turussa, niin oli paljon ihmiset että haluaivät TPS voittaa. Ja minä, tykkän Rauma, mutta haluain TPS voittaa. TPS voitta peli! Oli ihana! 4-3! Me istumme paikkassa missä kaikki suuri TPS penkki oli, ja oli hauska nähdää hullu olivät kun Lukko saai maalit. Oli hullu!<br />
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Minä myös menein peli Raumassa. Oli Lukko-Helsinki. Helsinki voitta. Oli surullinen. Penkki raumassa sanoi PALJON huono sanat! Oli tosi hullu!<br />
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Ok, so I am going to switch into English now, since it is much easier to use...I have to say that I type much faster when I am typing in english. But you should be proud of me because I only used Google translate like a couple times while writing that! Which is good!<br />
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So it was test week last week, Normally I do my test week update during test week, but I didn't find time to do that. So I am updating it now. Another period/semester/term (whatever you want to call it) ha come and gone! It is crazy how fast it has gone by! I only have two periods left until my exchange is almost over! Which scares me! I don't want this to ever end! So thinking about the end is scary! But anyways, back to what I have been doing lately. A lot has happened, at the same time that nothing big and noteworthy has happened...it is more like a bunch of little amazing things happen every day, things that aren't really worth putting in my blog. But here are some things that have happened:<br />
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I went to a couple ice hockey games! They were pretty awesome, the atmosphere was really nice, and I can see myself becoming a big ice hockey fan when I get back (though lately I have been thinking that there are a lot of things that I will become when I get back, so I am not sure if a huge ice hockey fan is one of them, but you never know...) I went to one game that was in Turku. It was a Turku TPS vs. Rauma Lukko (those are the two teams). My host parents are both from Rauma (a town a little ways north of Turku) and so they were rooting for Rauma, but I have to say that I was rooting for Turku TPS because I like Turku so much, but I like Rauma so of course I wouldn't have had a problem if they won. We sat in the section where there were a lot of Hardcore TPS fans, so it was funny how they reacted when something bad happened for TPS. They were shouting loudly in finnish the entire games, and I recognized several cuss words thrown quite a few times. But TPS won that game, which was awesome!<br />
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I also went to a game in Rauma and it was Lukko against Helsinki. It was a bit different because the stadium was a lot older, and the atmosphere was a bit different, but it was still a fun game. I thought that the TPS fans said a lot of bad words, but they were nothing compared to the Lukko fans. Lukko lost that game, so their fans were furious. It is funny how ice hockey games are such a family thing, yet the words that the fans use are so terrible! But then again, this is Finland, and cussing is not as big of a deal here as it is in the US.<br />
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So also now I am 16! Yay! Now I can tell people my age and they won't give me weird looks (which are a lot more common than you would think, not many 15 year olds go on exchange)! I didn't do anything special for my birthday, which is quite lame for it being my sweet sixteen, but I don't really care, I think I will have a sweet seventeen when I get back so it doesn't matter all that much. But my exchange birthday was also really nice too, because I was wished happy birthday in so many different languages!<br />
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My cake</div>
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So now I have already started my new schedule at school. It is pretty nice. Though I am sad to say goodbye to some of my old classes. I really liked a couple of them. But hopefully my new classes will be just as nice. I took the test in one of my classes this last test week. I took it in my religion class, because the class had been taught in english, so I really didn't have an excuse not to take the test. It was good though, I think I did well, though who knows yet?<br />
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In the new period I am taking Two english classes, art, spanish, and biology. The only class that I think will be any difficulty for me will be the biology class. I was going to take math, but I chickened out, and decided to take another english class. English class is nice. I mostly just read things out loud for the rest of the class so they can listen to how a native speaker would say something. It is nice, better than english class at home where we write essays....haha! Spanish is pretty easy because it is a low level of spanish and I have already studied it.<br />
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My life lately..summed up in several objects</div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-60556198964664435432012-01-21T08:41:00.000-08:002012-01-21T08:41:23.985-08:00Because it has been a while...Hey everyone, it has been almost a month since I last updated, and I know that I shouldn't go so long in between posts, so here is a new one for you.<br />
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Not all that much big and noteworthy things have happened to me lately. It is really really hard to believe that it is almost the end of january! It really seems like January just started. This means that I am halfway through my exchange! I already have my departure date for when I go back! Which depresses me beyond compare. I think about going back to my life in Colorado, and as much as I like home, I am such a different person here than I was there. I have changed so much, that going back to my high school seems like a nightmare. I have moved on from that part of my life, and now I know the day where I go back to it. It is really scary. But I still have a while before I go back, and I am told that as fast as this half goes, it is the better half, so I am looking forward to that. For all of you at home, Mark your calendars, I return to Summit County on the 27th of July.<br />
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And the end of January means....my birthday is coming up! I have been looking forward to this day, because finally I will be able to tell people my age without getting weird looks from everyone. That is because I am technically not even old enough to be in finnish high school. And it seems like half the people who go on exchange to Finland are 18. Sadly I will only be turning 16, and therefore still won't be able to do the same stuff as all the other exchange students, but at least I am older...And it is my sweet sixteen, which is not a very big deal in Finland, 18 is the big deal in Finland because everything becomes legal so that is when you party. I find it a little sad that I will be celebrating my sixteenth in a country that it isn't a big deal, and then when I celebrate my eighteenth, I will also be in a country that it doesn't matter...so I get no big birthday bashes....but I may celebrate big on my seventeenth and make it a big deal. Just for the party....and of course I know that the summer after I turn 18 I will be abroad, so then I will party.<br />
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So anyways, January, what has happened? Well for starters I went to my first presidential debate. No, not american...finnish. Which is something that I never though would happen..my first live presidential debate and it is in a foreign country in a language that I don't understand...you could say that I never saw that coming. Finnish elections are tomorrow, so there are lot of politics going around in Finland. I haven't kept up with them really at all. I feel like I want to start understanding american politics before I take up another country's, and if I ever do pick up another country's politics, it will be Norway, since that is another country where I have citizenship. But it was seriously cool to go to. I didn't even plan on going to it, either. My best friend from Colorado, Monica, who I have mentioned in this blog before, was visiting me from her host city, Kauhajoki, and I was showing her the sights of Turku, and then we were going into the main mall, Hansa, and then we stumbled upon the debate, just as it started, and with my amazing crowd pushing techniques, I managed to get us in the second row. The debate itself wasn't all that impressive, like any other presidential debate, in finnish, but it was cool just being there. One of my favorite parts of living in Turku is the fact that you can randomly stumble on random, awesome things like a presidential debate.<br />
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The bridges across the river have pictures of all the candidates</div>
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(Also the flag in the corner is of Turku's coat of arms)</div>
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They have popped up all over town</div>
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In the mall, there were paintings/drawings of all the candidates</div>
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My favoriet portrait of Finland's president...</div>
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All eight candidates in debate</div>
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I have to say, even though I know that Hansa is like the god of all malls and anything that is anything happens there, I was quite amused that they were having a big, televised presidential debate right next to H&M, a bit different from american presidential debates I guess....</div>
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I also got presidential pins for free, and they are on my blazer now :D </div>
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Now the Oldies have left (Oldies are exchange students that came to Finland last January and stayed a year, most from Australia) and now it is time to get Newbies! The arrive in Finland tomorrow, and then they have a language camp, like we did. Many of us, now Oldies (feels so strange to call myself an oldie...) will go to Tampere, and meet the Newbies when they visit Tampere during their language camp week, like we did. And I am looking forward to that so much because I get to see other exchange students who live all over Finland. And that will be great to see them again. I think that I will get much closer to the Newbies than our Oldies, because with most of our oldies, we only got to spend Lapland Tour together, but with the newbies, most of them will go on Euro tour, which will be a much better bonding experience since it is so much longer. But I still miss the oldies that I had in Turku..<br />
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My neighborhood</div>
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The snow has finally arrived here to stay. The city is nice without snow, but it is much nicer in the winter when there is snow. I also have to say that there is A LOT of ice! So much, I am surprise that I haven't fallen and killed myself already! Particularly the stairs that I use to get from my bus stop to my school every morning, they are the most dangerous stairs that I have ever seen! And I have to use them every day! It is terrible, but I haven't killed myself yet, so there is hope that I may last the whole year without dying...but if I do die on exchange, my money is that it will be those stairs...or the crazy drivers in this city...either one is incredibly dangerous...<br />
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Believe it or not this is a walking path....</div>
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Ice Skating anyone?</div>
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I finally got my Christmas package! After 5 weeks in the mail....haha, postal service sucks, but I am really happy to have it!<br />
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School has started up again and it is nice. I like all of my classes, and am hoping to get credit for several. It has been good so far. I have been continuing with my dancing classes. They are good, though a lot of the time I feel a bit helpless, but I am catching up fast. We learned the Tango, which is awesome to say that I know the Tango now, and we also learned a dance to the song Party Rock Anthem, which was awesome, and I think it is my favorite dance.<br />
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I got some clothing from my school now. Some of the senior clothes, because they don't have any other clothes really for the school. I have a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie. The sweatpants are awesome, and they have the school name, and Turku written around the coat of arms for the city. The sweatshirt is also awesome, with "Luostarivuoren Lukio 2012" written on one side. The only thing I find actually a bit amusing, is that I will not be able to wear my hoodie to my school back home, because on the back it has a picture of Captain Morgan and it says "cABItain Morgan" (ABI being the finnish word for high school senior) and that is technically a reference to alcohol, and against the school dress code at home...haha, I find that a little funny, and a bit annoying...i think that I will probably just wear the hoodie anyways and whenever some teacher asks me about it I will say, no it doesn't say "Captain Morgan" it says "cABItain Morgan" and I don't know and alcoholic drinks called that....<br />
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Anyways, I'll have more updates later :D Moikka!<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-39703072965986391722011-12-25T06:08:00.000-08:002011-12-25T06:08:03.452-08:00The Christmas Moon<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Tämä blogikirjoitus on minun ensimmäinen kerta kiroittaa suomeksi. En ole kirjoittaa paljon, mutta haluan kokeilla...Myös mul on Google Translate, sitten, jos et ymmärrä, tuo on miksi...ja en ole hyvin suomi kanssa...</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">No, niin, on Joulu tänään. On minun ensimmäinen joulu pois kotista. Ja oli hyvä. Ei on kuin minun normaali Joulu, ja tuo on miksi oli hyvä. Alkaa marraskuussa. Mä kuulen joulu laulut. Ja mä lauluin joulu laulut lapsille ja vanha ihmiset. Oli kiva, mä menein yliopisto vaihto-oppilas kanssa, ja me laulumme paljon erilainen kielissä. Me laulumme Petteri Punakuono japaniksi. Meidän oli vain yksi japanilainen oppilas, niin me olimme oikea huono japani kieli kanssa. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Myös, menein Joulu puoluet. Ja olivät kiva. Puoluessat me vaihtomme lahjat. Saain teeta, ja suomen elokuva niminsa “Napapiirin Sankarit” En katso ennen, mut kaikki sanoi että on paras elokuva. Olen jännittynyt katsoa se! Myös katsoin joulu elokuvat, paljon on amerikalainen elokuva, mutta katsoin yksi joulu elokuva suomeksi! Ei kanssa englanti sanat! Kastoin elokuva “Rare Exports” on tosi erilainen...en ymmärrä paljon koska paljon oli suomeksi, mutta katsoin se, niin ymmärrän jotain! </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Saaimme joulupuu kaksi päivä sitten, tuo on toinen asia miksi ei näytta silta kuin joulu, koska, USA:ssa, me saamme meidän joulupuu alku joulukuu, ja meidän puu talossa kaikki joulukuu. On ihana, mutta on kiva saada puu nyt myös, mutta se tunte lisää joulu puu kanssa kaikki kuukauta. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">No niin, kun kijoittan suomeksi, saan paljon aika, tämä oli lähellä kaks tuntea....haha mutta olin myös katsoin Leijonakuningas (suomeksi) sitten olin katsoin tuo ja kirjoittaa. Tiedän paljon suomen ystäväni lue tämä, niin nyt tiedät että ymmärrän jotain! Haha! </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Ja nyt...on to english...</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Apologies to all those who do not speak finnish, that last part was merely me trying to see if I could do a blog post in finnish...haha, and I hope that it isn’t as bad as I know that it is! Writing in english is sooo much easier!!! Mostly because of a much wider range of vocabulary!!! Even though nowadays I cannot speak english worth crap! Every time I open my mouth I stutter, can’t express myself, and utterly end up looking so incredibly stupid! For my all my readers who have not experienced their native language deteriorating before their eyes, it is like having a “brain fart” every 5 seconds, every single day of your life. It is quite an unpleasant feeling. In my own head I can not express myself, so it starts to get seriously painful sometimes..</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But anyways...</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This blog post’s name is a reference to the finnish word for December, which literally translates to Christmas Moon. So, as you guessed it, this post is about Christmas, and all the christmas things that I have been doing lately. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, in the US, the Christmas season starts after right after thanksgiving, and here it starts at about the same time. Mostly it officially starts the last weekend in November. In The Us, we have thanksgiving, and that is a point that marks when you can start decorating for christmas, and nobody dares decorating before then, but here they don’t have thanksgiving so they don’t really have a point that people can decorate for christmas and still be socially excepted, so you could notice christmas trees springing up mid november, but still nobody really decorates until December. And their “decorating is really nothing is comparison to the american version of decorating. In the US we always go around the neighborhoods looking at different christmas lights that the neighbors have, and then there is always a couple houses that don’t really put out a whole bunch, maybe one bush decorated, well that is probably the average here, many people don’t really have a lot of lights at all, and I haven’t seen anyone who really lights up their yard like an american. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Another thing that is really different is that here they get their christmas tree really close to Christmas, which I don’t like as much because it is really nice to have the christmas tree in the house much earlier. It really makes Christmas a lot longer. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Turku is the Christmas capital of Finland. Though many residents of Turku say that it really isn’t anything special. As much as I love this city, I must take the side of the many residents. The lights that they do have are really beautiful, but they don’t have very much at all, in my opinion. But they do have this Christmas market that starts in the last weekend in November and then is every weekend of December up until Christmas. I went three times. It is a really nice market, in the old town square right next to the big cathedral. Many people with hand-made crafts come there and sell their stuff. Much of it is not something that I would buy, but it is still nice to go and see. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The first time I went to the christmas market was in the end of november and I went for the lighting of the town’s christmas tree. Which actually a very huge tree, but they put it right in front of the cathedral, which is the tallest building in Turku, so it looks pretty pathetic. But it is still very nice. When we went we looked around in the market and we saw these people dressed as presents and some tent with a troll/elf head on it, do some weird dance. It was among the weirdest things that I have ever been seen performed.....</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Another Christmas tradition that the finns have is to make Joulutortu and drink Glögi. This is a very scandinavian thing, though I have never seen it before, so I have come to the conclusion that it isn’t common in Norway or it is just something that my norwegian family has never had for tradition. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Joulutortu are flakey pastries shaped like stars with plum jam in the middle. They are very good, but are had to eat without getting flakes everywhere. Glögi is a Christmas drink that you buy in cartons and then heat up on the stove. Then you pour it in cups and some people put almond slices and raisins in, but I think that they are just annoying, particularly the almond slices because they don’t sink so you might accidentally swallow one when you are drinking and that is never good. </span></div>
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Making JouluTortu</div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Something else that I did was go Christmas caroling with some University exchange students and we sang in many different languages. It was really fun, but those languages which I haven’t studied before, so I don’t know how to pronounce anything, like German and Japanese, it was hard to sing in. They were only a couple of us, three exchange students and then a couple finns. We went to a local primary school where we saw the children, who were so cute, and then we went to and Retirement home and sang to them. It was really fun. We sang in English, Finnish, French, Spanish, Swedish, German, Japanese, and one that I don’t know what it was... I think the most weird part of the experience was singing Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer in Japanese...</span></div>
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Christmas Caroling group </div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I was expecting to get and love all the christmas carols in finnish, but honestly have found that even though it is nice to hear them in another language, I have grown up with them in english and when it is something from your childhood, you like to be able to sing along and have it the same as it always has been. So it is nice to hear them in finnish, but for me christmas carols will always be best in english. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I usually always go to church on Christmas eve, and so I thought that I was going to miss that this year. But I did get two chances to go to church. Back in mid december, when it was Santa Lucia day, a swedish holiday that finland has taken up because of it’s Swedish speaking population where girls get voted to be Lucia and then walk through schools,churches, ect. singing. And I went to church last Thursday morning for the school, we all were able to go to our school’s christmas church service, which was in the main cathedral in town. It was nice. It was a classic christmas church service, except it was student’s from the school singing. And many of the people in the church were from the school. </span></div>
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Santa Lucia day </div>
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The Cathedral after our school's service </div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Anyways, In Finland they celebrate Christmas on Christmas eve, so yesterday was all the excitement and today is just a relaxing day. But that is a bit annoying because always when I was little, after opening all my presents, I knew that there was 365 days until the next christmas, and that always made me sad, but celebrating it a day earlier is just a rip off, because now for the first time ever, I have 366 days until the next christmas.... -.-....But later today I will skype with my family, and online a lot of people have been saying that skyping with their family’s on Christmas brings on the tears....great.....</span></div>
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Christmas food was definitely different </div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-48105776368536254562011-12-23T05:06:00.000-08:002011-12-23T05:06:56.540-08:00Lapland Part Two<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">On Monday after skiing we went to a local high school in the town of Muonio. Here we had a talent show where many of the different countries did patriotic or just funny acts, and some of the local high schoolers played some music and there were even some who even had did this fire twirling thing, which was really awesome. It was a pretty fun time there. We all enjoyed the acts that many of the countries did, and everyone wanted to go to Brazil afterwards since they did such a good act. That night also founded the tour’s theme song, a brazilian song called Ai Se Eu Te Pego. Everyone was singing it for the rest of the tour and a lot of time afterwards. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">On Tuesday, which was our busiest day. We did several different things. It started early in the morning and all the busses took off for different things. Our bus went first to a place where we saw a slideshow about Lapland (the music of the show was hard to listen to so early in the morning and keep your eyelids open) and then we were in some place with information on different types of wildlife in Lapland. I was surprised to learn that ptarmigans live in Lapland. I didn’t know that ptarmigans would live on other continents than North America. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">After that we all took group pictures from our bus. It was fun. An interesting thing about Lapland, that was noticeable today especially is that they don’t really have the sun, but they do have daylight, and in the daylight, everything turns a blueish twinge. Which was seriously cool. It made everything soooo pretty! </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Then after that place we went and met a reindeer herder, and she told us about the traditions of reindeer herding. And showed us some of the clothes that they wore, and showed us pictures from herding and showed us some of the tools that they used and all that. The reindeer herders have this “sport” where they get behind reindeers with skis and then the reindeer pull them on a track, and it seems really crazy. And then the reindeer “princess” a girl in traditional clothes, awards the cup to the winner. Tuesday was one of my oldies’ (from Australia) birthday so everyone made her dress up like the reindeer princess. It was quite interesting to see all the very old and traditional clothes that the people wore, and still wear (when herding reindeer) today. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So then before we went back to the hotel for lunch we had a little extra time. The town we were in was Muonio, which is right next to the swedish border. There is river that separates the two countries and our hotel was actually right on the river. So you could see Sweden right on the other side. And so since we had some extra time we actually went to Sweden for a few minutes. We went to the bridge that separates the two countries and we all ran around on the bridge for a few minutes, and then went back to the hotel for lunch. </span></div>
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Sweden, From the hotel </div>
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Customs </div>
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The sign that separates Finland on one side and then Sweden on the other side.</div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">After lunch we went snowshoeing to a reindeer farm. I didn’t snowshoe because I had messed up my knee yesterday, so I got a ride on a snowmobile, and then I got to drink Glögi (traditional Christmas drink, you’ll hear more about it in my next post) and wait for the rest to come to the farm. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So then while at the farm we were put into groups of three’s and then three groups at a time we went on Reindeer sleigh rides. They were really short (and we were right behind the reindeer, so the smell wasn’t great) but it was really cool. And then everyone got a chance to go on a ride, and then after all the rides we were able to take pictures with the reindeer. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">After the reindeer rides, we went back to the resort and then we went to the dog sledding part of the resort, where they had over 100 huskies that pulled dog sleds. We went on dog sled rides, which were also short, but the dogs went so much faster than the reindeer! They went so fast it hurt my eyes to be open and watching. It was also another really cool thing. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">After the dog sled ride we looked around the dog sledding place. There were so many dogs!! They were so cute!! And there were puppies! I loved the puppies so much!!! I wanted one so badly!!</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Then we went back to the hotel and had dinner. Tuesday was Finland’s independence day. But Finns don’t celebrate their independence really big at all, they really just act respectfully and light candles, and if we were in our host family’s houses, they would probably be watching the independence day dance that the president hosts (my host father has made it quite clear to me how much he hates that dance). But we really didn’t do anything special. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">That night we also all gathered and had a “party” where we had a reindeer herder that came and sang songs, and the oldies all gave out gifts to their favorite newbies, and then some people had some skits and it was all pretty fun. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Then next day we got up early and went on the busses and drove three hours south to Roveniemi. Which is right on the arctic circle, and boast being the home of Santa Claus. We went to “Santa’s village” which was actually just a bazillion gift shops, and some reindeer, and there was also his office where you could take a picture with him and pay a lot of money, but I didn’t get a chance to meet him. But I did some shopping there. And that was fun. </span></div>
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A Post in Roveniemi that said how far to different places all over the world</div>
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Santa's office</div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Then we went to lunch and we had to say goodbye, which was super sad because there were some people there that I would never see again. Which was sad. But we managed it, because all the people that I was closer with I would see again this year. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Then we had the grueling 14 hour bus ride in front of us, which was passed by sleeping (only a little) and the TV show friends. And then we arrived back home in the south at 5 am the next day. Fun!</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But Lapland was a really great time and it was soooo short and that is what is so sad about it!! </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-20256623005703574192011-12-22T10:44:00.000-08:002011-12-22T10:44:42.016-08:00Rotary Tour of Lapland Part One<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Rotary offers three tours for all of the inbound exchange students a year. They are really great because we get to see people from the other districts in Finland. On is the Lapland tour that is in the beginning of December. This one is the only one that all of the students go, because it is free, and the other trips cost a lot of money. But this one is paid for by Rotary. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The trip starts out with a 15 hour bus ride. Fun! I got on the bus in Turku at 7 pm on Saturday and we arrived at around 10 am the next day. Though the bus ride was pretty fun. There were lots of people that got on the bus as we went north. And I don’t see them as often so it was nice to see them. Plus we all tried to get some sleep on the bus ride. I didn’t really get that much, maybe a max of 4 hours sleep. And we had stops. One was great because another Rotary bus was stopped at the same spot and my good friend from Colorado, Monica (whose blog you can see the link to on the side of the page) and it was really great to see her because I hadn’t seen her in four months. And a bunch of my other exchange friends that I haven’t seen in several months that I met at language camp. And it was really great to see them again. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Eventually we all got there. We stayed at a hotel. There were four buses that came from all over Finland with 145 exchange students. Most of them were at language camp with us and then there were about 20 who were mostly Australian and have been in Finland since January and will be leaving Finland in about a month. It was nice to see all of the same people that were at language camp in August. </span></div>
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The Ski Hill </div>
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This was taken on the lift </div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The first and second days we went skiing. Which was really nice. Of course, everyone was telling me that I shouldn't expect anything big, because the “mountains” in Lapland are really nothing compared to the skiing in Colorado. But it was better than I thought it would be. The hills were bigger than I thought they would be, though my expectations were very low, which is why I was impressed. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Skiing in Lapland is much different than in Colorado. So it is harder to compare the two places. The snow is much better in Colorado, I have to say. At the ski hill we went to, it took maybe 25 seconds to go down, in Colorado, it takes....much longer, depending on the hill, conditions and skill. </span></div>
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Monica </div>
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Danielle (from California) </div>
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Vinny (from Brazil) </div>
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Good to be back on skis...</div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Monica and I stuck together a bit when we were skiing. It was nice to be with her because she was also another experienced skier, while others who went with us had never even seen snow before. Though I did spend a lot of time with others. Most of the time that I was skiing I just stuck to the main slope. But a couple times I ventured out of bounds with some of the others and it was more advanced skiing. And the ski area really only took care of it’s one run, so there was a lot of powder and deep snow out of bounds, which made it more fun. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The lifts were so different from the ones that I am used to though. I am used to huge ski resorts, so they only really have chairlifts, but these were lifts where you held onto this T-bar and then it pulls you up the hill. Many people (especially those snowboarding) fell off the lift several times because it was difficult to hold onto. I fell once or twice because I was trying to get onto it with someone else. Though once I fell down halfway up and then I was dragged up the rest of the way on my butt because I didn’t want to let go. </span></div>
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My bus </div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And another thing that happened to me was that once I was standing in line for the lift and then out of nowhere this completely out of control Brazilian comes and totally plows right into me. And totally knocks me on my butt. I haven’t been knocked over like that on a ski hill since I was four....and I got a big bruise on my butt that I discovered later that week.</span></div>
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Anyways, to avoid making really long posts I will post about this tour in two parts, and I will post the next one in a few days, so stay tuned.....</div>
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<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-88041467988322713782011-12-09T07:55:00.001-08:002011-12-09T08:22:15.532-08:00Vanhojen Tanssit Part 1In Finland, schools don't have many big events like prom or homecoming. But they have one big dance in February, which is like their "prom". It is called the "Vanhojen Tanssit" and that translates to the Old's Dance. This is a dance for the second years (or juniors, in american high school) to celebrate becoming the oldest in the school. This is in February when the third years all leave to study for exams for the next months. And instead of the classic high school dance, in the Vanhojen Tanssit the students in the dance all get partners and perform traditional dances. They perform it once for the school and once when people can buy tickets and watch the dance. All the students take a dance class the whole jakso (school period of 6 weeks) where they learn the dances that they will perform.<br />
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This dance is a really really big deal, especially for the girls. Partners are made over a year before the dance. Hair dressers are booked up months in advance and dresses are bought usually towards the beginning of the year. It feels like a lot bigger deal than prom is in the US. But I have been told it is because they only have one of these dances in all of high school, so when they have it, they go all out. The girls in particular.<br />
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I had my first dance class for the dance last week. I don't have a partner because I was told that if a girl doesn't get one, then they have a guy from the navy to be her partner, and a lot of the girls don't like the idea of dancing with someone that they don't know, but I would be dancing with someone I didn't know anyways, plus they is nothing like that in the united states where you get a guy from the navy to dance with you if you don't have a partner, so I really wanted something different. But if there are guys that don't have a partner I may be paired with them before I get a navy guy, but fingers crossed!<br />
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Though, in class it really didn't matter that I didn't have a partner because we switched off a bunch with many different guys. I thought the class was very cool. There is not a class like this at my school at home, sadly and it was very cool, because I had never really done traditional dances before. We only really did the basics, we did some walking and some steps. And I am sure that the class may get more complicated as it goes on. I really did enjoy it though.<br />
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When I was in the class I was reminded of this spring, when I was a counselor at a camp for some local fourth graders, and they had a time at night when all of the girls and the boys had to "Dance" together (they really just had to run down a line holding each other's hands) and all the girls and all the boys freaked out so much. I mean, obviously, in this class the guys and the girls were much more mature, and acted a lot different from the fourth graders, but I couldn't help but think of that as we danced.<br />
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I also learned that it is kinda awkward to dance with a really tall guy because then you can't see their face, but it is more awkward to dance with a guy your height because then if you don't have anything to talk about, you are just dancing together and staring at each other while you dance.....a bit awkward when you literally just met the guy.....<br />
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I will have more about the dance as the class progresses and the dance approaches.....Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-68576197468970093532011-11-28T01:01:00.001-08:002011-11-28T01:59:07.764-08:00A Finnish TestThe finnish school system is very well known for it's excellency. And it really is an incredible system, solid system that works wonders. In finnish high school, there are 5 jakso's and they last six weeks each and are the equivalent of a semester in the united states. At the end of every jakso there is a week of final tests for every class. As an exchange student I am not required to take the tests, and so therefore I have a week off. And then after the test week is over, everyone has a new schedule and new classes. So it is a bit harsh that they have to study so hard, so often, but I think that they have it that way so that it keeps the students on their toes and always studying. Which is a good way to keep them from slacking off. If you slack off you get left in the dust, and education is very important in the finnish culture, so slacking off in school and getting left behind is unacceptable, especially in my school, which is known as one of the best schools in Turku.<br />
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So this morning I took my first test in the finnish school system. It was in geography, which is one of the classes that I greatly enjoyed in this last jakso. I enjoyed it because it was quite an easy and simple class, which comprised mostly of the basics and introduction to earth science and geography. It was also a mixture of some of the subjects of my science classes in several of the past years. Which made it easy because I could follow what was going on, since I already knew much of what the class was about.<br />
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Studying for the test was probably the hardest part. I had my geography text book, but it was all in finnish....so that helped a lot....not really. I basically just flipped the pages and tried to memorize the many pictures and diagrams, google translating words in bold and such. But I also had a lot of notes that I copied down and then google translated so most of my studying for the test consisted of memorizing those notes. Google translate had actually done a mostly good job on some of them. I had used some other translating websites as well, so most of my notes made sense. But also what made studying so hard was that I really had no idea what to expect from the test. I had no idea what a finnish test would be like. I had some notes where the teacher had written down some tips for taking the test. I had an idea that it would have a lot of writing. But otherwise, I was totally clueless, so I just studied my notes as if I was taking an american test.<br />
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So, come Monday morning when I had my test, I set my alarm for 7 am, which was terrible, by the way. And then I took the bus to school, and I was kinda nervous, but I had to tell myself that I had an excuse for failing the test: the class had been in another language....so that was a good enough excuse, if I did manage to fail it....But the test was going to be in english, thank god.<br />
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In Finland, american tests have a big reputation of being so incredibly easy. All of the finns think that all of our tests are multiple choice, and we barely ever have tests. And in all honesty I think that these allegations are false. Our tests are hard enough, it just depends on the teacher you have. Some teachers don't even give tests, and some give tests that are really challenging and take forever. Not to mention that most of the time that we have tests, which are not in finals week we have to complete them in one class period, unlike finnish tests, which you are given 3 hours for.<br />
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But anyways, enough about how hard tests are. In my opinion, having taken tests in both Finland and USA, I think that they are probably just as difficult in one country as the other. I was thinking that because Finland has such a better system, that of course they would have harder tests, but when I think about it, we have tests every six weeks, also, and they are just as hard, it is only at semester's end that we have a week dedicated to tests.<br />
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So I took the test, it wasn't all that different from an american test, it was kinda like an essay question test, which had more than one essay question. But that was it. If you knew what you had to write about, it was fine.<br />
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I have no idea how well I did. I did better than I thought I would, that is for sure.<br />
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Anyways, sorry for a post without pictures...Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-47944472979554543892011-11-23T08:18:00.001-08:002011-11-24T03:15:15.944-08:00District Camp of 1410The weekend of November 18-19 was one that has been put off. It was the district camp of my Finnish Rotary District of 1410. We were supposed to have this camp back in October, on a weekend which I had nothing planned, but no! I had planned to go to a puppet show but, I instead went to my district camp, which I honestly would prefer, but of course I would have liked to go to both.....but anyways. The district camp was just a weekend where all the exchange students in the southwest of Finland got to hang out and do bonding activities and it was really a lot of fun.<br />
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My entire name didn't exactly fit on it.... :( </div>
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On Saturday morning, I as well as the exchange students in and around Turku took a bus from Turku bus station to Laitila, where the Rotary picked us up and took us to some church like house in the woods, and it was on the lake. I don't really know what kind of place it was. I guess just a meeting place, designed for camps like this. Of course there were some religious stuff there, so it was also probably connected with a church or something. But the important thing was that there was a main place, with a cafeteria, some dorms and a sauna. Oh, and a ping pong table. That was also a very important part of the place.<br />
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Oldies!!!!!!!!!!!</div>
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Trying to push people in....classic pastime....</div>
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We were sinking it!!!</div>
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All the Rotary Exchange students who go to my school! </div>
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This picture really shows our ability to sink the dock....</div>
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So while we were there we ate, and played some games, and talked a lot. It is always nice to talk to the other exchange students. Of course I am in the city so twice a week I get to see twenty other exchange students, but then many of these exchange students live in small towns where they are often times the only exchange student in their town. And then times like the district camp and such is some of the only times that they get to spend with a lot of other exchange students. So times like these are always really nice.<br />
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Then at night we went to the Sauna and got to swim in the lake, which was probably around 5-8 degrees Celsius, and it was cold. But fun to do it with all the others. The dock which was on the lake had a lot of water on it and the water froze really fast so it was really slippery! But it was still fun.<br />
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And then we all got in our pajamas and cooked Sausages over a fire, and it was a lot of fun. And then we all stayed up late eating chocolate and playing ping pong. I went to bed around two am and I know that I was among the first to go to bed.....<br />
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Roommates from Taiwan and Minnesota :) </div>
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Blazer is filling up :) </div>
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Ping Pong! </div>
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Australians! </div>
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Smash ping pong....</div>
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Chocolate.....how to describe my feelings of joy when I saw this! </div>
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The morning was very tiring and hard. Luckily breakfast was at 10 instead of something like 7 or 8, because that would be torture, in the morning we did much of the same and we all discussed how our host family and school has been going, and if we have been homesick. And then the camp and we took the bus back to Turku.<br />
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At dinner :) </div>
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Sadly on the bus back to Turku, I mistook the sun set for a sun rise, and when I realized that I was actually being blinded by the sun set, I was quite sad. It definitely gets dark early of you confuse those two things.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-3287254622398857542011-11-23T07:02:00.001-08:002011-11-23T09:12:27.780-08:00Koeviikko Update again :DWhat is even harder than keeping up on your blog? Keeping up on other people's blogs! For a week I check my all the blogs that I am following, and none of them update! And then all of a sudden I forget to check for one day and I am swamped with so many blogs, I am glued to the computer screen for like an hour! Gah! But, I think that everybody seems to have a new blog post at the same time as everyone else. And I also start writing these blog posts at some of the worst times too. Like do I write in my blog for the several hours that I have nothing much to do after school when I am for moving host families, which I will be doing sometime in the next few hours. And I still barely have anything in my suitcase.....But once you start, you can't stop blogging or else this post will be prolonged until next month, and we don't want that to happen, do we?<br />
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So it is that time again! Test week! Usually, this would be followed by a groan, but of course, I am an exchange student which basically means that test week means no school while all of your finnish friends spend all their time in school or studying. It is actually a bit boring......So I get to sleep in until 12 and then spend the rest of the day watching TV. It is nice, though today is the first day of the test week and I was so antsy that I needed to get out of the house so I went to exchange student cafe Wednesdays, where all of the exchange students in Turku and surrounding areas meet in a cafe and discuss the meaning of life....actually our conversations are not that deep....just the average exchange student conversation....which can range a bit...<br />
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I am taking one test this test week....yeah, I know, it is a crazy amount of work! Haha, not really. I was planning on taking more at the beginning of this period (or term, whatever you want to call it), as you may recall from previous blog posts, with my big plans. Well those plans kinda fell apart when some classes turned out to be a bit boring and really hard to understand in another language....So now I am just going to take my geography test, which will be really easy because I have tons of notes which I have google translated (as inaccurate as that may be......) and the class itself is a mixture of what I have learned in my last two years of science class, so as long as I remember some of that (as hard as that will be) then I will be able to take this test and possibly get a good grade....<br />
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I also have my classes for next term! Which starts after test week, I am taking a lot of easy classes, which will be nice because I have found that when you have a lot of classes like History or really academic classes, they are very easy motivation to just stay in bed in the morning, whereas classes where I enjoy what is happening, such as Art, are really much more enjoyable, and are much more motivation to get up in the morning, especially when they are first thing, because usually I don't skip the classes that are in the middle of the day, only the ones in the morning when it is dark and I am tired. And I also have three mornings a week which I get to have the first class period off! But this also means that I have longer afternoons and every single day I go until 2:30 in the afternoon. Which is a lot different because pretty much every day now I finish at 1:00, and it is stupid for me to feel like my days are long, because when I was in the US, I would go from 8 to 3 every day, so I have really gotten used to the easy life, which makes me worry about how hard it will be to go back to that life....<br />
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New Text books, they are backwards because they were taken with my webcam....</div>
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Anyways, I am taking French 1, Art 1 and Art 3, Biology 2, Music 1, and I am also taking a dancing class. This dancing class is for the Old's Dance at school, which is a big prom-like dance in February for all the second years in the school. It is different from American Proms because they dance in front of an audience and they also dance traditional old dances. But I am will have a lot more on that subject as the date approaches.<br />
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I am excited for this schedule because the classes are easy and hopefully I will be able to take the tests in all of them and get credit for all of them! Which will be nice to bring some credit home so I don't have to take all these classes over again, in the states.<br />
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Somewhere in Turku :) </div>
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This last Saturday marked a very sad day. It was the day which one of my Oldies went home. Oldies are also exchange students, but all from the Southern Hemisphere and so they always come in January, and they leave in November/December/January. So one of my australian oldies left to go home. Which is so sad because I am going to miss her like crazy. And not only is she gone, but that means that my exchange is almost halfway done, not quite, but time is definitely going by so fast! It seems like yesterday that I was at home in Colorado and it was Summer! So soon I am going to have a mid-exchange crisis here! But one good thing comes from the Oldies leaving, and that is Newbies! In january there will be more Southern Hemisphere exchange students coming and that will be fun! My Rotary club here is hosting another exchange student in January, which will be soooo nice, because having another exchange student at the meetings will make everything so much less boring! But I don't want my Oldies to leave! I feel like I am torn between my old dog and my new puppy!<br />
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Anyways, that is probably enough long segments of text for now, I will have another post soon (I know this because I actually have something specific to write about for the next one)!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-1179680990577600632011-11-15T10:21:00.001-08:002011-11-15T10:21:28.723-08:00New Address!<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
I have my new address! If anyone wants to send me mail, that would be super awesome! </div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
Christina Montgomery </div>
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Puhuri 11 G 22</div>
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20900 Turku</div>
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Finland </div>
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Send Me something!!!!</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-44714861767411371312011-11-11T07:50:00.001-08:002011-11-11T08:23:30.888-08:00November HappeningsNovember is by far my favorite month of the year. Thanksgiving just makes it all so good. Not to mention it is around time that I am craving some snow. I get all of that in the US, and I should be able to have snow here too, but none yet......strange....<br />
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But November still has yet to dissapoint. It is the perfect temperature outside. Though, it is pretty freezing. My mexican friend is from Yucatan, and on Wednesday we saw each other and she was like "It's sooooooo cold!!!!" Haha, I can't wait to see her in the dead of winter! The cold feels really good. And I recently switched host families, which means I have a new bus route, and since I now live on an island, I see the ocean every day, and my bus route follows the river until I get to my school, so a couple times I have walked along the river instead of taking the bus and then just get on the bus at the last stop along the river. A couple days the sun was out and shining on the river, and it made the river so gorgeous!<br />
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It also gets dark at like four here, which is kinda weird, some days I don't mind it, other days I feel like the days are way too short. But I have discovered that the cafe that all the exchange students meet in on Wednesdays, is really really nice when it's dark out. </div>
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Also yesterday I got to model for my art class. When I asked the teacher if I could, she was so surprised because normally nobody ever wanted to be sketched, but I guess that is just another example of how much more outgoing americans are than finns in things like this. Being sketched was weird, but it was still pretty cool. There was a guy in the back of the room who kept smiling when he was drawing, I didn't want to see his drawing of me....</div>
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But I got some pictures of some of the best of the class' sketches. </div>
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When I was being sketched, I couldn't help but think about the 12 pounds I have gained in the last few months, and all that chocolate I have been eating.....</div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11539495241994260841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174987455065921067.post-36318731268809164682011-11-09T02:15:00.001-08:002011-11-09T02:17:57.137-08:00Sweden!!!!!<br />
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Hello again. It has been a while but blogging is more difficult than you think, because it involves sitting down and typing a ton! And with the existence of Facebook....it is harder to blog than you may think. A friend of mine here in Finland labeled her last blog post Ugh which I think is an appropriate blog post for this one as well, but then I have a specific thing that I am talking about in this post so I will not label it Ugh, but instead Sweden.</div>
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This last weekend my host family and I went to Sweden! It was a weird feeling, to just visit another country for the weekend, but then we are in Europe. We left Friday night on the ferry to Sweden. The ferry left at 8:00 at night from Turku Harbor. And since Turku harbor is only a 15 minute drive from my house, we left at like 7:30, so that was quite a strange feeling, to leave for another country only a half hour before the boat left. The boat terminal had a feeling a lot like an airport. There was passenger check in and then many people standing around waiting for the boat to leave with their suitcases.</div>
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The boat was packed on Friday night. Many finns go on the ferry to sweden on friday night and then party the entire night on the ferry and then don't get off in Sweden and take the boat back to Finland right away and sleep the entire way back. I have talked to many people in school, who have taken the ferry to sweden many times, but in fact have never stepped foot in Sweden. There were 2700 people on board that night, so it was almost full.</div>
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On board, right after we left </div>
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Turku Harbor in the background </div>
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So we went on and then we did some shopping and looked around. We ate dinner in one of the restaurants on the boat and then we slept most of the way there. Because it is international waters, there are no taxing, nor laws for gambling, so on the ferry there are plenty of opportunities for shopping (lots of alcohol and chocolate) and plenty opportunities to gamble, even I could gamble (with adult supervision of course). With 25% sales tax, it is nice to get a relief and buy things for cheap on the boat. Of course I did get the feeling that it was quite similar to titanic, but I really wasn't worried at all. Overall, the ferry had such a nice atmosphere to it, it was very nice. </div>
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Tax free shopping! </div>
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Tax free Beer! Don't worry I didn't buy any </div>
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There is a time difference between Sweden and Finland of one hour, and the clocks had both times with the finnish flag pointing at the finnish time and the Swedish, at the Swedish time, I thought that this was so cool! </div>
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This was our room, the beds were a lot more comfortable than you thought. </div>
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Unfortunately, the ferries often leave from Turku early enough in the evening so that people are hungry and go and eat dinner in the onboard restaurants, this would seem fine, but that means you get to your destination earlier. Meaning that we get to Stockholm at six in the morning. Yeah, I know, it sucks. So we had to get all our stuff together and walk off the boat into darkness. So we found the subway and it took us to the city center. We dropped our luggage off and went to find breakfast. After breakfast, it was still very very early, but at least the sun had risen so it wasn't still dark. Looking back on it, if I weren't so tired, it was very nice to get into Stockholm and see it in the early morning, because it was well before anyone in the right mind would get up so there was no one out, and cities, especially big cities like stockholm are very different in early morning, and it was interesting to see. We went along the area by the old town and there were many fisherman fishing on the sidewalk, there wasn't the noise of lots of traffic and the sun was just coming up so I got to see the sunrise on the hundreds of years old buildings. It was really nice, if I wasn't so tired! </div>
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Something that I really liked about Stockholm was the way that the city was on several different islands. The main, oldest part of the city was at it's center and on it's very own island. It was nice because there were many bridges and there was a lot of water. There were also a lot of very old buildings there. There has never really been a lot of war in Stockholm, so many buildings have been able to stay intact. And the people of Sweden take very good care of their old buildings, especially in the oldest part of town. They were actually quite intimidating. But very pretty. </div>
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Swedish Parliament </div>
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Nobel Prize museum</div>
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So we walked around a lot in the old town. We saw a lot of the old buildings, many of the tourist attractions were closed because we got there so early. But it was very nice. It is a really nice city. So then in the afternoon we saw a bit of the newer part of the city, where the big expensive department stores were. We went and had lunch with my oldest host brother who lives in Espoo, Finland but was also in Stockholm that day. We ate in the Market Hall of Stockholm, which is where you can buy tons of fresh meat and fish and bread, and all sorts of things. We have one in Turku, but the Stockholm one was much bigger. </div>
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At Lunch </div>
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The Market Hall</div>
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We also went to a church in town, which I am guessing is the official church of Sweden, since it was the one that Princess Victoria and Daniel got married in a few years ago. It was really nice. It was one of the most impressive churches I have been to. It had so much detail, that it was just incredible. I was totally blown away by it. </div>
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So then we went to the Swedish royal palace, which many people have said that it is the ugliest building in Sweden, but I think that it wasn't ugly, I thought that the architecture really was strong and powerful, like it said "I'm better than you" Which is exactly what you want the home of a king to say. But I may be the only one with that opinion. What I liked most about this palace is that it is like a copy of Versailles. It isn't as huge and extravagant as Versailles, but when they designed it, they wanted to have everything, especially everything that Versailles had. And one thing that I am especially looking forward to seeing on my eurotour next summer is Versailles. Unfortunately, when we toured, we were not allowed to take pictures, so I don't have any pictures, but I can assure you that it looked very nice. There were lots of rooms that were very royal. </div>
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So then later we got on a train and went a little bit into the country side and stayed the night at my host uncle's house. It was nice because it was way out in the countryside, but still very close to the city. The next day we didn't do much, we went to a shopping outlet and everyone except me bought something. On Sunday night we drove to the ferry terminal and boarded the boat back to Finland, this time I had seen a lot of the ferry before and we had already eaten dinner, so after a little bit in the tax free store, I went to bed. And we got into Turku early morning, but I was feeling sick so I didn't go to my first classes. Overall it was a really great trip to Sweden. </div>
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Leaving Stockholm </div>
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