Eurotour 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.

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.

This is a wall of cheese, I am pretty sure that Heaven looks a lot like this. 

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.

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....

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.

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.

Nothing like being a total and complete tourist....

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. 

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....

Eurotour Part One

The 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.

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.

Sweden from the Road 

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...

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. 

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! 

For some reason we decided to make a pyramid....

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.

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. 

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!

Top Ten Moments of Eurotour

Eurotour 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.

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.

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.

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.



10 The complete lack of sleep we got on Eurotour (worst)

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.

Trying to catch up on sleep

9 Spending time in Hotel Rooms (Best) 

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.

Our Hotel Room in Paris, Sebastian, Me and Raphael, and Monica is taking the picture

8 Getting Lost in Copenhagen (worst)

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).

7 Things we do in Austria (best)

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!

The burger was seriously the size of my head!

6 Getting Sunburned in Monaco (worst)

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...

It was horrible...

5 Speaking Finnish and Confusing Everyone (best)

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. 

4 The Paris Subway (worst)

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.

3 The Bus Rides (Best)

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.

1 and 2 Saying Goodbye (Best and Worst)

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. 

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. 

The End of my Finnish School Experience

I 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. 

I will start with where I left off. 

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. 

There is nothing worse than a goodbye. 

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...

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. 

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. 

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. 

A bit grainy photo of the three exchange students in Luostis 2011-2012

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. 

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 

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....

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. 

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! 

That evening I left for my Eurotour, which was, as I expected, the greatest two and a half weeks of my entire life.....

more on that soon.....

Lately....

Hyvää Päivää!!

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. 

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! 

This was a actually from a while ago, I haven't imported all my May photos yet, this one is from April sometime

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. 

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. 

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..

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 

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! 

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...

Om nom nom..chocolate...and even better, all you can eat chocolate! 

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! 

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! 

Pian mul on esitys Rotarylla! On suomeksi....ja mul on pelkää! 

See you all soon!!!!

Nähdään!!!

Lapland Part Two

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. 

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. 

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! 

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. 

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. 

Sweden, From the hotel 

Customs 

The sign that separates Finland on one side and then Sweden on the other side.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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!!

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. 

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. 

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. 

A Post in Roveniemi that said how far to different places all over the world

Santa's office

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. 

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!

But Lapland was a really great time and it was soooo short and that is what is so sad about it!!