Hello Turku!

So I officially moved to Turku! It is official when I change my current city on Facebook, which I did right away. But i will start from the beginning. On Saturday morning i woke up, and went down to breakfast. Unfortunately I was extremely sick. It started on Friday and I had a fever and a headache, and eventually I also got a cough and a sore throat, so great, I was in terrible health for meeting my host family! But I managed to get dressed and get ready. After some meetings with our Rotary district officers (I really like my district officers, they are cool people) Host families started to arrive. All week I'd been freaking out on the inside about meeting my host family and I was very nervous, but when I saw all those families coming to pick up exchange students all of my nerves disappeared and I acted as calm as I would if I were taking a trip to the grocery store.

 So, then I went up to my dorm and packed up all of my stuff that I had managed to take out of my bags in the past week. Then we came down and all of the exchange students searched for their families, and there was closing ceremonies. I was a little confused after the ceremonies were over because I still hadn't found my host family, but after I had started eating lunch my host mother came and found me. They were late because they couldn't find it, but it was fine, I wasn't very worried because I didn't think that they didn't want me anymore. So after we found each other and I ate lunch, we loaded my bags into the car, I said goodbye to some of the other exchange students that I have met in the past week and we headed south to Turku. It wasn't a terrible drive. Some of the other kids at the language camp were talking about how they had to drive for more like 8 hours all the way to Lapland, which would not have been very fun. Our drive was only like an hour and a half and I was talking with my host family the entire way there. When I got to Turku it was very nice weather, perfect for my first time in Turku.

A Bridge in Turku 

 Immediately when we got in the vicinity of the city there were advertisements everywhere for Turku 2011. If you didn't know, Turku is the European Capital of Culture for 2011, so there is always something weird happening that has "culture" I think most of the stuff that is happening is very cool though. But I will have more about it in another post.

The main old church of Turku 

So, when we got to my host family's house I met my three host brothers and we all had dinner before the two oldest left because they no longer live with my host parents. I unpacked which was a messy process but eventually my room was clean again...or at least the floor is clean, my desk is currently disorganized like crazy.

Big fake ducks in the Aura river, which are supposed to be Art 

 That night my host mother and I went into the city, which is really close to my house, it is like 15 minutes by bus and like 10 by car. It is a really nice city with the Aura river running down the middle of it. It had a castle and an old church. It is very nice, and similar to Stavanger, Norway. But of course it is different because it is Finland. Overall I really love my new home, it is absolutely perfect. I get a little homesick when I look out my bedroom window thinking about my family, friends, and everything about home, even when I think about Norway. But when I am out and doing things I think that I have a really great life.

My bedroom, kinda messy when I took the picture but I am still unpacking some stuff