Koeviikko Update again :D

What 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?


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...

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....


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....

New Text books, they are backwards because they were taken with my webcam....

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.

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.

Somewhere in Turku :) 

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!


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)!

School Supplies!

Why am I writing a post? Because I just wrote several long emails and I am in a writy mood. Yes I just created the word writy. And because I should go over what I bring to school everyday,  just because.

Today I bought my books! Yay! I won't sit in class with an empty desk in front of me not understanding what is going on! I mean... I still won't understand anything but at least I can look like I am doing something.

In Finland, the books are what the classes basically revolve around. Kind of. I have mentioned that Finland has these "periods" or terms that last six weeks and they have about 5 or 6 a year. These all have different classes. And for every class you have one book. So you have to buy about 7 books every 6 weeks for your new classes. The books cost about 30 euros each. So, I didn't have that many classes this "period" and I spent 200 euros on books. Thank god the Rotary pays for it because that will be 200 euros 5 times a year and that is around 1000 euros a year. So basically school is free but book money is about $1500. Not the average cost of school supplies in the US. Usually I just use my old school supplies and buy maybe a folder and some colored pencils. So usually my school supplies cost about $3.50. There is a small difference this year.

But before I tell you about my books I will discuss other things that I bring. On the first day I wore my backpack to school. I have not worn my backpack since. One thing that I noticed, because I was paying attention to the small things, is that backpacks are not very common in school. Only a few people wear them, and those few people are all guys. Of course there are no lockers in finnish high school, so what do people carry books in, you ask? Well most people have a book bag type bag that they carry everything in. And some people (girls) have purses. Nice and big purses. So, on the second day I ditched my backpack and had my big purse with me to carry all my stuff. I must say that it is easier because it is smaller and has no pointless straps that go out into the aisle and trip people as they walk by, like my backpack. But that was of course before I had really any supplies, so I may pick up my backpack again for some of the days that I have a lot of classes, and therefore a lot of books. Today I just had one book with me and it was really heavy. I have no idea what is going to happen, but I just thought that I should note that nobody wears backpacks in finnish school. Unlike the US. I can work with this as long as I always wear something that is either pink, white or blue because those are the colors of the big purses that I brought with me to Finland and the only ones that are big enough to fit anything in them. I never had to worry about color coding my outfit when I had my backpack! Gah! I hate how fashionable finnish people are!


So, enough about bags and how I can never get enough of them! Here is a list of mostly everything that I NEED everyday.

• Keys.....I have to be able to get into my house when I come home because I am always the first home) 
• Phone
• Bus Card
• Tissues :( (I am still a little sick!) 
• Camera 
• Wallet 
• Umbrella! 
• Water Bottle (They have no drinking fountains in school! If I am thirsty I must buy something which isn't what I want to spend my money on, plus one of the first days I did not have my wallet and that was bad) 
• Lukiokalentari (High school planner) 
• Finnish-English Dictionary 

All of these are very important! Not one of them can be left at home! Otherwise I may not be able to survive! And if I die, my mother would not be happy because she always says "take care of yourself" and if I don't have one of these, I am technically not taking care of myself. 

Another thing! People here don't really have notebooks. They have like small notebook like things. They are much smaller (so they fit in your average purse) and they are all graph paper. Which is what people use over here instead of line paper. We had to look pretty hard to find the line paper notebooks. I am going to try and use the small graph paper notebooks, but we will see how it goes. But it is definatly nicer how little space they take up compared to the Big notebooks that they have in the US. Also they have a lot less paper, probably because you have one per class, and a class only lasts 6 weeks, so it is saving a lot of paper if you just take a smaller notebook. 

Small notebook 

So, onto books! 

I have a book for every class. I think that they are very interesting to look at. The english text books may be helpful with learning finnish because they have a lot of finnish-english glossaries and excercises. And I have two books for my english classes. The spanish book may not be of as much help, but still may help some, for learning spanish, not so much, but learning finnish! It is always funny in that class I understand everything that the teacher says to us in spanish, but then suddenly I don't understand what she is saying, and that is when I realize that she switched to finnish.

History 

An english book

My students planner. Lots of ads for...H&M

All my books 

Swedish

Spanish

Spanish....to finnish 

But the thing about school is that it is still school. It is school in another country, in another language, with different people. But still school. I still have that dreaded feeling on Sunday night, I still have to get up at godforsaken times of the morning, and I still watch the clock in every class, hoping time will go faster so I can get to the next class. School may have disgusted itself with new looks, sounds smells and so on, but it is the same deep down. Not that I don't enjoy it, just that it is the same. 

In another subject, I went to my first legit soccer game! Or as they say here...football......

It was quite interesting. First thing, it was kinda boring. The game was zero-zero the entire time. Nobody scored at all, and they didn't even Go into over time until somebody did score. So that made it kinda boring. It was the two teams of Turku against eachother, so there was a fair amount of people cheering on both teams. There was 7,000 people there, but not many of them were many much noise. They said that a mexican exchange student once said that it was one of the quietest football games he has ever been to. And he was right. There was probably 50 fans from each team making a ton of noise, and all the rest of the stadium was quiet. Of course there was the big Oh! Whenever there was a penalty, or if someone almost made a goal. But Other than that, not much noise. The first half was kinda boring, but the second half was was more keeping you on the edge of your seat because both teams wanted to have a goal. Of course both teams were playing their best on defense too, so nobody scored. At the end when everybody stood up, I was like "What's happening?" and my host mom said "It's over" I was kinda shocked, because I am not used to people who would be anywhere near satisfied with the final score being zero zero, but that is part of going to another culture. But overall the game was fun. 

I enjoyed getting action shots of the players 

And finally I will end this blog on a happy note. I have discovered a new finnish chocolate! It is so delicious! I have already eaten a huge bar of it and I plan on buying more tomorrow during my free period, or after school. Whichever works, but I need more of it. Because it is good!