Koeviikko Update

Moi 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.


Joku asiat tapahtuu:


Nyt on uusi australialainen vaihto-opilaat suomessa. On jännittava! Vielä minä tarvitsen tavata eniten uusi vaihto-opilaat mutta olen pian.

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!

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.

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!

Minä myös menein peli Raumassa. Oli Lukko-Helsinki. Helsinki voitta. Oli surullinen. Penkki raumassa sanoi PALJON huono sanat! Oli tosi hullu!


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!

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:

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!

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.

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!

My cake

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?

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.

My life lately..summed up in several objects

Nothing To Talk About???

So I don't really have anything specific that I want to post about, but I feel like I should post something just to keep updated, so I am going to post about anything random that has happened to me in the past week.

Stairs In Luostarivuoren! Gah! 

Advertisement for the European Capital of culture 

So I have gone to my first and second Rotary meeting! They are not the most exciting things in the world because I cannot understand anything that anyone is saying, and there is like no people there under the age of 50 other than myself...but otherwise they are nice. This last one that I was at today I presented a 25 minute presentation on the US and Colorado and basically all about my life. I was a little nervous to present, but it was overall fine, I got lots of compliments afterwards saying that it was good, and that I didn't seem nervous at all. So that was good.

Pizza on Exchange Student Wednesday 

So am I making friends? Yes! That is a good thing to report! I have one other exchange student at my school who takes a lot of the same classes as me and we both arrived at the same time, and in the beginning we stuck together a lot, and now we are slowly making other friends so we don't spend every class just talking to each other, and that is good because it means that we are both making progress! Hurray! When I came here, at the language camp, the tutors that were there supposedly told us about "finnish culture" but I am discovering a lot of what they said to be stereotypes and untrue as most stereotypes are. One thing is that finns are very shy and will not talk to you at all, this is untrue, I have found them to be very friendly! Not as friendly as americans or say, italians, but they still talk to me. I have found finnish boys to me more shy than finnish girls though.

Huge sign advertising Turku as the Culture Capital 

My favorite class in English Class. Mmmm....i wonder why....but I love it because I have studied languages a lot in a classroom setting a lot.  And I have always wondered what it would be like to study english in a classroom setting. Of course this isn't exactly the same, because finns learn english really fast and really young. So by the time they get to high school they are fluent in english. So it isn't the exact same as the languages classes in the US, but it is still a language class. It is also interesting to experience though. I am actually very surprised at the level that the 3rd years (seniors in the US) are on. They are practicing words in English that I doubt that I will ever learn in another language. It is insane! And they have absolutely no confidence in their english skill, so I am constantly saying "no! Your english is amazing!" But I am also becoming better at understanding what people are describing and their sign language when they don't know the right word, so sometimes I get what they are saying a lot faster than they say it, so I feel very telepathic, like a mind reader! Because you have to be a mind reader sometimes with those who can't speak the best english, but most of the time it is very easy to understand people because they speak very good english. But the lack of confidence that finns have with their english class makes them a bit more shy. But after I tell them "Your english is great" They get a bit more relaxed about speaking english. But it will be hard to learn finnish when I only speak english with them. But the times that I have spoken some finnish I have been told that I have very good finnish....but I don't speak a lot........yet!



This last weekend there was a big thing happening in Turku, which was the Tall ships came to town! The tall ships were big pirate ship like ships that came from all over Europe for a big sailing race in the Baltic sea. I heard that usually there are a lot more ships and this year not all of the ships that are racing But it was still a cool experience because I had never seen a lot of ships that are that style. They were very cool. And on Saturday evening my host mom and I went to see them, and there were a whole bunch of vendors selling all sorts of Handmade crafts and I think that those are very cool to see, so we spent a lot of time looking at those and of course we also saw the ships that were there, and then on Sunday went early in the morning to look at more of the crafts that people had made, and then we took a boat out a little ways in the archipelago and we watched at the big ships all left the harbor, and it was really cool! The only thing was that it was very windy on the boat and my hair became really annoying!

Another thing that we did this weekend was that we went to my host brother's military base. This was interesting because I got to see how where all the finnish boys go to do their military service that they are required to do. It was cool. Because in the finnish military service that they have the public can come and see them pledge themselves to the finnish military. And we got to see them marching. It was very cool, because there really isn't anything like that in the united states. And it was a totally new experience for me. Of course it was all in Swedish, so I didn't understand anything that they were saying, but it was still cool.

My host brother is the third one over 

He is the only one smiling in this picture 

My host brother is the one in the center 

Next weekend I am going sailing in the archipelago! Which will be very fun! And tomorrow is Wednesday and that is my favorite day of the week so yay!

So I will leave you with a quote that I found in my english book that I really like even though it isn't really related at all to this post.


"Television is when you can be entertained by people who you wouldn't normally have in your living room"