The Christmas Moon

(For English, scroll down) 

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...

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. 

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! 

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. 

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! 

Ja nyt...on to english...

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..

But anyways...

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. 

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. 

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. 

Our Christmas Tree

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. 

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.....

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. 

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. 

Making JouluTortu

End results 

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...

Christmas Caroling group 

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. 

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. 

Santa Lucia day 

The Cathedral after our school's service 

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.....

Christmas food was definitely different 

The Biggest Inland City In Scandinavia

Caution: This post is long because it has a ton of pictures in it. I really went overboard and uploaded all the stuff that I was going to put on Facebook.

Tampere. It is a very cool city. And like the title says, it is the biggest inland city in Scandinavia, which I thought was very cool. So on wednesday the 10 of August the entire language camp took a trip to Tampere, since it was very near to the camp, Karkku, which is near the town Sastamala. We left Karkku at like 12, right after lunch. It was probably about a 20-30 minute bus ride to the city. The bus ride gave me a little bit of a stomach/headache so I just stared out the window the whole way there. I love the scenery here. It is similar to Norway, and similar to Hawaii (in that everything is very green) but it is also unique in its own way.

On the bus (Canada and Chicago) 

 So then when the bus drove into the main part of the city and we picked up our tour guide. Then we drove around in the bus some more with our tour guide, and she told is about the parts of the city that we passed. It was a very nice tour, I thought that it was very informative. The city is very historical even though it is not a really old city. It is as old as the United States. But what I thought was very interesting was that it used to be a town with many factories, so they have a lot of abandoned factories, that now have been refurbished and made into apartment buildings and such. Which I thought was very cool. I would love to live in an old factory. It was very cool, and there were many old factories in the city. We also visited a cathedral in the city that was old, and it was very interesting because in like 1906 there were tons of painting in it that were very controversial at the time, and they make the church very unique. It was painted almost everywhere in the church. My favorite painting was the one of the ceiling which had the snake and the apple from genesis. It was very cool, and because it was on the ceiling it was even cooler.

A church in Tampere 

The girl from Chicago and I in front of one of the lakes of Tampere 

The view from the top of a hill of one of the lakes of Tampere 

This house was overlooking the same view, it also was the home of a famous finnish writer that lived a long time ago and now it is the home of some other writers. 

This was the Cathedral from the outside 

In front of the Cathedral 

Right in the Entrance 

Inside the Cathedral 

Inside again, you can see one of the paintings 

You can see the second floor, and there is the painting with several naked boys all carrying a vine, and each of the boys represented a different person from the bible, and you would be able to tell which is which by their face expression, if you were familiar with the bible. The weirdest thing is that one of them looked like a kid that was in my spanish class back in the US

The Organs 

The ceiling, with the serpent of paradise 

Kind of a blurry picture of the serpent, but the lighting was terrible inside 

The picture that was in the center of the room, though I don't think that it was the most famous picture in there 

 So Tampere is also the 3rd largest city in Finland. The First is Helsinki, the second is the Helsinki-Espoo area (I think). But when we were in the city and driving around, it didn't strike me as a huge city, for one thing, there were too many trees, so it made it feel like there was less of a city feeling because you couldn't see much. So it didn't have the city feeling that I have gotten from cities like Denver, Vegas, San Fran, or L.A. It didn't even have a similar feeling to the one that I get when I go to Norway and I stay in the "city" of Stavanger. It doesn't feel the same because you can't look around and see many building that are big and tall.

Nordic Walking!!!!! Yes, I took a picture of some old guy just because he was nordic walking...

After the tour was over we drove back to the city center and got off, while there we had several hours of free time in the city, we could've gone as far as we wanted as long as we could get back to the city square at the designated time. It was nice, I have not been used to that kinda of freedom, they basically just let s go and told us to be back at 5:45. So, I went with three other friends that I was sitting with on the bus. The other girl from my home district in Colorado, a girl from Chicago, and a guy from Canada. We all walked around near the city plaza, and down near a harbor of one of the lakes that is near Tampere.  We first when to Hesburger, which is like finnish Mcdonalds, except they have Mcdonalds here, so it is not the same, it was pretty good, and I would say that it is better than Mcdonald's but Mcdonalds is basically in it's own category of taste, both bad and good. Also when we got off the bus and inside Hesburger we met a lot of the Australians that have been here since January, they are called Oldies and then they will leave in December and then in January new Australians will come and we will be their oldies. I met my Turku oldies too, a girl from Australia and a girl from South Africa, because all of the southern hemisphere (not counting south america) leaves in January.

Inside the Hesburger 

Finnish Fast food

It says Kiitos in finnish! (thank you) 

Then, when we were down by the harbor we bought some mansikkat (strawberries) from a vendor there, and we split it between the 4 of us. Then I also found a vendor there that was selling scarves for cheap, only 3 euros each, which I thought was very good for Europe. So I bought two. Then I also bought some Ice Cream from a vendor there and it was very good. I also ordered it in Finnish! Even though it was only two words that I actually spoke I just said "Yksi Softis" and then she said something really fast but I recognized the word for Chocolate so I said "Vanilija" knowing that she was asking for the flavor, so it was so great. Then we walked around some more and went into a bunch of different stores and we tried pronoucing and speaking Finnish as much as we can. It was great to be around those kids who wanted to speak finnish just as much as I did, so we were all very motivated and it was very fun to go out and take our newly learned vocabulary and try to test it out. It was very fun. Different than anything else that I have ever done. But very great. So then after we had wandered around for several hours we went back to the bus and eventually drove home to Karkku. After a dinner at the camp we went to a church that was pretty close to the camp and at the church we hung out for a little while and a some people read poems and sung songs, it was pretty cool, and the church was huge. Then we came home and maybe stayed up for a while longer then went to bed.

The other church 

Inside it 

This post is kinda late because I am already at my host family's home and we went there on wednesday, so I will post again soon about my new home. Hopefully before school starts on Tuesday! 

Language Camp

Language camp is very awesome. I will say that. So I got here back on Sunday night and it is like wednesday now, or at least it was when I am typing this, I have no idea when I am going to be able to finish this and put it online. Everyday usually starts the same. We get up at like 7:30 and we all shower and get ready, then we walk down the hill from our dorm to the main building where we have all our lectures, lessons, meals and where the internet is so in the lobby whenever there is free time in the couch area there are tons of people crowded around on their laptops on the internet, and lots of people sykpe at night. So once in our main building everybody heads down to the cafeteria, some of the smart people go on the internet when everybody goes to breakfast, that way less people are on their computers and the internet is faster, but this happens more for lunch and dinner instead of breakfast because everyone is hungry in the morning.

The Main Sign 

The Main Building 

The "Internet Cafe"

Everybody worked on their computers! 

 So breakfast usually exists of open sandwiches and either cereal and oatmeal. Then we go and sit with people. I sit with different people everyday it seems like, with people from Canada, USA, France, Germany, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Taiwan and an assortment of other countries. It is always fun to try and cross the language barrier, unfortunately when I came here I forgot all of my french so that isn’t so good, and my spanish is not polished since I have barely ever used it with people who speak it. So then after breakfast we go to the hall and get our morning information and hyvää huomenta. Then we either go to lessons or have a lecture. Lectures are very fun, so far we have had three. The first one was on the finnish school system, which was very helpful because I needed to be told how school works from an actual finn, not just random websites on the internet. We had another one that was on the finnish way of life, which I didn’t enjoy as much as the school system one, but I liked the lady who gave the lectures a lot, she was a very fun person. Then we had another one that was about a year in Finland. It was pretty good, it was done by a different person, but I didn’t like her any less than the first lady. All the lectures were pretty good, the only problem was that it was sitting in a room for an hour and a half and let lag usually would kick in, though jet lag kicked in more when I am in lessons. 

One of our lectures 

In the main hall where we have our lectures 

Lessons are pretty good, but I feel like I know a lot of the stuff that they have taught me. Though it is nice to be taught this in a class. Then we usually have lunch which usually is soup and open sandwiches, and meat and it has always been a different variety of food. As I am half norwegian, I am quite used to the kinds of foods that they have here, but I am not used to only this kind of food, and I really like it. It is very healthy. 

Yum, Finnish Foods 

So then after lunch we have more lessons/ lectures and then eventually we have dinner. Which is usually the same type of food as lunch. They also always have this drink called kotikalja which is like a non alcoholic beer, and I tried it once, and it was quite interesting.....had a lot of yeast in it, so it is not for me. :( After dinner we usually have free time the rest of the night when we go to Sauna, and swimming, and hang out in the internet area. I really like this time. It is a good time to talk to people and stuff. 

Then we also have evening snack, the best one we had was down by the lake and we had some sort of finnish crepe, and it was possibly the best thing that I have had the entire trip! Then eventually we make our way to bed at 10:30. Overall every day is good. I have made lots of friends from both the US and from countries all over the world, which is always fun. I will have more on Language Camp soon and some on my trip to Tampere, and how I practiced finnish with finns! 

The Evening snack by the lake that we had one evening, this crepe-type thing is possibly the best food in the world! Haha, maybe not, but it was pretty delicious! 

Anyways! Sorry that it took me several days, but the internet at the language camp sucks because so many people were using it!