Koeviikko Update

It has been a while...I realize....

But I will try to post more, or at least some....

Lately I have been pretty busy. A lot has happened since last post. I have switched host families, which is great. I am now in my third and last family. It makes me quite sad that I am in my last part of exchange, but there is also a part of me that is quite relieved that I won't have to stress over moving again. Not that it is an incredibly stressful process, but packing is a pain, and there is always the fact that you are moving in with complete strangers. Though I have to say that it is quite an amazing thing that exchange students do, and that is move in with complete strangers, and most of the time, feel quite at home within a couple days.  When you think about it, it is a bit strange. Now I have the shortest bus ride that I have had in all my host families. It is only 15 min, and 10 min by car, so very close to the city, which is nice. 

Moving

Spring appears to be coming. I have stopped wearing my thick winter jacket, and I am now wearing my converse again. The snow is all melted, and it is starting to be warm again. I just started my last jakso (semester) in school. Which is incredibly depressing for me, and everyone else in school just loves it. 

I just had test week, and I took two tests, and slept the rest of the week. The first test I took was spanish, which naturally I aced. The second test was biology, which took a bit more studying. But when I got to the test, the questions were a lot easier than I thought they would be, though I still don't know what I got, but I think that I passed. Both tests were in english, but the study material was in finnish....

This weekend was Easter, which was nice because in Finland they get off school Friday and Monday, and since I had only two tests during the test week, I had several more days of break than everyone else. On Monday we went and had a late lunch on one of the restaurant boats that float on the river in town. Eating on one of those was on my bucket list of things to do in Finland, so I am happy we went there. Also a finnish easter tradition is to eat Mämmi. Mämmi is one of the most finnish foods in the world, and most people hate it and think it is disgusting. Most finns even hate it. Everyone has told me that I have to try it, and I did try it (with tons and tons of sugar, at their instruction) and I didn't think it was all that bad...I was expecting it to taste really strong of crap, from everyone's descriptions. But it wasn't really that strong of a taste (though that maybe because of how much sugar I put on it). It is not my favorite food in the world, but it isn't really that bad at all. 

Also on Monday, my host family and some of their friends and I, went to a movie called Iron Sky, which is a new finnish made movie. It was about Nazis from the moon, which sounds a bit stupid, but it was actually good. The actors spoke English and German, of course though, they had swedish and finnish subtitles, which got me through the german, alright. I thought that the movie's perception of americans really put it into perspective how americans are viewed by the rest of the world. Perspective that you cannot get from any Hollywood movie. 

Iron Sky Trailer

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