I think that title may be correct swedish....but I have no idea.....For all those who don't speak broken up swedish, it means "What I have been doing"
So when did I last write? A while ago...it is so hard to keep up because everything goes by so fast and so much happens! And I could be a professional free time waster.
Let's start where I left off.....
This time of the year appears to be the sales season...because every store and mall appears to have their own big sale, I mean these sales are nothing compared to sales in the US, but they are a big deal here, apparently the prices are supposed to be a lot better, but they really aren't. But it was fun because it was test week and all the other exchange students and I had free time so we spent it shopping and hanging out. It was quite fun! The biggest sale was the department store, Stockman's Hullut Päivät, which means crazy days. It lasted almost a week and it was nice. But what wasn't nice was there was so much candy on sale so I wasted a ton of money on chocolate and now I can't sit in the same room with it without getting fat.
Can you see why I am getting fat?
And just to comment on the whole getting fat situation....I don't like it. I know it is no big deal when you are on exchange to gain a couple pounds and that you will lose it all when you go back, but I don't like to be fat! It is annoying!
And while I had some time off I spent it with the other exchange students a ton. One day, which I think was one of the most fun days, we went to the cathedral and there we ran into one of the other exchange student's host dad, who is the organist for the cathedral, and he gave us a private show of the organs, so we got to go up to the top where the organist sits, which has a great view of the whole cathedral, and I do have to say that seeing an organist play is quite cool. I could never play one, it is way to complicated looking, I mean I can't even play the piano. We also went to the Turku Castle, but we didn't go inside or anything, and we went to the terminal where the boats from Sweden come, and it was pretty fun.
Me with my "crazy days" bag
Inside the Cathedral
The organs
The organist
Turku Castle
The ferry terminal
But anyways. Something cool that happened also was that there was this showing in a theater of Star Wars: Uncut! Which was a version of Star Wars Episode 4 that was made up of 15 second fan made clips. It was AWESOME! A bit hard to follow at times...but it was really cool! I loved it! They also showed a movie about copyright infringement and how it is suppressing new types of art that focus on a lot of remixing. I thought it brought up a very valid point, and it was a very good movie. Overall the day was very good. I went with a couple other exchange students and on the website it said "We are only letting the first 1000 people in" and of course being from the US, we assumed that it meant that there were going to be well over 1000 people there, unfortunately we were wrong and got two hours early. But it was fine, we hung out in the free exhibition that they had in the same building that was focused on soccer and it was quite fun.
The Place where The Star Wars was shown
For the european culture of capital
Inside the soccer exhibition
Hanging out because we were the stupid americans and got there 2 hours before it started
I have had all new classes in the past week. It is nice. I can get used to them quickly. The thing that is most different about this new period is that I am starting to actually try harder. I mean in some of my classes, I plan on getting grades, taking tests and getting credit for three of my classes this period. Geography, Art and Spanish. So I am focusing a lot more in my classes and trying harder. I actually did my swedish homework the other day! Which is more than I ever did in the states.....sadly...But I think that it kinda fun to try and pay attention, probably because I enjoy the classes that I have a lot. But I think that the hardest part of this is the fact that it is so incredibly easy to just let go of my mind and let it wander in class. Because I don't understand anything that the teacher is saying, I have to really try to catch words and guess what she is saying, So that means paying utmost attention...not the easiest. But I am trying!
So another thing that has happened it that today I went to Turku Art Museum. It is a quite small museum, especially compared to Denver Art museum which takes a week to really see everything...and that is not just an exaggeration...it was literally designed so that it would take 5 days to see the entire permanent collection. But the Turku museum is my favorite art museum that I have been to. For one thing, it is an incredibly beautiful building that looks like a castle. The city square, along with the river, is in between two big hills, that the road of Aurakatu goes up and down. One hill is called Luostarimäki and the other is called Puolalamäki. My school is at the top of Luostarimäki and the art museum is on top of Puolalamäki. So it is on top of the hill, and you can see it from all of Aurakatu until you reach the top of Luostarimäki. <-----this may have been an irrelevant fact about the art museum, but I felt like I needed to tell you that. So I have been wanting to go to the art museum because I have been seeing advertisements for the Carl Larsson collection that they have there now and he is a Swedish artist so I have been wanting to see the art. And I was not dissapointed. I went with my art class so the teacher talked about much of the art in finnish, and I didn't understand a lot of what she was saying but I still appreciated the art. Plus there were signs with text in english, so I could read those. I really liked Carl Larsson. A lot of him art depicted Scandinavia, and they reminded me so much of Norway and a lot of my childhood, and it was very nice. It was just sooo scandinavian, and there is nothing that I love more than Scandinavia! And also the other art that was in the permeant section of the museum was also very scandinavian and I absolutely loved all of it. So that is why Turku Art museum is my favorite art museum that I have ever been to, because it is the only one that I have seen that had scandinavian art, which I adore!
I wish I had pictures of this but I will probably have in the future
This is by my school. As you can see, fall is definatly here, which is a nice change, because it summit county, there is no fall, just summer and winter
I should probably go to bed seeing as it is 12:36 am and I doubt that tomorrow I will be going to bed very early...as I am going to see Britney Spears in Helsinki! Ahhh! I am excited! Seriously excited!
So...stay tuned because this staurday I plan on posting about Les Miserables in Swedish, Helsinki and Britney Spears!
And I apologize for any typos that you may see, it is very late!
Sorry I haven't posted for such a long time. I have been thinking that I don't have enough to post about and now that I am posting I realize that I have so much to post about that this may become a little long.
Right now is Koeviikko in most finnish schools. Koeviikko literally means test week. It is like Finals week in the US, but here they have it every six weeks whenever a period (semester) ends. They have tests in all their classes and then when it is over school resumes as normal, but with totally new classes. As an exchange student, I don't have to take any of the tests unless I want credit for the classes, as I am going to wait to get credit until I understand a little more finnish, so guess what? I have a week off! Being an exchange student is really nice, I must say. Since I have a week off, I have made myself a list of things that I must accomplish because I have been putting them off, and I need to get some things done. This list includes things such as writing letters, translating some swedish and finnish class notes, reading my finnish book, updating my journal, and of course blogging because I always hate it when I get behind in updating my blog and before I left for Finland I vowed to myself that I wouldn't get behind in updating my blog. So here I am.
So about two weeks ago something really exciting happened. The Princess of Sweden came to Turku! So naturally I had to take this opportunity to see her. She was visiting different places in Turku for two days. At one point around lunch time she was going to be at the library so I left from my school about a half an hour before she came to the library and I amazingly got in the first row where she would pull up and get out of her car. So it was really exciting to be in the first row! I was very surprised at that. And soon she pulled up in her car and she and prince daniel got out of the car and walked around and said hello to all the crowd around the entrance to the library. Soon she walked by where I was standing and it was seriously cool to see her so close! She was like 2 meters away from me! There was a whole bunch of little kids standing next to me so I got a bunch of pictures of her talking to the little kids. When she saw all of the kids she was like "oh, så masse barn" and I was excited because I understood what she had said (oh, so many kids)! That made me very happy. I got some pretty awesome pictures of her and in my facebook album I tagged the pictures with her as "Princess Victoria, Crown princess of Sweden"
There she is!
Her and Daniel
Turku really showed their yellow and blue colors for the days that she was there. You could tell that she was in town because there were Swedish flags everywhere!
They were handing these out to everyone there. It is defiantly a nice souvenir to have. It now is up on my closet door. By the way, Tervetuloa means welcome in finnish. They also had some in swedish, but I stuck to just the finnish one.
Something that happened more recently was that I went to a finnish book and food fair. It was very cool to go to, even though every single book there was in finnish...but still it was cool. Also it was a nice break from the temptation of buying things! I wouldn't understand a word of the entire book, so why buy it? What is weird is that I actually spent 11 euro, even though everything was in finnish, weird right? What I bought were little things like keychains. I also got information on future events happening in Turku, which is always good because I love randomly going to things like a book fair. My favorite part was that there was a stand there that was from the norwegian embassy and I stopped there and got some information about Norway in finnish! It is very useful! Haha, but I stopped by just because I am such a loyal norwegian! It was also a food fair, and that was good because there were tons of free samples and like everything was delicious! Especially the norwegian salmon (hmmm...I wonder why?)! But the whole fair was defiantly a good experience!
Another thing that has happened in the last month is that I have joined a local swim club. This week will be my third week with them. In Finland all hobbies are on your own, which is to say that the school does not have any extra circulars connected with it at all. Not even a homework club. I think that this may be one of the reasons why it is one of the best school systems in the world, none of that stuff to distract you from your studies. Though I do think that it is good to have some extra ciriculars connected with the school. It actually makes me a little sad when I think about the fact that the school I go to has basically nothing after school. There are few signs on billboards advertising a dance or a club. There are no events hosted my the school. No school colors or mascots, no school pride. It is good at the same time that it is bad. I have never minded people with school pride, sure sometimes whenever the principal would go off about how he was "bleeding green"and then go into a huge speech about something like that, I did think from time to time that it is a bit much, and I can understand why the finnish school system doesn't have anything like that and how here it is so much more intense with school. But I have to say it does make the school days seem a little less bland.
But enough about school, I was talking about swimming. I have now been with the club for 2 whole weeks and I must say that it is INTENSE! So much more intense than Lady Tigers Swim and Dive. The practices here are a lot more work than the ones at Summit High! And we have a half an hour to an hour of dryland warm up before every practice. It is a bit annoying. But I like it at the same time that I hate it. But it is good. I definatly like swimming with them, because the other kids are not the most competitive people, even though they are good...and the dryland warm ups are good because it gives me a chance to see the other kids on the team when they aren't wearing a swim cap and goggles. And it also gives me a chance to meet kids that go to different schools than I do. They are mostly all my age and maybe a year younger. Also there are two other exchange students on the swim team. One from Taiwan and one from Mexico. It is nice because then I feel like I am not the only one that doesn't understand the swimming directions from the coach because they are in finnish. Speaking of which, I am starting to learn the different strokes in finnish. I know that Perhonen is Butterfly. That one is the easiest because I knew what butterfly is before I started swimming. And Breast is Rinta. But it is hard because the strokes begin with different letters in finnish. So I can't read the abbreviations for the different strokes and the coach has to repeat everything in english for me and the others. But I am starting to learn the different strokes so then they won't always have to explain it to me.
I have been homesick. There I said it! But it is weird. It is not like something that you would expect. For me homesickness has really been a lot like deja vu. At totally random moments it hits you because one thing gives you a feeling at home. And it is like deja vu because you don't always know why you got homesick from this one thing. Especially so random. It isn't so bad, it usually goes away pretty fast. Sometimes I do feel really alone though. I miss my friends, they seem like such perfect friends when I am all alone. Another thing that makes me homesick, or not really homesick but just I feel really angry and mad at the world, is whenever technology doesn't work, or if it is being slow. It is always the littlest things. What I miss the most about the states is understanding things. I don't care that much about understanding conversation, television, or even school. But there are always those things that you never thought of that you wish were in english. Like for instance, coupons or captions under pictures in the newspaper, or the tv guide. It is hard, and it makes me wish that I was back home sometimes, so I wouldn't have to use google translate to find out what a coupon is for, or when that show that I really want to see comes on. But for now all I can do is study finnish in hopes that the words I learn are high frequency in coupons.
Another things that has been happening lately is that in the evenings my host mother and our neighbor take me to the local beach for us to go winter swimming! It isn't winter swimming yet because it isn't fall yet, but we are preparing our bodies so we are able to go swimming in an ice hole in the middle of winter. This is an old finnish tradition where they have a whole in the ice and people swim in it and then go to the sauna. It is doable because you have the sauna to warm up in. It isn't like winter swimming yet because the water isn't nearly cold enough for it, but the water is defiantly getting colder, I can feel it. I will probably have posts in the future about it as I get more into the sport.
A couple weeks ago here in Turku there was the annual Turku Day, which was very cool. All the museums in town had cheap to free admissions. Which I took advantage of the opportunity of and went to one local museum. It was a very cool museum because it was actually an underground museum that had some of the old medieval building foundations and streets from the beginnings of Turku. Turku is the oldest city in Finland so it was very cool to see the buildings from so long ago. It is always so hard to comprehend how old things in museums are, and therefore hard to appreciate their age, but I still thought that it was very cool to see all the old streets from Turku. Also on this day the city was unveiling a new bridge that goes across the river, that and you add the fact that this city is the European Culture Capital of 2011, and you get a day where the city will go all out. And that means only one thing: a humongous concert on the new bridge and.....fireworks! So at 9 at night we went to the city and saw the fireworks, and I must say that they were the most amazing fireworks that I have ever seen. They had music playing and they coordinated the music and the fireworks in an amazing display. It was by far the best firework show I have ever been to.
So as this is test week, I have a week off, which means I basically have a week with nothing to do. I have spent a lot of this time watching TV and relaxing at home. With of course little spurts of actually doing stuff. Like, for instance, last thursday, the first day of test week, I went go karting down the ski hill with the other exchange students. It was absolutely a blast! We all met up in the city before and then we took the bus to the nearest island of Hirvensalo, where the ski hill is, (Hirvensalo also happens to be the island where my second host family lives, so I was able to see the bus route that I will be taking every day starting in late November). So when we got there we got off the bus and walked towards the ski hill. I had been hearing a lot about this ski hill. It is basically the place where everyone in the city goes to ski. It is incredibly close to city, and that is probably why it is so popular. Of course when people talk about it with me they always tell me that it is the most unimpressive hill for skiing that I would ever see, coming from Colorado, whose lowest point is higher than the highest point in all of Finland. But I was excited to see the hill just to see what they were actually talking about, and I must say that it was bigger than I expected, but still not much. It was about the size of the average bunny hill in Colorado. But in the summer it is used for some biking and it has a go kart track going down the side of it. So it is a attraction for any tourist. Going there was really fun! Also we came there when it had just rained so the track was very slippery and a bit dangerous.This made it more fun for me, though all the australians kept slipping and going off the course, and I didn't slip off course once, in fact I got the fastest time going down the hill. Overall it was a fun afternoon. And the view from the top of the hill was pretty nice of Turku.
Go karts
Megan! (South Africa)
View from the top
Learn how to drive, Australians!
The hill, yes this is a ski resort here, I know, I am as shocked as you are
As it is test week that also means the start of a new period in the the finnish high school, and a new period means new classes, new schedule and new books. This all starts next friday. So here is my new schedule:
Time
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
8:00-9:30
Swedish
Swedish
Swedish
History
9:45-11:00
History of Art
History of Art
Geography
Geography
11:00-11:45
Lunch
Lunch
Lunch
Lunch
Lunch
11:45-1:00
Finnish Class
Rotary Meeting
Spanish
History of Art
1:15- 2:30
History
Spanish
.....It's pretty nice....you may notice that on fridays I get off at 11:00....like I said...pretty nice
So now it is October! I have been here nearly two months! It really doesn't feel like two months at all! It feels like some time since I said goodbye to my mom in the airport but time goes by so fast! It is weird to think that I am already a sixth done! But I still have a long time left and I hope that it goes by slowly!
If anyone is bored you could always send me mail! Getting mail is always very exciting! My address is:
Christina Montgomery
Muntionkatu 11 A 4
TURKU, 20740
Finland
Also keep in mind that it will change late november. I would really appreciate any kind of mail!
And lastly I will add a link to a song on youtube for my mom, So anyone who isn't my mother can just ignore it :)
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
