First Class to Finland!!!!!!

My travel was pretty exhausting and awesome! Here it is starting on Saturday morning:

So today I got up at regular time. I didn’t really sleep last night because I had too many butterflies. I got 2 hours max. So I finished packing my carry on, and I attempted to clean my room. My family spent an hour or two together in my house, which doens’t happen a lot because my brother is always leaving and my parents are always at work. It was nice, and before I left, I got some pretty nice pictures of me together with my brother and my mom. 

Here is me, with my mom before I left home

Me, with all of my bags. I have the most stuff of like all the people at the language camp 

 Then my mom drove me down to the airport. It is hard to believe that it was the last time that I was with her for a whole year. Luckily goodbyes at the airport weren’t that bad. I almost cried but both my mom and I were strong. But before we sid goodbye, we waited by the Lufthansa check in for about 45 minutes for my Finland buddy Monica. So when she finally arrived there we checked in and her mom was able to bump me up into business class, which was so great because I have never been in business class before. Or anything above economy. So we said our nearly tearful goodbyes. And we went across the bridge with Monica and her dad, since he works at DIA and he is able to go to the gates. We hung out by the gate for a while talking and stuff. Then Monica and her dad said their goodbyes and we boarded onto the plane. I was in business class and Monica wasn’t, so I didn’t see her for the entire flight. The first thing about business class, is that it is nice. Very nice. I didn’t sit next to anyone. And the chairs are very awesome! The service is great, and they kept trying to stuff me full of food. Even though the seats could go down all the way, I didn’t get any sleep because of all the butterflies inside of my stomach. So I watched Thor, Paul and Arthur (movies, if you din’t know that) It was very good, and I liked the whole experience of business class a lot. Also, the pillows are a lot more comfortable than the ones that they give you in economy! 

 Exchange students that I met in Frankfurt. They are Canadian!

So after we landed in Frankfurt, I took the shuttle back to the airport terminal because they parked so far away from the terminal. Then we went through passport control and security and made our way to the gate that was on our ticket, once we made it to the gate, we found like twenty kids with Rotary blazers waiting for the flight, and it was really great because I could just sit right down and we could talk like we were old friends, even with a slight language barrier. It was really great, even though we lost half of them because they changed the gate, and half of them thought that it was changed to the gate at the other side of the airport, when it was actually changed to the gate next to the original, so eventually everyone got on the plane, but those of us who stayed, our numbers were reduced greatly. It was also cool because there were some french students who din’t speak a lick of english, so naturally I wanted to test my year one french on them, but the only thing that I could remember was “Je ne parle pas beacoup de francais” So that didn’t really work out. 

In the Airplane to Helsinki, yes that girl is staring at the camera, she is an exchange student from California 

I really felt the jet lag on the plane ride, but thankfully I was sitting next to two others and we had a spiderman coloring book to help us stay awake. Eventually we got to Finland and I was so surprised how flat it looked from the air. But I loved it. We landed, got our bags and all piled onto a three hour bus ride to Karkku Language camp, which is near Tampere in central Finland. The bus ride was fun, I took a nap the first half, then I talked with some of the other kids until we got there. We got there at like 10:30 at night and got our bags and had some bread then went to bed.

Spiderman Coloring Book 

First Pictures of Finland

It is so flat! 

On the Bus to the language camp :) 

Sorry that I haven't updated until now, didn't really have the time, I am so behind in blogging and journaling. I will have a new post about first thoughts soon. 

Eight Months Later.....

So today is August 5th. That date means many things. For one thing, it means that I leave tomorrow(!). It also means that it has been 8 months exactly since I originally received the news that I was indeed excepted as an exchange student, and I would be spending a year in Finland. I remember the night oh so well. When it seemed like all the other kids that were at the district interviews had received their country placement. I was sitting on the coach downstairs with the phone in my lap, wondering why on earth they weren't calling me! All terrible thoughts were going through my head at the time. Like the idea that I wasn't accepted into the program, or that they wouldn't call me until later that week, which would have been like torture to wait that long. I remember that instead of wasting my time fretting and staring at the phone, or spending time on Facebook, I would make use of my time and use my homework as a distraction. So right when I was two pages into reading the odyssey the phone rang. I specifically remember feeling the most anxious and nervous and scared as I have ever been in my entire life. My heart was beating a million miles an hour in my ears. And I am not over exaggerating that in the least. I remember my heart beating so fast, it was the fastest it has ever beat in my life. And when my country contact asked me if I would accept placement in Finland, it was an absolutely amazing feeling of relief and excitement.

Finland had almost come as a surprise. Though I was completely open to any country that they would've given me. My number one choice was Argentina, and Sweden was my second, with Austria in third place. And Croatia was tied with Finland for my number 4 choice. I still want to visit those other countries but I am very happy with the choice that the rotarians have made for me. People always ask me why I chose Finland, and instead of saying that I didn't get to choose and then explaining about how the rotary's system works, I just say something like "I thought that it sounded cool" and the fact is, I am very happy with my country placement, thinking back on it, I can't imagine being placed anywhere else. Back in the exchange student weekend we had in may, a mother of another exchange student said "It is like everybody is going to the right place" and I couldn't agree more, the way that rotarians choose countries for students is quite amazing and it works so well. They would do a much better job than the students for sure. 

So much time has past between then and now. I feel like a totally different person than I was 8 months ago! I am so much more ready than I was back then too, and I think I am more ready than I thought that I would be. 

Today I spent the day with my best friends, and it was a perfect send off, the weather was beautiful as it always is in summit county. I am going to miss my friends but when I think about it, I am very ready for this change in scenery. The mountains are beautiful, but I have spent too much time staring at them and dreaming about Finland.  I need to get out of here! 

So, packing continues until the last minute. I will leave Summit County around noon, and I will stare Buffalo Mountain one last time very dramatically as I drive east to Denver. 

Before I started packing...

I could fit into my suitcase when it was empty, which was awesome

This is me in front of Peak One and Two. 

And these are my suitcases after I stuffed them full of my junk. All pushing the weight limit....

So I look up to my blazer which has been hanging on my closet door for a couple weeks now, and I think "Tomorrow's the day!" Tonight is my last night in my own bed! :D

So I will leave you with this quote which I found on the Internet, and I think it sums up why anyone would go on an exchange in the first place:

"Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons."

See you on the other side.  

Saying Goodbye

Well, I haven't said goodbye for a year...yet. But every time I look out my window and see peak one or Buffalo mountain, I think to myself "I have lived here my entire life and I have never once appreciated how amazing the mountains look" I am so aware of it when I think to myself that I only have 13, 12, 11, 10 days left. Though I still haven't grasped the fact that I am leaving my house for a year (and I don't think that I will until I am in Finland) it is because I am realizing that something will be different and finally for the first time in my life I am realizing how much I love my home. And when I look up at those mountains it makes me sad that I will not see them again for a year. But I have taken so many pictures of the mountains in the past couple weeks that I will have enough to keep me going.

I haven't said goodbye for the year with any of many of my friends. I had my going away party yesterday. It wasn't really a party, but more of a picnic with several of my close friends. It was seriously great. I am going to miss them a lot. But hopefully I will make tons of new friends, and friends that don't ask me to speak english, when I blurt out things in random languages. Though, I couldn't ask for better friends.

Peak One at Sunset 

Buffalo Mountain (Not the best picture of it I have) 

My friend, Reena, made me a shirt that I absolutely love! 

And all of my friends that were at my going away party signed it and wrote messages on the back 

When I think about leaving my friends and family and the mountains, I get sad. But this sadness easily disappears when I start packing. After all, it has been my lifelong dream to pack up, get on a plane by myself and fly away to some foreign land and speak some foreign language.

Shout Out To Norway

15 days before I leave for the time of my life, tragedy struck my life.  Many of you probably know what events have took place in Olso, Norway in the past few days. Though, I did not know anyone in the attacks personally, I still feel terrible. I have cried many hours for Norway. Because, even though I have never lived there and I am not fluent in norwegian, I feel that Norway is in my ways my home. I also consider Dillon, Colorado to be my home, but in a different way. I am a citizen of two countries. And that is how my heart feels. So on top of the many feelings that any exchange student feels before they leave for a year, you can now add depression and sadness to my list.


But this post isn't about me, it is about Norway and it is about all the lives lost in the attacks on my beautiful country. We love you. May all those hurt by this heal and become happy again.

Norway, and Packing

I would do two different posts for Norway and for packing, but I don't really feel like doing two different posts, so I will do one long one.

So First off, I am back in Colorado......yeah, I know, I wish I was still in Norway too :( It is sooooo nice there!!! I love other countries so much! But being back in Colorado is good? Yes, because now I can get everything done for my exchange! But I miss Norway! Even if the weather is so much nicer here....

For most people, it is always easier to pick out what you think is better and what you think is worse about other cultures. I am sad to say that I, too, have done this. For instance, in Norway it is very easy for me to say that the driving rules in the United States are far superior. But it is also easy for me to say that how Norway carries out construction, is also far superior to the Untied States' system of construction. But because I will soon be an exchange student, I was following a simple motto that I learned at orientation weekend. "There is no such thing as better, no such thing as worse, only different" As hard as it may be to follow, I am trying.

In Norway there are many things that I miss. I will make a list as short as I can:

1. The ocean
2. Swimming in the ocean
3. Skolebolle (pastry) 
4. Saft (a juice that is amazing)
5. My family there
6. My grandmother's cat
7. The coach in my grandparents house 
8. Green (as in all the plants that are there) 
9. Norwegian Hot Dogs
10. The language 
11. Shrimp
12. Biking Everywhere 
13. Boating 
14. Seeing Prices in Kroner (norwegian currency) 
15. The Overall Feeling  

Yeah, going home was pretty much like the saddest thing ever for me. What made me not cling to my grandparents door on the day we were leaving and shout "You'll never take me!", is the fact that I will soon be having a great experience in Finland that has been taking up my every thought for 8 months. And what helped me leave is that the culture and landscape in Finland is similar to Norway in many ways. So, knowing that soon I will be back in scandinavia was a thought that helped me through the sad and long process of leaving the country I've always loved so much. 

Here are some pictures that I took:

Awesome Graffiti

Shrimp :) 

Fish that we caught....and my feet 

I gutted a fish, and it was gross 

Everything is in Norwegian! 

This is me :) 

Me, with a norwegian shopping cart

This was a two lane road...

Me, swimming :) (my favorite thing to do)

Stavanger Domkirke, which is a 1,000 year old church 

So, enough about Norway! Now we get onto the really exciting part! Packing and Preparation! Hurray! So as soon as I got to Colorado I went to Waterworld of course! But that wasn't really helping me prepare. I took a trip down to Boulder, Co for 4 days and I went to Denver and went shopping for host gifts! And I had luck! Yay! I also went to lots of clothing stores! Going on an exchange is SUCH a good reason to go shopping!!!! I have so many new clothes that I don't need to buy any clothes when I get there! Going to Norway helped me with learning what the style was in scandinavia, maybe that is cheating, but I don't care because I saved so much money! So I am almost done with all my shopping. I just bought two new suitcases for my exchange yesterday and they are huge! I won't have to worry about enough room! Though, I may have to worry about it being less that 50 pounds, or 70 pounds, I don't really know which one it is...

I have sooooo much to do before I leave! Lucky I still have 17 days left! 

Here are some pictures of Denver to leave you with :) Näkemiin! 

Feels like a dream!

Ok, so my life is going to be a dream soon! Just saying! I am so freaking excited! I am right in Norway right now and even here I can't stop thinking that in just 43 days I will be stepping into Denver International Airport once again, and this time it won't be with my mother or brother. It will be just me!! On my own! So weird to think about! And a little scary......but I won't focus my mind on that part :)

So Guess what? I booked my plane tickets! Yayayayayay!!!! Yeah it was kinda annoying because my travel agent sent me an email with the first idea of itinerary and she was like "fax me back with your signature by monday" and that was friday. I left for Denver to go to a hotel by the airport saturday and I spent all sunday in an airplane flying to Norway and I got to Norway and was totally jet lagged on Monday. And did I mention that at my grandparents house in Norway there is no printer or fax machine? Yeah big problems I have! But we worked it all out. My mom asked my travel agent to look up an itinerary on a different airline because the first one was on American and I wouldn't get frequent flyer miles for that, so then we got one more day. I am very glad that my mom asked for that because she came up with a much better itinerary that I liked a lot more (and I don't have to get up super early!) And we got one more day to figure it all out. So eventually we found a printer at my aunt's house and printed out the itinerary, signed it, and scan emailed it to my travel agent. Yay! So here it is:

August 6th 6:05 pm  Denver, Colorado - Frankfurt, Germany (arrive 11:35 am on August 7th)
August 7th 2:25 pm Frankfurt, Germany - Helsinki, Finland (arrive 6:45 pm on August 7th)

I really love this schedule because I leave Denver so late, which means I can sleep in on the 6th, and I don't have to leave Summit County until like 1 pm. So maybe I can say goodbye to some of my friends that before I leave that day :) but it will be sad :( And I don't know how bad my jet lag will be because I can sleep the entire flight to Germany :) Yay! Sleeping is good! And it is one of my priorities!

So anyways.....I am in Norway! It's not every day that I get to say that! Since I'm not very far into my trip (day 5) then I am not going to go into much detail about Norway itself, I will be posting about Norway later into my trip or after I get back, but I am going to talk about how useful this trip to a country so similar to Finland is literally a month and a half before I leave for a year :)

 Finland and Norway are very similar! Why? Because, if you know geography, you know that Finland and Norway are so close that they even share a border. The two countries have so much in common, that I, with a norwegian passport, did not need a visa to spend a length of time in Finland! When I found that out you could say that I was relieved!

But don't get me wrong, there are plenty of differences! But the similarities help me prepare for a year abroad, just being in a foreign country helps me prepare. I am constantly doing math. The metric system is not my strongest point, but my grasp of the metric system will get better as time goes on. I am always converting prices to dollars. I really wish that whoever is in charge of the value of the dollar would make the euro and the kroner number that are very easy to calculate, but no, the norwegian kroner to dollar is 5.5!
I spend a lot of my time when I go shopping over here watching people and observing their styles. It helps to know what the style is like over here because it is so expensive to buy clothes over here and the style is so similar to Finland that I know what to buy when I get back to the US. Because it is so much cheaper in some store like forever 21.

When I am not loving Norway and I'm just hanging out in my house over here, I am getting more norwegian/finnish music. When I first started to look for finnish music, when I first started learning finnish, I had nowhere to start looking since I had no idea how to change the country in itunes or anything, so I picked up a couple of songs on wikipedia, believe me I have no idea how I managed to find songs in an encyclopedia (they are not very good songs)! But now I figured out how to change country of the itunes store, so I am actually getting songs that are popular in Finland. Plus many of the English songs that are popular in Finland are also popular in Norway so they are all over the radio here :) My new favorite songs are Mr. Saxobeat (which is on constantly over here in Norway) and Poika (saunoo) (which is number one in Finland right now)

Mr. Saxobeat - In the top three in both Finland and Norway

Anyways, that's about all I really know what to say. Sorry for this post being kinda long :) I'll have more on Norway soon. But in the meantime I will focusing all of my energy on finding out how to change the language on my mac so everything that I spell isn't underlined in red. 

Nakemiin! Or har-det in Norwegian

It's Summer!!!And lots of things are Happening!

It’s summer and the anticipation grows! I know that I told myself over and over again that I will study more finnish right when school gets out, but I haven’t. I have been....too busy? Yeah let’s just go with that....

But I have been doing a lot of things, for one thing I have cleaned out my closet and I will soon be having a garage sale to fundraise for next year. That has taken up a lot of my time. Also I have been out with my friends, enjoying summer, ect. I am putting studying finnish off and I do feel bad about it but I will focus on it eventually. I promise, there is no way that I would let myself go off to Finland with only the vocabulary that I have now. 

So I have officially gotten my first host family! Which has made me super pumped! I originally emailed the host family that was on my guarantee form and they emailed back soon after. I was very excited about them when another host family emailed me and said that they would be hosting me in August. Naturally I was a little confused. So I talked to my YEO (youth exchange officer) and he said that it is normal that the host family that is on the guarantee form isn’t always the first host family and that the second family to email me is probably the first host family I will have. So I started to get excited about this family as well. Another exchange student from my district is in Finland right now and it’s so funny because he is staying with the family that will be my first host family! It is very coincidental!

Facebook is possibly the greatest invention of all time! I am just going to put that out there(and I still haven’t seen the social network yet!). It is so helpful in finding and talking to people from all over the world who are going through the exact same thing! I have found many people who will be going to Finland next year and those who are already in Finland and people who live there. It is so great! I can't really imagine what being an exchange student 30 years ago must have been like! Having to receive information by actual mail! Can you imagine?The thought seems to scare me as an exchange student! Now it is so quick and easy to email my host family or my YEO so quick and get a response within a day. Or instant messaging people in Finland and getting to have an entire conversation being worlds apart! If there is anything that is more handy than Facebook when it comes to talking to people all over the world, you will need to tell me about it!  

  Anyways....As the days go on I find myself thinking about all the american things that I will miss. First and foremost I will miss my cat. She is such a big part of my american life, it makes me sad to think that I will have to spend a year without her :( Second I will miss some of my favorite TV shows. Most of the shows that I watch I don't really care about and I can miss a year. But the shows that I will miss the most are The Daily Show with Jon Steward and The Colbert Report. They are very american shows. And I know that by going on an exchange I'm trying to get away from american culture. But they are some of my favorite shows, and I love being "update with american politics" (I put those in quotes because it really isn't a news show but one of the only ways I can actually pay attention to politics) especially since I'm going to miss the primary elections for 2012 and I always like to see the political bits of Saturday Night Live. I am going to miss websites like hulu and netflix. I was aware that they don't stream in other countries but then I was reminded of it the other day when a friend who is already on her exchange posted about it on Facebook and it started to seem so real :( And of course I will miss my friends. I am spending a lot of time with them now that it is summer and I keep thinking that I will spend next year without them. Of course I will make new friends but that is also one thing that scares me a lot about the beginning of next year. Everybody tells me that Finns are very reserved and that I'm going to need to break the ice. I would be able to do this but it is also in a language that I barely speak. So I am freaked out a little by this thought. But I am sure that I will be able to accomplish this. 

It is easy to put my exchange out of my mind right now with summer in Summit county. I know that other future exchange students are not having such luck but I am spending a lot of my time with friends and the weather here as been absolutely perfect! It reminds me that I am glad that I'm not leaving just yet because summer in Summit is the best time of the year! Also I have a huge trip to Norway coming up and I will be trying to speak a lot of norwegian with family when I'm there. This will help me with my swedish when I'm in finland because Swedish is basically the same as norwegian just some small differences. Here are some pics from summer in Summit County. 

As you can see I am able to put my exchange out of mind and not explode from all the excitement!