School Supplies!

Why am I writing a post? Because I just wrote several long emails and I am in a writy mood. Yes I just created the word writy. And because I should go over what I bring to school everyday,  just because.

Today I bought my books! Yay! I won't sit in class with an empty desk in front of me not understanding what is going on! I mean... I still won't understand anything but at least I can look like I am doing something.

In Finland, the books are what the classes basically revolve around. Kind of. I have mentioned that Finland has these "periods" or terms that last six weeks and they have about 5 or 6 a year. These all have different classes. And for every class you have one book. So you have to buy about 7 books every 6 weeks for your new classes. The books cost about 30 euros each. So, I didn't have that many classes this "period" and I spent 200 euros on books. Thank god the Rotary pays for it because that will be 200 euros 5 times a year and that is around 1000 euros a year. So basically school is free but book money is about $1500. Not the average cost of school supplies in the US. Usually I just use my old school supplies and buy maybe a folder and some colored pencils. So usually my school supplies cost about $3.50. There is a small difference this year.

But before I tell you about my books I will discuss other things that I bring. On the first day I wore my backpack to school. I have not worn my backpack since. One thing that I noticed, because I was paying attention to the small things, is that backpacks are not very common in school. Only a few people wear them, and those few people are all guys. Of course there are no lockers in finnish high school, so what do people carry books in, you ask? Well most people have a book bag type bag that they carry everything in. And some people (girls) have purses. Nice and big purses. So, on the second day I ditched my backpack and had my big purse with me to carry all my stuff. I must say that it is easier because it is smaller and has no pointless straps that go out into the aisle and trip people as they walk by, like my backpack. But that was of course before I had really any supplies, so I may pick up my backpack again for some of the days that I have a lot of classes, and therefore a lot of books. Today I just had one book with me and it was really heavy. I have no idea what is going to happen, but I just thought that I should note that nobody wears backpacks in finnish school. Unlike the US. I can work with this as long as I always wear something that is either pink, white or blue because those are the colors of the big purses that I brought with me to Finland and the only ones that are big enough to fit anything in them. I never had to worry about color coding my outfit when I had my backpack! Gah! I hate how fashionable finnish people are!


So, enough about bags and how I can never get enough of them! Here is a list of mostly everything that I NEED everyday.

• Keys.....I have to be able to get into my house when I come home because I am always the first home) 
• Phone
• Bus Card
• Tissues :( (I am still a little sick!) 
• Camera 
• Wallet 
• Umbrella! 
• Water Bottle (They have no drinking fountains in school! If I am thirsty I must buy something which isn't what I want to spend my money on, plus one of the first days I did not have my wallet and that was bad) 
• Lukiokalentari (High school planner) 
• Finnish-English Dictionary 

All of these are very important! Not one of them can be left at home! Otherwise I may not be able to survive! And if I die, my mother would not be happy because she always says "take care of yourself" and if I don't have one of these, I am technically not taking care of myself. 

Another thing! People here don't really have notebooks. They have like small notebook like things. They are much smaller (so they fit in your average purse) and they are all graph paper. Which is what people use over here instead of line paper. We had to look pretty hard to find the line paper notebooks. I am going to try and use the small graph paper notebooks, but we will see how it goes. But it is definatly nicer how little space they take up compared to the Big notebooks that they have in the US. Also they have a lot less paper, probably because you have one per class, and a class only lasts 6 weeks, so it is saving a lot of paper if you just take a smaller notebook. 

Small notebook 

So, onto books! 

I have a book for every class. I think that they are very interesting to look at. The english text books may be helpful with learning finnish because they have a lot of finnish-english glossaries and excercises. And I have two books for my english classes. The spanish book may not be of as much help, but still may help some, for learning spanish, not so much, but learning finnish! It is always funny in that class I understand everything that the teacher says to us in spanish, but then suddenly I don't understand what she is saying, and that is when I realize that she switched to finnish.

History 

An english book

My students planner. Lots of ads for...H&M

All my books 

Swedish

Spanish

Spanish....to finnish 

But the thing about school is that it is still school. It is school in another country, in another language, with different people. But still school. I still have that dreaded feeling on Sunday night, I still have to get up at godforsaken times of the morning, and I still watch the clock in every class, hoping time will go faster so I can get to the next class. School may have disgusted itself with new looks, sounds smells and so on, but it is the same deep down. Not that I don't enjoy it, just that it is the same. 

In another subject, I went to my first legit soccer game! Or as they say here...football......

It was quite interesting. First thing, it was kinda boring. The game was zero-zero the entire time. Nobody scored at all, and they didn't even Go into over time until somebody did score. So that made it kinda boring. It was the two teams of Turku against eachother, so there was a fair amount of people cheering on both teams. There was 7,000 people there, but not many of them were many much noise. They said that a mexican exchange student once said that it was one of the quietest football games he has ever been to. And he was right. There was probably 50 fans from each team making a ton of noise, and all the rest of the stadium was quiet. Of course there was the big Oh! Whenever there was a penalty, or if someone almost made a goal. But Other than that, not much noise. The first half was kinda boring, but the second half was was more keeping you on the edge of your seat because both teams wanted to have a goal. Of course both teams were playing their best on defense too, so nobody scored. At the end when everybody stood up, I was like "What's happening?" and my host mom said "It's over" I was kinda shocked, because I am not used to people who would be anywhere near satisfied with the final score being zero zero, but that is part of going to another culture. But overall the game was fun. 

I enjoyed getting action shots of the players 

And finally I will end this blog on a happy note. I have discovered a new finnish chocolate! It is so delicious! I have already eaten a huge bar of it and I plan on buying more tomorrow during my free period, or after school. Whichever works, but I need more of it. Because it is good! 

I can adjust to this

This is a long post. Very long, but I am going to litter it with pictures to make it seem shorter. So please don't leave, it may be long, but I cover like everything. Please bare with me. 

This title refers to my regular day. Because it is awesome. Totally and completely awesome.

So what is my average day? Well I usually get up at 6:45 (wayyy to early, and the only thing I do not like about my schedule) then I get dressed and get ready for school. Then I scamper 20 feet from my house to the bus stop at 7:20. Wait there for a few minutes with a whole bunch of other people who live in the same neighborhood. Then the bus comes.

My bus card...still don't know where the bar code thing is, but when I put it against the card reader on the bus, the light turns green, and that is good enough for me

A few things about the bus in Finland. One thing, it is efficient, which isn't that big of a deal for anyone from any country in Europe, but compared to the bus that we have in summit county, it works a whole lot better. At the language camp the finnish tutors that they had there put on a skit about buses in Finland. After I have traveled on the bus a few times I now know that everything that the tutors said about the bus is a total lie. There are many things that the tutors talked about that are wrong, but so I don't ramble on for a long time, I will only list the major one that the tutors made it seem like a big deal. And that is that nobody will let you sit next to them. They made it seem like most people will take a seat and then put their bags in the seat next to them so people can't sit next to them. This is not true at all. The tutors made it seem like a lot of people would be standing because you don't sit down if someone's bag takes up a seat. But this is not true at all. The bus is very crowded in the mornings and you keep the seat next to you open. If there are two seats completely open, those will fill up before someone sits next to someone that they don't know but people don't stand if there is a seat that isn't filled with someone open.

This is outside school in the morning, since people here can't drive to school, there is no parking lot because nobody has cars. Everybody either bikes, rides the city bus, or has a motorcycle. Nobody has their parents drives, and there is no school bus. So there are bikes as far as the eye can see. 

I take the bus for about 15 minutes into the city. And when I say into the city, I mean, in the city. My school is right in downtown. It is very cool, because I am not used to city life. Even if it isn't a big city like New York. So then I get into town and get off the bus right next to my school. Then I walk up a slight hill, a flight of stairs and I am at my school! From the street you can't really see my school very well, but I have been looking at it for months on google street view even if you can't see it very well. When I was actually there for the first time, it was very cool. My heart skipped a beat when I realized that I was actually there in person, because it looks exactly the same from street view as it does in person.

This is me in front of Luostarivuoren Lukio

Then I walk into the building and up several flights of stair. When I say several, I mean, a lot! Gah! If there is anything that I do not like about being here that they are way to many stair surrounding my school! Walking up from the bus, to class, into downtown, stairs, stairs, stairs and more stairs! Gah! And most of my classes are on the top floor of the building so I have to walk all the way up, then all the way down for lunch, then all the way up again. By the time you get to your class you are sweating!

Here is another picture of me in front of Luostarivuoren Lukio. These pictures do not do the building justice in size and impressivness. It is a quite beautiful building and it is sooooo tall! Like the first thing that I thought about the school is that it is soooo tall! And that was before I went inside to climb some stairs! 

So, even though you have to walk up tons of stairs to get to school, it is not bad once you get there. My schedule of classes is amazing! At Luostarivuoren (my school's name), there are always a Bunch of exchange students, and a ton of kids that just went on exchange. So they know how to treat exchange students. There are no classes that are required to be taken by exchange students, and it is nice for me, because I am almost viewing this year as a year off from high school, because in the classes I do take, I don't have to take the tests or anything for them, I don't even have to show up. But I do because if I skipped class, the Rotary would be out for my tail.

Schedule (don't bother reading it, I list all of my classes, you just have to read on) 

So what are my classes, you ask? Well, I am taking two english classes (easy), a swedish class (the most difficult because I was only put in it because I know some norwegian and they are different languages (norwegian being better) and my norwegian sucks, so you can imagine how bad my swedish is) and am I taking a history class where I don't know anything that the teacher is talking about, I know the words for Germany and France, and there was a big lecture about some war between Germany and France, and I only know that because I could catch those two words and only those two words. So that is an interesting class....and I have spanish, which I actually think is at a higher level than I am in spanish, and it's Spain's spanish, so not really my best class, but I can at least contribute in that class, which is nice.

This was the sheet which we picked our classes off of. And I thought choosing classes in the US was confusing! Here there are abbreviations and numbers. Somehow the students understand what they mean and pick a schedule that they can be happy with. If I didn't have a teacher from the school there with me, I think I would have been asking when the next plane back to the states was leaving from Helsinki! 

In finnish high school, it is like college. Teachers do not care if you are there or not. They don't give you detention for skipping class, they aren't responsible for you in the least. So when you don't have class you can leave. I have several spots in my schedule where I don't have any class, and I have only had two days of school so far so I have only had one free period, and when I had that, I went down into Turku and sat by the river and watched as they set up some show that was for the Culture capital thing. It was very nice. I like how much independence they give the students. Because in Finnish school system, you graduate from school in 9th grade, then you can legally stop in school. But nobody does this, everybody either goes onto Lukio or vocational school. These you have to apply for, like college and you have to be accepted into the schools, so the people at these schools want to be there, because they have the choice, unlike in the US, where people are forced to stay in school until they are 18. People can drop out, but that is not something that most people do. So the people at Lukio are treated like adults. Which is a nice change from the US, where they treat us like children, and you get yelled at for having a water bottle out in the commons. But it was kinda weird to just walk out of school like it was over.

So here is my schedule:

Monday:

8:10-9:30 English 8
9:45-11:00 History 3
11:05-11:45 Lunch
11:45-13:00 English 1
13:15-14:30 Spanish

Tuesday

8:10-9:30 Swedish
9:45-11:00 History
11:00-11:45 Lunch
11:45-13:00 Nothing (this is when my Rotary meetings are, so I will have a place to be now every week)
13:15-14:30 English

Wednesday

8:10-9:30 English
9:45-11:00 Nothing
11:00-11:45 Lunch
11:45-13:00 Spanish
Go home early (I only have 2 classes today!)

Thursday

8:10-9:30 English
9:45-11:00 Swedish
11:00-11:45 Lunch
11:45-13:00 History
13:15-14:30 Spanish

Friday

8:10-9:30 English
9:45-11:00 Nothing
11:00-11:45 Lunch
11:45-13:00 Swedish
Go Home Early (2 classes today!)

The schedule here goes by week. We have a class multiple times a week, but at different times during the day, which is different than most schedules in the US. This is a nice schedule. I really like going home at 1 o'clock and 2:30. Even though I wake up at 6:45, some people don't take a first class, so they can sleep in *cough* My host brother *cough*

These classes only last six weeks though. In Finland there are five or six "periods" in a year. And every period lasts six weeks, and when a period ends there is a week of tests for all the classes. Then everyone has new classes. So the teachers only have six weeks to teach the entire course, so they go over stuff fast. For instance, in my history class, I didn't understand what the teacher was saying the entire lecture but the words for France and Germany, which were said a lot. But the girl I was sitting next to said that we went over like a hundred years in one class. Which is quite impressive. I think it is because whenever the teacher is talking, everyone shuts up. Which is different from the US, because you can never get any class where everyone listens. Because nobody wants to be there, whereas here, you can choose to walk out the door and nobody will say anything at all.  So I will have a chance to take less classes in the morning and more in the afternoon. And six weeks from now I will have to have another post going over my new schedule.

I ran out of school related pictures...so here is a picture of the design on my key chain thing. 

Lunch is nice. I have only eaten at the school once so far, and it was pretty good. But lots of times, the kids say, that it isn't very good. That is probably because there is one kitchen in Turku that cooks a lunch enough for everyone in Turku to have enough food to stuff themselves silly. You can take as much food as you want. So naturally, the food can't be that good, if you have to cook enough for thousands of kids. I think that it is a kinda interesting system though, my host brother and I go to different schools, yet we eat the same food for lunch. Also, finns are usually spacious people, but at lunch everyone pushes and shoves to get into the cafeteria. So it is very hot and sweaty and uncomfortable waiting in line to get food.

And here is a picture of my house for your enjoyment. 

Well, this post is long enough for like six posts, and sorry about that. I applaud you that you actually made it to the end. I will have more posts about school soon, because this one is long enough for now.

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 

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!