Because it has been a while...

Hey everyone, it has been almost a month since I last updated, and I know that I shouldn't go so long in between posts, so here is a new one for you.

Not all that much big and noteworthy things have happened to me lately. It is really really hard to believe that it is almost the end of january! It really seems like January just started. This means that I am halfway through my exchange! I already have my departure date for when I go back! Which depresses me beyond compare. I think about going back to my life in Colorado, and as much as I like home, I am such a different person here than I was there. I have changed so much, that going back to my high school seems like a nightmare. I have moved on from that part of my life, and now I know the day where I go back to it. It is really scary. But I still have a while before I go back, and I am told that as fast as this half goes, it is the better half, so I am looking forward to that. For all of you at home, Mark your calendars, I return to Summit County on the 27th of July.

And the end of January means....my birthday is coming up! I have been looking forward to this day, because finally I will be able to tell people my age without getting weird looks from everyone. That is because I am technically not even old enough to be in finnish high school. And it seems like half the people who go on exchange to Finland are 18. Sadly I will only be turning 16, and therefore still won't be able to do the same stuff as all the other exchange students, but at least I am older...And it is my sweet sixteen, which is not a very big deal in Finland, 18 is the big deal in Finland because everything becomes legal so that is when you party. I find it a little sad that I will be celebrating my sixteenth in a country that it isn't a big deal, and then when I celebrate my eighteenth, I will also be in a country that it doesn't matter...so I get no big birthday bashes....but I may celebrate big on my seventeenth and make it a big deal. Just for the party....and of course I know that the summer after I turn 18 I will be abroad, so then I will party.

So anyways, January, what has happened? Well for starters I went to my first presidential debate. No, not american...finnish. Which is something that I never though would happen..my first live presidential debate and it is in a foreign country in a language that I don't understand...you could say that I never saw that coming. Finnish elections are tomorrow, so there are lot of politics going around in Finland. I haven't kept up with them really at all. I feel like I want to start understanding american politics before I take up another country's, and if I ever do pick up another country's politics, it will be Norway, since that is another country where I have citizenship. But it was seriously cool to go to. I didn't even plan on going to it, either. My best friend from Colorado, Monica, who I have mentioned in this blog before, was visiting me from her host city, Kauhajoki, and I was showing her the sights of Turku, and then we were going into the main mall, Hansa, and then we stumbled upon the debate, just as it started, and with my amazing crowd pushing techniques, I managed to get us in the second row. The debate itself wasn't all that impressive, like any other presidential debate, in finnish, but it was cool just being there. One of my favorite parts of living in Turku is the fact that you can randomly stumble on random, awesome things like a presidential debate.

The bridges across the river have pictures of all the candidates

(Also the flag in the corner is of Turku's coat of arms)

They have popped up all over town

In the mall, there were paintings/drawings of all the candidates

My favoriet portrait of Finland's president...

All eight candidates in debate

I have to say, even though I know that Hansa is like the god of all malls and anything that is anything happens there, I was quite amused that they were having a big, televised presidential debate right next to H&M, a bit different from american presidential debates I guess....

I also got presidential pins for free, and they are on my blazer now :D 

Now the Oldies have left (Oldies are exchange students that came to Finland last January and stayed a year, most from Australia) and now it is time to get Newbies! The arrive in Finland tomorrow, and then they have a language camp, like we did. Many of us, now Oldies (feels so strange to call myself an oldie...) will go to Tampere, and meet the Newbies when they visit Tampere during their language camp week, like we did. And I am looking forward to that so much because I get to see other exchange students who live all over Finland. And that will be great to see them again. I think that I will get much closer to the Newbies than our Oldies, because with most of our oldies, we only got to spend Lapland Tour together, but with the newbies, most of them will go on Euro tour, which will be a much better bonding experience since it is so much longer. But I still miss the oldies that I had in Turku..

My neighborhood

The snow has finally arrived here to stay. The city is nice without snow, but it is much nicer in the winter when there is snow. I also have to say that there is A LOT of ice! So much, I am surprise that I haven't fallen and killed myself already! Particularly the stairs that I use to get from my bus stop to my school every morning, they are the most dangerous stairs that I have ever seen! And I have to use them every day! It is terrible, but I haven't killed myself yet, so there is hope that I may last the whole year without dying...but if I do die on exchange, my money is that it will be those stairs...or the crazy drivers in this city...either one is incredibly dangerous...

Believe it or not this is a walking path....

Ice Skating anyone?

I finally got my Christmas package! After 5 weeks in the mail....haha, postal service sucks, but I am really happy to have it!

School has started up again and it is nice. I like all of my classes, and am hoping to get credit for several. It has been good so far. I have been continuing with my dancing classes. They are good, though a lot of the time I feel a bit helpless, but I am catching up fast. We learned the Tango, which is awesome to say that I know the Tango now, and we also learned a dance to the song Party Rock Anthem, which was awesome, and I think it is my favorite dance.

I got some clothing from my school now. Some of the senior clothes, because they don't have any other clothes really for the school. I have a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie. The sweatpants are awesome, and they have the school name, and Turku written around the coat of arms for the city. The sweatshirt is also awesome, with "Luostarivuoren Lukio 2012" written on one side. The only thing I find actually a bit amusing, is that I will not be able to wear my hoodie to my school back home, because on the back it has a picture of Captain Morgan and it says "cABItain Morgan" (ABI being the finnish word for high school senior) and that is technically a reference to alcohol, and against the school dress code at home...haha, I find that a little funny, and a bit annoying...i think that I will probably just wear the hoodie anyways and whenever some teacher asks me about it I will say, no it doesn't say "Captain Morgan" it says "cABItain Morgan" and I don't know and alcoholic drinks called that....


Anyways, I'll have more updates later :D Moikka!

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 

Lapland Part Two

On Monday after skiing we went to a local high school in the town of Muonio. Here we had a talent show where many of the different countries did patriotic or just funny acts, and some of the local high schoolers played some music and there were even some who even had did this fire twirling thing, which was really awesome. It was a pretty fun time there. We all enjoyed the acts that many of the countries did, and everyone wanted to go to Brazil afterwards since they did such a good act. That night also founded the tour’s theme song, a brazilian song called Ai Se Eu Te Pego. Everyone was singing it for the rest of the tour and a lot of time afterwards. 

On Tuesday, which was our busiest day. We did several different things. It started early in the morning and all the busses took off for different things. Our bus went first to a place where we saw a slideshow about Lapland (the music of the show was hard to listen to so early in the morning and keep your eyelids open) and then we were in some place with information on different types of wildlife in Lapland. I was surprised to learn that ptarmigans live in Lapland. I didn’t know that ptarmigans would live on other continents than North America. 

After that we all took group pictures from our bus. It was fun. An interesting thing about Lapland, that was noticeable today especially is that they don’t really have the sun, but they do have daylight, and in the daylight, everything turns a blueish twinge. Which was seriously cool. It made everything soooo pretty! 

Then after that place we went and met a reindeer herder, and she told us about the traditions of reindeer herding. And showed us some of the clothes that they wore, and showed us pictures from herding and showed us some of the tools that they used and all that. The reindeer herders have this “sport” where they get behind reindeers with skis and then the reindeer pull them on a track, and it seems really crazy. And then the reindeer “princess” a girl in traditional clothes, awards the cup to the winner. Tuesday was one of my oldies’ (from Australia) birthday so everyone made her dress up like the reindeer princess. It was quite interesting to see all the very old and traditional clothes that the people wore, and still wear (when herding reindeer) today. 

So then before we went back to the hotel for lunch we had a little extra time. The town we were in was Muonio, which is right next to the swedish border. There is river that separates the two countries and our hotel was actually right on the river. So you could see Sweden right on the other side. And so since we had some extra time we actually went to Sweden for a few minutes. We went to the bridge that separates the two countries and we all ran around on the bridge for a few minutes, and then went back to the hotel for lunch. 

Sweden, From the hotel 

Customs 

The sign that separates Finland on one side and then Sweden on the other side.

After lunch we went snowshoeing to a reindeer farm. I didn’t snowshoe because I had messed up my knee yesterday, so I got a ride on a snowmobile, and then I got to drink Glögi (traditional Christmas drink, you’ll hear more about it in my next post) and wait for the rest to come to the farm. 

So then while at the farm we were put into groups of three’s and then three groups at a time we went on Reindeer sleigh rides. They were really short (and we were right behind the reindeer, so the smell wasn’t great) but it was really cool. And then everyone got a chance to go on a ride, and then after all the rides we were able to take pictures with the reindeer. 

After the reindeer rides, we went back to the resort and then we went to the dog sledding part of the resort, where they had over 100 huskies that pulled dog sleds. We went on dog sled rides, which were also short, but the dogs went so much faster than the reindeer! They went so fast it hurt my eyes to be open and watching. It was also another really cool thing. 

After the dog sled ride we looked around the dog sledding place. There were so many dogs!! They were so cute!! And there were puppies! I loved the puppies so much!!! I wanted one so badly!!

Then we went back to the hotel and had dinner. Tuesday was Finland’s independence day. But Finns don’t celebrate their independence really big at all, they really just act respectfully and light candles, and if we were in our host family’s houses, they would probably be watching the independence day dance that the president hosts (my host father has made it quite clear to me how much he hates that dance). But we really didn’t do anything special. 

That night we also all gathered and had a “party” where we had a reindeer herder that came and sang songs, and the oldies all gave out gifts to their favorite newbies, and then some people had some skits and it was all pretty fun. 

Then next day we got up early and went on the busses and drove three hours south to Roveniemi. Which is right on the arctic circle, and boast being the home of Santa Claus.  We went to “Santa’s village” which was actually just a bazillion gift shops, and some reindeer, and there was also his office where you could take a picture with him and pay a lot of money, but I didn’t get a chance to meet him. But I did some shopping there. And that was fun. 

A Post in Roveniemi that said how far to different places all over the world

Santa's office

Then we went to lunch and we had to say goodbye, which was super sad because there were some people there that I would never see again. Which was sad. But we managed it, because all the people that I was closer with I would see again this year. 

Then we had the grueling 14 hour bus ride in front of us, which was passed by sleeping (only a little) and the TV show friends. And then we arrived back home in the south at 5 am the next day. Fun!

But Lapland was a really great time and it was soooo short and that is what is so sad about it!!