What the Finland?!

I will be taking Finnish lessons three times a week, starting in September. One during school (starting tomorrow) and two outside of school. Hopefully this will help me. Note to self: pay attention in class for once.

On September 11th, I will be hopping on a ferry with my host family to Sweden, where we will spend the entire day of the 12th there and come home by the morning of the 13th. I am super excited for this. Mostly cause I really wanna go on a boat. Then I can start singing that song by the Lonely Island. That won't look weird at all, the random Canadian girl going, "I'm on a boat mother----, take a good hard look at the mother----ing boat" Not at all.

Ooh! I've made some friends that are actually finnish! Huzzah! They are talking about going to Helsinki for a day sometime soon! So excited!

More later! Peace out! Moiko!

Hey! I'm sorry for not writing sooner! It's been crazy lately and I haven't had a lot of time to write. SORRY IAN!!!

I started school last Wednesday, and I take "finnish", english, music, art, PE, German, Spanish and Music of the World. My schedule is going pretty crazy. Every day has a different order and I have two spares and lunch is at a really weird time (11:00 ew). There are two buildings about two or three blocks away from each other, I usually switch buildings after every class, and I won't be lieing if I say its uphill both ways. I have no idea how it works, but it seriously is. So ridiculous. Most of my classes are on the top floor too. The finns need more elevators and escalators. I am way too lazy for this much exercise. XP

The finnish are pretty quiet when you first meet them, but they really warm up once you get them talking. It's a little scary just striking up a conversation with a random stranger, but it pays off pretty well in the end :)

Well, that's all I'm writing for now. Its kind of late. I'll write more tomorrow! I promise!!

It's my third official day with my host family and its going pretty well actually. Yesterday, my host mother, Emi, Sophi and I went grocery shopping (extremely weird), then we went to Kaarina beach and I swam in the sea for the first time and had some ice cream. Next was a football derby, TPS against Inter. My host family didn't really care who won, except for Emi, she was supporting Inter. So I decided to join with her. You all know what football games are like, right? Lots of people sporting their teams colours, yelling and waving and singing and cursing. Well, in Finland, no one shouts, no one curses (that I could understand), and no one freaks out at the refs. They just sit quietly and clap everynow and then. There was one section that was very pro TPS and they sang and cursed and shouted, but even that couldn't have been more than 75 people. By the end of the game, you could tell the Canadian by the girl who kept standing up and shouting at the players and telling to the guy who just got kicked in the head (effin hilarious by the way) to stand up and take it like a man. My team lost 2 to 0 by the way.

I went to the library today and it was pretty amazing. I got my library card and a bunch of childrens books in finnish including one by Shel Silverstein, I'm kind of excited for that actually. The english section kind of sucked, but that's not what I'm here for!

Tomorrow I am going shopping with Emi and Lian and meeting up with my counselor sometime I hope. Then on Wednesday is something with rotex, I have no idea what. I have to meet my rotary club sometime too... Oh well.

I had what had to be the best time of my life in Karkku language camp. It was amazing and I love the people that I met there. I learned a lot of Finnish (Well, I tried), five hours of lessons a day. I tried a lot of new foods, most were delicious. I went to some amazing places, Tampere and this old church outside of Karkku (I'll find the name when I find thepiece of paper). I tried some super fun things, rowing, swimming in a finnish lake with finnish fishies that were going to eat my feet, a sweet game of soccer and finnish saunas(sa-ooh-nah). The entire week was pretty much rockin. I took lots of photos, so check them out on facebook when my laptop starts working again.

It was really sad to have to say good bye to some of my friends there, but Lian is in my city and we are going shopping with my host sister sometime this week. Also, my district has a conference in early november, then all the exchange students get together for the lapland tour in december and the St. Petersburg tour in April and the Eurotour in June. That's right, be jealous. My host family is also taking me to Sweden sometime in October.

There are about fifteen students in my district and five or six that are in Turku. Two of them go to my school. My school starts on the 18th so I have lots of time to check out the city and get to know my host family.

Speaking of which, we are now going to go walk around Turku and see some of the sights. Talk to you later! Kiitos ja moi moi!

Yesterday all of the students went to Tampere, the third largest city in Finland, went on a tour of the city and then got dropped off in the main square to wander around for three hours. So much fun, it was so beautiful and the shops are so hardcore. We met up with the oldies, the aussies, and I'm not going to lie, they were kind of really scary. But they were nice and took a bunch of us shopping. Right up until me and Lian somehow lost the group. Oh dang. So we went off shopping by ourselves. She had the camera, so I'll upload the pictures as soon as she gives them to me.

Camp here is so much fun and the students are all so awesome. Spoons and swimming everyday!

Got to run! Peace out!