Month 8ish

So I gotta say I haven't been keeping track of what's going on so I'm going to sum up my month in a couple of sentences. I can finally see the grass outside and it is getting warm, I went to a Stam1na concert which was sweet, I moved into my last family who are really nice, Easter is soon and we get to have Mammi which is a Finnish Easter food which is basically rye bread ground up and liquified then hardened and served with cream, and thats about it.

Month 7

So, its still cold here. I'm not sure when this cold weather will let up but it doesn't seem to be anytime soon. A lot has been going on lately. I've started moving into my new family's house. It's cool cause their son is one of my friends and he speaks great english so I dont have to worry about not talking to someone. I think this will be a good family for me. So usually in America, Valentine's Day is a big thing with couples going to dinner and non-couples going to parties and everyone really celebrating the day. Not like that here in Finland. Actually the only Valentine's Day present I got was from my family in America which was a box of chocolates and some sweet tarts and other candies. They were gone within 2 days. So for Valentine's Day, instead of going to a party or to dinner, I went sledding with the exchange students and rotex (ex-exchange students) which was a lot of fun. For some of the Australians, it was still one of their first times sledding so that was fun. Then after everyone was cold and wet, we went to a coffee house and got hot chocolate. That was a good day. Not what I would have done in America but it was definitely fun. So, if you remember from my previous blogs, I said I was doing this Oldies Dance at school, which is basically Finnish Prom. The prom has come and gone now. It was a lot of fun really. I didn't get a real tux because I don't have 300 euros to spend on that for one night. So I just wore my America suit and it was fine. The dance itself was cool. We did it in another school's gym. I was a little jealous that one school got to dance in the city castle's ballroom but it was no big deal. All in all a good night. Most people went to dinner or a party after that, but I went and hung out with my new host brother and we saw some friends later. It was really cool. I am going to Sweden with my family for the next week so that will be a really fun adventure. I am just hoping to have a good time and hopefully theres someone my age I can talk to. So I went to Sweden and basically it was just sight seeing and shopping. Like thats it there was nothing really exciting. I did get to see some of my exchange student friends on the island between Sweden and Finland but that was about it. Seriously. I mean yeah there were some old churches and stuff but when you've seen Notre Dame, nothing really compares to it. I moved families finally. They didn't have a second family for me so I moved with my friends family. I enjoyed my stay with the other family and I am very excited about my new one. I think this will be a great family for my last 4 months. Wow guys, 4 months and 6 days from today I will be on a plane back to America. Crazy how time flys..

Month 6

It was a party for 6. The going away/birthday party was today. 3 people turned 18 and 3 people are leaving. Among the 3 leaving is Australian Matthew. This yeah, Matthew has been my mentor, my teacher, and my good friend. I realized that night that all good things eventually do come to an end. It is only a few days left until he and all of the other Australians leave for home. Though I am very sad to watch them go, I know I will see some of them again. I do not know when or where, but I will. The party was alright. It was a dancing party with some little games planned in but I'm not really a party kind of person so I mostly just talked with friends and hung out. My parties are people hanging out and talking, I've never been into dancing really. I prefer a campfire and a guitar and 5 a company. Those are the best. Today they left. It was a very sad day. I went to the airport to see them all off. At first I was with a couple of other newbies but they all had to leave after a while. I hung out with Matthew just talking about stuff and the year and the future. After a while Ashley came. Then Jade. Then all the rest started pouring in. We went to the terminal and I said goodbye to everyone and went home. I had stayed up all night with them in the airport. It was a very sad day. Mia's birthday was today. It was the first party I had gone to in a while and I was glad to go. Mia is a Finnish girl who came on exchange to America last year. So I got to hang out with her and Alex (from Florida) in Tampere which was really nice. So then on Wednesday we finally got to meet our newbies. I cant really say how that was. It was great having newbies but at the same time its sad because now I only have 5 months left on exchange. It's amazing that these 6 months have gone by so fast and so much has happened, even though it feels like I've been here for a little more than 2 weeks, if that. The newbies though, they were cool. It's kinda hard still because I compare them to my oldies and it's impossible to compare to them. So I guess in time I will come to see them not as taking the oldies' spots but as making new spots for themselves. I can't believe I'm an oldie. It really just doesn't feel right. I really have been opened up to the world this year through the eyes of my fellow exchangies and through the people I have met along the way in Finland and before and most definitely after. I have so many plans to go to so many different places all throughout the world before I die. I have a list of some 30 countries I would like to visit. I will visit many of them in Eurotour this year so that will be nice. Also, I applied for this University in Australia which I am almost accepted into. I just have to give a verbal interview and record some original music and send it in to them. I really hope I get in. I've always wanted to do music and now I have the opprotunity to do so on an international level. So when you go on exchange, no one tells you that you will enter a sublevel of poverty... seriously, I'm so broke. I have been sick for the past week. It sucks. But ice cream and coffee will get me through. So I can officially say I know how to Polka, Tango, Waltz, and a couple of other dances. We do them in our oldies "prom" dance class. It's quite fun I must say. I have started recording my songs at school now so I can go to Uni in Australia. I hope to have three songs done before I leave. Hope you enjoyed this.

Month 5

There's finally snow on the ground and it stayed. It's gone from kinda warm to very cold here so it is kinda hard to get used to a huge change so fast but I like the cold. The Australians are very close to leaving. It's pretty sad because I've made really good friends with them but I know I'll see most of them again. We had the Rotary Christmas party this past weekend. It was fun and I got a present. I'm not sure what it is yet but I know it does something. For now its purpose is to take up space on my desk until I find some use for it. At the party we went to the big cathedral for a celebration of Lucia. Lucia is a girl chosen by the city to be a symbol of light for the Christmas season. This is a really important thing for Finnish people. There is a new girl chosen each year. My rotary club each year hosts a Christmas event also held at the cathedral. I helped them this year by collecting money gifts. Though I was pretty bored throughout the thing, as it was all in Finnish and I understood little, I did find that the music was very similar to the American Christmas music that we sing every year. This was a nice reminder that the celebration of Christmas, no matter where you are, is for the same purpose : getting presents and eating good food. But seriously, Christmas is a great time of the year for everyone. I bought a ukulele. Ever sense i knew this thing existed, I've wanted to play it. I didn't get a really nice really expensive one because i dont have the money for something like that. I just wanted one i could learn to play on. I really do love the sound it makes. I've started taking the songs that I've written on guitar and transferred them to uke. It's really cool the sounds I'm getting. Hopefully I will be able to record some stuff with the Uke and guitar. That would be awesome. I finally learned how to ice skate. I have done it before but that was when I was 6 and I don't really remember that much. It was a lot of fun. I went with all my exchange student friends and we had a great time. Though our feet were sore from the skates and our elbows/butts/hands were sore from falling we still had a great time. So Christmas has come and past. It was nothing special for me but I had a good time at least. It was a little different than Christmas in America. We had my host uncle dress up as Joulupukki (Santa) and he made everyone laugh a lot and I got to sit on his lap which everyone thought was really funny. But I understood only one of the jokes he said and that was "People in the USA nowadays are so picky. I mean I might have to get lawyers just to say that I gave them the gift they really wanted" I thought it was very funny and true because a lot of people in the US are coming to the point were they sue just so they can get money. Back 30 years ago everything was solved with fist fights and mouth offs. Now if someone says something they can be charged with "verbal assault." I mean come on, what kind of idiot actually takes something like "verbal assault" and sues for it? Someone who has no life and nothign better to do. If someone punches me in the face, I'd probably just punch him back. And whoever wins the fight wins the dispute. End of conversation. I'm not going to sue him for "Physical and emotional damages." Those don't really exist. But back to Christmas, we had a lot of different foods here. There were a lot of different smoked fishes and mustard covered hams. it was a much different experience having all these new foods on Christmas. My favorite gift would have been the Finnish Sauna book because I want to build a sauna when I get home. I also got some candy, a jar of peanut butter from my amerikan parents, and a cd. But really i didnt want much so i got more than i expected. I also played guitar and ukulele with my host cousin who went to Australia a couple years ago. She was a really cool person to meet and hopefully i will see her again. its nice to have a host cousin you can hang with and talk to. and before you the reader gets any ideas she's 23ish and engaged and lives in Sweden and is about to become a doctor, i f you get what im going at. Anyways... The next day we couldn't go to Christmas Mass because we had to drive several hours to my host dad's side of the family to have dinner there. Same deal, smoked ham and fish, lots of potatoes, my host grandma dressing up as Joulupukki. It was funny having her dress up as Joulupukki cause she kissed her boyfriend and everyone thought it was funny. Then we watched some of the Harry Potter movie with my other host cousins and I had a good talk with my host uncle who went to Cincinatti on exchange many years ago. It was fun to be able to talk to someone about sports and teams again. And when we drove back home my host bro and i nolifed on Xbox until 2 am playing through Halo 1,2 and 3. Though we only got halfway through 1 and called it quits. I got to skype my family which was nice cause they said it was weird not having me there at Christmas. I guess it will be weird next year not having my sister there as she is also going on exchange but to where we dont know. I went and saw the 3D movie AVATAR which was probably the most graphically amazing movies I've ever seen. Currently my favorite movie and you should definately go see it. It was my first New Years outside of the country today. I must say, probably one of the best times I've had. I went to visit my friend Ashley in Nokia which is close to the big city Tampere. For New Years, her host dad gave us like 5 fireworks (which are LEGAL) and we went into Tampere and joined 3 other exchange students for the New Years. Most of the night we hung out in this coffee house kinda place and just chilled and talked about things. Then when it was close to midnight we went to this lake and we had a hung yelling count-down to midnight and when it was midnight we lite our fireworks and watched them fly. It was a great time. Afterwards, two of the exchangies had to catch their busses so the 3 of us went back to the coffee house and hung out there. We met these Finns there who were really interested in us cause we were foreigners. It's cool how many people like you because you're not from the country. Then we went back to Ashley's house and had a bunch of fries and amazing cake that her host fam made us and went to bed. Goodbye 09 and hello 10. Hope you enjoyed reading this.

Month 4

It snowed today. Though it didn't last a day, it still snowed. Which means fall is over and winter is officially moving on in. It will be a great winter here getting to see Santa and Lappland and just having a good time experiencing the year here. This past week I've taken a course in school which focuses on recording music. I've never had so much fun with music before. I spent all of 8 hours in the studio just messing around with recordings with my friends. It might be something I will look at when I think about a possible career. This weekend was the district meeting of district 1410, the best district in Finland. I had a great time and got to go to sauna and jump into the below freezing lake after. The lake wasn't frozen but it likely could have cause it was really really cold. I am excited to jump in when it is totally frozen over. The snow is all gone now. It got really warm. They say it won't snow again until January which sucks cause its not christmas without snow. It's called White Christmas for a reason. I got to go to Tampere, a city up north from Turku, to visit my friend who came to America as an exchange student last year. We played pool and hung out with a bunch of her friends and it was a really fun time. Her sister gave me some music pieces for me to teach myself how to play the piano. I am trying to be able to read notes this year sense it is a skill I have forgotten. Hopefully I will be able to record some of my original songs in the school this year and maybe make a cd. That would be really cool. We are going to Lappland now so we can go skiing and see the real Santa and his house. This will be a ton of fun I can't wait. I got to see my first reindeer in the ciy today. it was a lot like a regular deer except it had fuzzy antlers and was a lot bigger. So we went to Lappland. It was without a doubt my favorite part of Finland so far. It was a really long bus ride there but it was definately worth it. I was really happy that there was snow because my city doesn't have any yet. Hopefully we will soon. When we got there we got to go snowboarding at this local mountain. It wasn't very big but it was still a lot of fun. I met heaps of cool people there. The Australians have gotten me saying some of the Aussie words like heaps, cheers, no worries, and fair dinkum. I got to see my first reindeer. They were really cool. I got to go on a dog sled ride which was great. Definately heap loads of fun. We also did a reindeer ride but that wasn't as much funn. After the reindeer ride we took snow shoes back home. That was fun. We got to listen to a traditional Saame person sing songs which was super mad. It was really peaceful and something I would like to hear again someday. We then have the gift giving which was great and sad at the same time cause now the oldies are less than 2 months until they leave. I was given a guitar by Ashley Bujeya from Australia. I will keep it safe and play it everyday. Hopefully I'll see her along with all the other oldies when I visit Australia which I plan to do for senior spring break and after I graduate. We then packed up our things and headed off to Santa's house. We had to buy a picture of us with Santa but none of us wanted to do that. So after when we were watching a video of us going into Santa's room, I took a picture of us with Santa on the tv screen. Sneaky me. We then went to a nice restaurant and had our last meal. We said our many tearful goodbyes and headed home. It was definately the best weekend of my exchange so far. I had my first traditional Finnish ballroom dance lesson today. That waws fun and interesting at the same time. It should be fun to see how I do. Christmas is coming soon. My next post will be after New Years. Hope you enjoyed this.

cold. that about sums up what its like here. no snow, just rain. and cold. LOTS of it. but i like the cold so thats fine. at the request of my host dad, i have started to try and teach my host siblings how to speak english. it is going ok. my 4 year old brother has a speech problem and cant pronounce S's and some other letters so it is not as easy for him as my 6 year old host sister. we took 2nd at the rugby tournament. that was really cool. then after the tournament we got to see Finland play Bulgaria in the first professional rugby game I've ever seen. Though Finland lost, it was still cool to see the game. Exams were this last week though I didn't have to take any besides english. I got to see the best drummer in Finland do an expo at a local place. He was advertising a new drum pedal but we just went to watch him play. It was really cool to see someone with that kind of talent play. It snowed for the first time today. It's not going to stay but I think that there will be lots more to come soon so that will be good. I've lately been getting a lot into The Doors as my choice of music. I'm not sure why cause no one here listens to them but I really like their stuff. My host mom really likes to make food from the things she grows in her garden. Today, we had rubarb pie and ice cream (ice cream not home made) which was really good. I think I should write down some of these recipies to take back to america with me. I have taken to going to sauna almost every night. I really enjoy it and it gives me a good feeling of peace during and after. I live it so much in fact that for my 18th birthday, I have asked my parents to buy me the supplies to build my own sauna back in America. I've done some research on them and they are a lot easier to build than one might think. I really hope I can build one. This last weekend I was at the summer cottage with my host brother Jolle and the rest of the family. We went fishing and caught one fish which was a pretty good sized fish I'd say. We spent the rest of the night playing Halo and eating chips and candy. It was quite a fun weekend. I made American pancakes for breakfast the next day and they all really liked them. I only wish I had made more because they were all gone very fast. It has been quite a quick month. It seems like just last week I arrived here and now I'm 3 months into this. It's been quite an adventure so far.

Month 2

So, where to begin. I have become a part of a band here and we are starting to get things together. We had our first practice this week and it went pretty well seeing as two of the members could not make it. but we have song ideas going to thats good. My football team here took a hard fall last game losing 33-6 but in the end we all had fun during the game and thats really all that matters. We have our last game this coming weekend and hopefully we will end on a good note. I have become what is know here as "kahvi addikti" but its more commonly known as "coffee addict." I think just the other day I had almost the whole pot by myself which is a ton of coffee. But I don't really care that its a lot cause the quality of the coffee here far surpasses that of Starbucks coffee. I will definately have to send some of that home to the family and friends. Also, I've noticed that candy here is a lot better. It's tasty and not just sugar and is soooooo addicting. I have also become part of the largest youth rugby team here in Finland. Though we are not very good we will see if we can try and play some games with people in other cities around Finland. I went to see something very strange the other day. My friend Jaakko sings in an opera and he had a free ticket so i decided to go. I got all dressed up for it which was, I thought, kinda fun. But when the show starts, I find out that the opera is Italian with Swedish and Finnish subtitles. So, I saw a Finnish opera in Italian with swedish subtitles. Weird, but definately entertaining. So we won the football game at the end of the year to win the bronze medal of Finland. This is something really cool to me because instead of going into the game with a must win attitude we went in with a lets make this the best game we've ever played and have fun doing it. I ran the opening kickoff back 80 yards for a touchdown. Needless to say, things just got better from there. I ran a career high (and probly life high) 400+ yards, 3 touchdowns, and had 20 tackles with 1 interception. That was the most fun game I've ever been a part of. Not because that we won, not because we got the bronze medal, but because I learned the most important lesson to learn in life, its not whether you win or lose, but whether or not you had fun doing it. I got to go and see the Turku Castle which was really cool. I've never been to a castle before so that was quite an experience for me. It was a lot bigger than I thought if would be. It took 2 hours just to go through all the available rooms we could and we didnt even get to see half of the castle cause a lot of it was closed off. Really cool experience though. I am going to be playing in a rugby tournament on saturday in Helsinki which will be really fun and a great experience for me in my rubgy playing. Things are going great here. Hope you enjoyed reading this.