Hyvää Pääsiäistä / Happy Easter!
Easter is something that I have been looking forward to here, because there are some very different traditions than we have in Canada. To start with, on the Sunday before Easter Sunday the younger kids all dress up and go from door to door with willow branches. The tradition is to dress up as a witch, kind of similar to our Halloween witches. They decorate willow branches with brightly coloured feathers, ribbons, or other things. Then they go around to people's houses, and just like trick or treating, they knock on the door and say "Virvon, varvon, tuoreeks tirveeks, tulevaks vuodeks, vitsa sulle, palkka, mulle!" (I wave a twig for a fresh and healthy year ahead, a twig for you, a treat for me). Then the children get candy, chocolate, or sometimes money, and they give away the decorated willow branch. There are some traditional foods that are quite different as well. For starters, mämmi. Mämmi is a really thick, dark, pudding that is made from rye. It is quite strong, and most people either love or hate it. I tried it twice, once a month or so before Easter, and then again on the Saturday over Easter weekend. While it is not my favourite as it is quite strong, I can eat it if there is enough cream over it. Another traditional food is Pasha, which is a thicker pudding, it is kind of creamy and sometimes can have little fruits inside of it. It is really hard to describe the taste, but it is good. I also had karjalanpaisti for dinner one night. That is a traditional Finnish meat stew that originates from Karelia, an area in the east of Finland. I made my mom's sugar cookies that we always have around Easter time, and we had lots of chocolate eggs. There were regular small Easter eggs, kinder eggs, and then the special, very Finnish one, is called Mignon, and it's from the main Finnish chocolate brand, Fazer. It is an egg with a real shell that it totally solid chocolate. It is kind of like a nougat instead of just chocolate, it's slightly softer. It was a lot of chocolate, I would not want to eat more than one, and even one was almost too much. But it was good, and kind of cool that it had a real eggshell around it that I had to take off like a normal egg. On Saturday I helped out at a theatre stand in a Easter Market in the old town in Naantali. There were only a few stands, it was pretty small, but it was fun. There were 6 of us from theatre, we were all dressed up. We had an Easter bunny, a witch, a cat, and a mother hen with two chicks. We were running a Lucky Wheel, so people could spin the wheel for free and get candy or a small prize, while at the same time we had posters up for the show. Some of the little kids were sooo happy and it was so much fun to make them happy. It was also nice to get to know a few of the people from the theatre that I didn't know very well. I spent Easter with my friend's family, because my host family was going up to visit my dad's mom, and I had to be at the theatre over the weekend. So I spent it with one of my friend's from theatre, and I know her mom quite well because she is the director. Her family was so welcoming and so nice, I had a really good time. They also had new kittens, one that was almost two weeks old and four that were around a week. They were so so cute! Spring is definitely here, and summer will be coming soon. The weather has gotten so much warmer, and there are lots of flowers starting to come! March 28th-31st was our 2nd Rotary trip! We went to St. Petersburg. The first day, we got on a bus pretty early in the morning. Then drove all the way there, picking up some more exchange students in Helsinki as well, and met the other bus that had started from Seinäjoki near the border. It took us a while to get across the border as there were a lot of us, and we had two buses. We had to go inside and get out papers checked while the buses were getting checked as well, and doing that twice took quite a bit of time. We finally got to our hotel around 19.30, and we got our room assignments and then met for dinner, which was a four-course traditional meal. Driving into St. Petersburg was really eye opening. I had heard about it and seen a few pictures and such, but seeing things with your own eyes is always different. On the outskirts of town so many buildings were so totally run down. They would have boarded up windows, patched up walls, badly painted, and just really not doing well. Although they looked like they could have been so nice if they had been in decent condition, they were all old but had some interesting towers or shapes to them at times. And then there would be a neighborhood with many houses, and in the middle of them there would be one that had burned, and there would just be part of the frame, or just a few blackened walls. Then closer to the town there were apartment buildings. Every single one looked the same. They were square and there were no decorations or anything other than just these blank walls in either grey or dull red. It didn't help that it was a pretty grey day that day, but the first impression was certainly pretty dismal. Once we actually got into the city we could see alllll the palaces lining the roads, and those were decorated and painted and had carvings and such around them. The wealth separation was so visible, and it was so different from what I am used to.
The next day we went to see the Hermitage museum. It is the second largest museum in the world. It is made up of 6 buildings, 5 of which are open for viewing. They are the Winter Palace; Small, Old, and New Hermitages; and the Hermitage theatre. It could easily take a couple of months to get through the whole collection, so we saw what were called the "highlights of highlights". The details and decorations in the rooms, and the size of some of them, were absolutely amazing. It was beautiful, I had seen a few pictures but never could have imagined that. We had about a two hour guided tour, which was nice because we learned a lot and I most definitely would have gotten lost otherwise. After lunch we went to another museum, the Kuntskamera which houses Peter the Great's Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. That was nothing like I have ever seen before as well. Parts of it had displays with things from history from all sorts of different groups around the world, things such as clothing, tools, and weapons. Having multiple smaller displays from such different cultures so close together was interesting because we could compare them pretty well, you could really see some similarities and differences based on location. The other part of it had lots of human abnormalities, as well as just things you don't see in common museums. There were multiple fetuses in jars, some human skeletons and limbs, but also abnormalities such as fetuses with two heads, or extra arms, or two bodies joined at the hip with only one pair of legs. That evening after dinner we went to see a Folklore show at Nikolay's Palace. The palace was beautiful, with a huge central staircase and then a balcony that went all the way around. The room the show was in was pretty small, but it was nice because it meant we were all close to the stage and could see well. The show was music and dance, and was amazing. There was a wide variety of Russian music and dancing, and then within all the different pieces they told a little story. It was unlike anything I have seen before, and so much fun, that was an experience I will not forget. Our second and last full day in St. Petersburg wasn't quite as busy. In the morning we went sightseeing, so we drove around the town on the bus and our tour guide was talking the whole time. Then we stopped at a few places and would have 5 to 10 min to go around and take a bunch of pictures before getting back on the bus and driving to the next place. Although it wasn't the nicest to spend so long on the bus (traffic could be pretty bad on Nevksy Prospect, the main street), it was a good way to see a lot of the city. Then we had a few hours to walk around on our own. That evening we went to see the Nutcracker. We were sitting pretty far away from the stage as it was a large theatre, so we couldn't see the actors' expressions as well, but the show was still amazing. Ballet is such a beautiful form of dance, and they were all so talented they made everything look so easy! That evening when we got back to the hotel was pretty nice as well. I had been in contact with a few of my friends from my school in Victoria, and found out that they were on a trip to Russia as well, that they were in St. Petersburg at the same time that I would be, and then found out that they were staying at the same hotel as us. I had met a few of them really briefly in the hotel in the morning, and then a few more when walking around the city, but now I had a chance to actually see them and spend some time with them after eight months away. It was a little weird seeing them on the other side of the world, and for such a short time, but it was really nice at the same time. We left the next morning. We stopped at one marketplace that was just a big building filled with little and bigger booths selling absolutely everything, and walked around there for a little bit. Then started the long drive home. It didn't take us quite as long at the borders, so it only took us 11 hours to get home, but it was still quite a long day. It was so nice to be able to see a bunch of the other exchange students again, and visiting Russia was an experience I will never forget. Many more pictures are in the Photos section February 14th and 15th (sorry this post is really late!) were both filled with celebrations at my school. In Finnish high school there are three years, but in the third year they have a really big set of exams, the Matriculation exams. Because of that, the students have only 3 periods at school instead of 5 like the other two years. February 14th was the day that they celebrated leaving school and starting their "reading break" which lasts until March 11th. Then they have just over two weeks of tests, the last being the 26th. On February 14th we had what was called the "Abi show" (the grads are called Abi), so we all went into an auditorium and then watched the video that they had filmed. It is supposed to be making fun of the students and teachers at the school. Not picking out one person in particular though, just the full year of students in general, for example how the first year students can be unsure of things and scared of the third year students. They also interviewed a bunch of the students and then edited their answers. So then instead of them answering the question they had been asked, they would actually be answering a totally different and probably opposite question. During the show they also got a few students up on the stage and then they had to do a little challenge or quiz designed to be really hard. All of the third year students dressed up in costumes. For example one of my really good friends here was Charlie Chaplin, and there was a lot of variety in the others. After the show they all got on big trucks that they had decorated with signs. They drove out of the school and then around to all the schools in Naantali. As they drove through each school they would shout "ABI ABI ABI!" and throw candy to everyone.
The next day was the Wanhat. It is kind of like prom. It is the "oldies dance" and it is to celebrate the 2nd year students now being the oldest ones in the school. All of the second year students (and Greta and I) had had ballroom dancing classes for the last period. On the 15th we preformed them. It is also sometimes called "princess day," because it is a day that all the 2nd year students get to dress up a lot. So a floor length dress, and hair and makeup done. Sometimes the hair and makeup is done professionally but Greta and I had our host mom (her 1st family, my 3rd) do ours, and she did a really good job. We got to school and had a bit of time for some photos, and then preformed the dances we had learned to our school, and a few other schools or classes from other schools came as well. Normally you have a partner that you do all the dances with, but my school doesn't have a lot of people and we had way too many girls, so there were always 2 girls dancing with one boy. For some dances we could have three people, but some we switched partway through. After the daytime show for the school we went and had a really fancy lunch at the Naantali spa which is right next to the school. Then in the evening again we preformed for our families. That show was much longer as we all were introduced and there was a speech from the principal. After we danced there were refreshments for everybody and then a group dance, so we all had a partner and it was a really simple dance that just involved walking around the gym in a circle and then slowly joining with other partners until there was one big line. I danced it with Essi, the oldest of my younger sisters. The whole two days were really fun and a very good experience. It is different from any sort of grad celebrations we have back in Victoria, and I am very glad I got the opportunity to participate in the Wanhat and see all the celebrations. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Sorry, I am very very late in posting this! It's going to be long, but hopefully it gives enough information about Christmas here, as well as a bit of what I've been doing. December 6th was Independence day in Finland. It is celebrated kind of like our remembrance day. There aren't really parties, but often people go with their families to ceremonies and we have the day off school. The day before my school celebrated it. We all were dressed up a bit more and we met a the flagpole before school started and there was a speech and we sang the national anthem. Later on in the day there was a ceremony for the whole school in the gym. My music class was preforming, we sang three songs. Well, as a class we preformed three songs but not everyone did every song, and they were all in Finnish (a really hard language to sing in), so I only did one. There were also a few speeches from teachers and students. A week before Christmas my first host family took me to go see Lord of the Rings. We went into Turku and had dinner, then walked across the river to the theatre. There is a bridge that had a bunch of Christmas trees on it, and they were covered in lights. We also had snow by that point and it was beautiful. The show was about 4 hours long with 2 intermissions. It was absolutely amazing. I couldn't understand everything because it was in Finnish and I still have a very long ways to go with the language, but I could follow what was happening and even got a few of the jokes. I loved the lights, costumes, sets, and everything. There were some really cool special effects where they used fog or fire or dropped people from the ceiling. It was an amazing show, and I am so happy we got to go see it. There were also a few Christmas celebrations at school. We had Christmas food one day for lunch (well a mixture of Christmas and other food) and then Friday evening we had the "night church". Many schools have Christmas parties or celebrations on the Saturday before Christmas, but my school had one in the middle of the night - literally. Our celebration started at 23.00. I and a bunch of other first year's had to be there at 21.00 for a rehearsal, so it was a very long night. We had some people sing songs or play the piano or flute, and a few speeches from the principal and another student, and Greta and I gave speeches as well. Our speeches were about Christmas in our home countries. And, the speeches were in Finnish. I gave a five minute speech in Finnish! I wrote the speech in English beforehand and then we hadn't decided whether we were going to do it in English or Finnish, but a day before we decided to try Finnish, and so got a friend to translate it. So I think I had read it though only once before our first rehearsal right after school, and then I read it through a million more times to myself and my family before going back in the evening. It went really well and everybody said they could understand us and they were good speeches. It was a really fun evening in general, and I liked getting to see some of my friends preform as well Christmas time here was definitely different than what I am used to. Christmas is celebrated on the 24th instead of the 25th. In the morning we opened our presents from my host parents. My sisters were very excited and the older two were up at 5 to open presents. They woke me up (with permission) a few hours later and we all opened presents together. At noon we went down to the old town square to listen to the Christmas Peace speech. There were soooo many people there, I have never seen so many in Naantali before. Luckily the square is right below the road where my house is, so we didn't have to be a part of the huge crowd we could just stay on the edge and leave really easily. Christmas peace is a declaration of a period of peacefulness and calm that lasts for many days after Christmas. It is very old, in Turku (the oldest town in Finland) it has been almost every year since the 1300s. It is traditionally held in the old part of the town, and is to remind people about the peace and warn about punishments that will come if you do not observe it, as well as wishing people a merry Christmas. Later on in the afternoon we all went to Mummo's (my grandmother's). Most of the family was there, my dad has multiple siblings so there were about 20 people altogether. It was a lot, but it was fun. We had a traditional Finnish Christmas dinner which is pretty different from a Canadian one. To start with we had two different smoked salmons as well as another fish, and a salad. Then the main course we had a huge ham that had been in the oven forever, as well as three different "Laatikko". The literal English translation is "box" (closest English translation to what it actually is is a casserole but its not the same) and it's kind of like a mash of vegetables. We had a carrot, rutabaga, and potato one. They have spices and some other stuff in them so it's not just a mash. For dessert we had luumukiisseli (a prune pudding/sauce sort of thing - we had a challenge translating it) with whipped cream. We also had very traditional Joulutorttu which are really good and if you have a premade puff pastry really easy to make. The idea is that it is a bit lighter than the rest of the meal, which was kind of heavy. After dinner Joulupukki (Finnish Santa, literally translates to Christmas goat) came. There were already many presents below the tree, but he came a bit before 18.00 and had another large bag of gifts. It is tradition in families where there are younger kids to hire a Joulupukki to come and distribute the gifts. The younger kids sang a song before he could start (also a tradition). Then he distributed the presents to everyone there. I think it is nice for the younger kids who believe in Santa to have him come, but I think I like the Canadian tradition of gift giving where you personally exchange gifts better. I like being able to thank people and know who gifts are from, and I think when kids are a bit younger it is good for them to learn to thank the gift givers as well instead of just getting a pile all from "Joulupukki". But it was really fun seeing just how excited they all got. There were 5 kids under the age of 9, and then another 6 of us under 19 (ages are approximate I'm not sure how old some of my cousins are). That took a while, and then later in the evening we went home. The next day (25th) we had a lazy morning but my host mom's dad came over and made traditional rice porridge for us. It takes about an hour of constantly stirring to make it properly without it burning. It is then eaten either with a prune sauce or with cinnamon and sugar. There is one almond in the pot, and whoever gets it has to sing a song or make a wish or something. We went to my host dad's grandfather's cottage around lunch time (now owned by Jaakko's father and siblings). It was a long ways into the woods, but it was nice. I liked driving through all the trees with the snow. There were also a lot of people there, but not quite as many as the previous night. We had coffee and snacks there, and then went back to Mummo's for dinner. We had leftovers from our Christmas dinner, and there weren't as many people there. We went to some friend's of my host parents in Raisio (the town between Naantali and Turku) for New Year's. We had a potluck dinner with lots of salads and sausages and just spent the evening there. At one point we went outside and melted tin horseshoes in a ladle over a candle. Once it had melted we poured it into a bucket of cold water and it instantly hardened and took a shape Then you look at the shape and can see different things that will happen in the next year based on texture and its form. Mine didn't work super well because I was old enough to do it myself but I had never done it before, so I have a few smaller pieces instead of one larger one but that's ok! A bit before midnight, maybe around 11, we went into the yard and had a bunch of sparklers. Then one guy set off some fireworks. They were pretty small but they were still pretty cool, and I have never set off fireworks like that before. I didn't set them off but I've never had small ones like that before. It was kind of wet snowing so a bit cold, so people went back inside after that, but a group of us stayed outside and had a snowball fight. We started off with most of the kids (those closer to Essi's age, 7) but because it was kind of wet and cold it eventually because just me and three younger boys, maybe they were around 8 or 10. I don't know their names and don't think I talked to them much if at all before then that evening, but thanks guys because that was a great snowball fight! Just before midnight we went out onto the deck, and could hear fireworks everywhere. It was cloudy and the clouds were pretty low so we couldn't see a whole lot but we could hear many and could see some close by. Almost every direction we looked we could occasionally see one which was really cool. We stayed a bit longer, somehow the kids were still awake, and then went home. Here are a lot of pictures. The newest pictures are first and dating backwards throughout a good chunk of December and a bit of January (Naantali is so pretty in the snow and we have so much right now). On December 1st I switched host families. Leaving my first family was harder than I expected. They were really really nice and I was close with them. I may have only lived with them for 4 months but I first "met" them about 4 months before coming to Finland. I got an email from them introducing themselves and telling me about my town on April 18th, so almost a full 4 months before meeting in person. So we were in email contact and also we skyped twice. I met my second host family about 2 weeks after arriving, but it wasn't settled that they would be my family yet.
Packing to move was really hard. I was leaving a family where I was really happy, and even if I went back to visit it will never be quite the same. It also made me really aware of just how much time had passed. It didn't feel like very long but I am over 1/3rd of the way. Four months went by in the blink of an eye. They were amazing and I did so many really fun things but it was shocking realizing how long I had been here for. I am now with my new family, and have been for a month (sorry this is really late). The family is different for sure, but they are really nice and I am happy here. I have three younger sisters, ages 3, 4, and 7. One really good thing is that I am forced to use my Finnish. My host dad speaks good English, but my mom doesn't have a lot and my sisters have practically none. The oldest of my sisters I can communicate the best with as she is pretty good at helping me to understand what she means, and she will speak slower or one word at a time. The younger two just think that saying it again and again will eventually lead to my understanding, which is often not the case. I have noticed that my Finnish has improve though which I am very happy about. It still has a very long way to go but I have made progress. My new family is really nice and I like them and am happy here. This weekend was our rotary trip to Lapland. Almost all of the exchange students from across Finland met up near a town called Muonio. We had four buses that started across the south and took different routes north until we had picked up everyone. It was a very very long trip. I got on a bus in Turku at 18.30 on Friday, and we didn't get there until 11.00 or so on Saturday. We did have a few breaks on our way up, but not many and not super long. The first day we then had a chance to meet our roommates, and we went to the ski hill to get our gear and go sledding! There wasn't very much snow up there so they had fake snow on the hill. It was pretty steep and hard to stop at the bottom, but tonnes of fun! We had free time that evening, and it was really nice to see everyone in other districts again. For dinner we went to a place they called 'wintercamp' which was basically some firepits with a shelter, but we were warm and we got a hot berry juice and salmon soup and cookies.
The next morning we set off and my group (everyone who was on my bus) went to a place where they had some huskies, and we got to take a husky sleigh ride! There were three of us on the sleighs, and one person standing driving the sleigh. We only did a loop around a field, but it was amazing. They are so strong and fast. After that we went to a husky farm, the largest in Europe with 420 dogs. We were only in one part of it, and a lot of the dogs were behind fences, but some weren't and they were all really friendly. The dogs are so beautiful! They also had a pen with three-month-old puppies which they let us pet. When we were on our way to the nature center we stopped by a bridge that crossed the river into Sweden. We could walk right across. Then we went to a nature center where we could look out over the landscape a lot at all the trees. It was really pretty, we were up on a hill a bit and we had two other hills behind us that were about as close to mountains as it gets in Finland. We also got a presentation about Lapland and how it changes throughout the seasons. It would be really cool to go up there again when there is more snow or in the spring or summer. To finish off the day we went back to where we had done the husky rides and instead had reindeer sleigh rides because it was a reindeer farm! We could also feed them through the fence. They are really majestic animals, and also really strong. One was able to pull two of us in a sleigh without a problem. It was a really fun day! In the evening we went to a nearby school where there was a local church band that played two songs and a dance group that preformed. Then it was our turn, we had 40 minutes to preform. It was kind of like cozy night the last night at Karkku (the weeklong camp at the beginning) but we had a lot less time and less people did stuff with their countries. I didn't do anything, but it was fun to watch. The next day was our ski day. We had the choice between cross country, downhill, or snowboarding. I chose cross country, and I am glad I did because it was a lot of fun and there were only 11 of us doing it which meant there was over 100 people on the ski hill. There was a path through the forest that we took. I fell a few times trying to go up or down smaller hills, but I wasn't too bruised and it was definitely worth it. That evening was our last evening all together. The time went by so fast. We all went over to this little building with a fireplace in the middle. It was a tight fit. We had a Sami person (native to the north of Finland, Sweden, and Norway) sing us a few joiks (traditional Sami songs), and he explained the meaning of his outfit, what different positioning of the hat meant and how his clothes helped keep him warm. Then we had the rotex (people who have been on exchange before) act out a few skits of funny things that have happened before on the lapland tour. Our oldies, students from Australia (mainly), South Africa (only one), and New Zealand (also only one) gave us a few gifts, some of which have been passed down through many generations of oldies and newbies. For example, there was a boomerang that went from the French to Aussies in a certain district, a Canadian flag for "whoever needs it the most" in one district, a guitar for the kindest and nicest person, a backpack for the most adventurous, and more. It wasn't any sort of competition, we actually had no idea that it was happening. And I think the oldies did a very good job with choosing the recipients, especially because there were about 100 of us to choose from. After they sang 3 songs, which we will then sing for our newbies at the end of the Eurotour in June. There was a party afterwards which was very crowded because the room wasn't super big. But I went outside briefly with a few of my friends, and we may have seen the Northern lights. It was very small, but it was greenish and there were no other clouds nearby, and it disappeared after not very long so we are hopeful that it was. Then on our way back the next morning we stopped for about 2 hours at Rovaniemi, or Christmas Village. There we could walk around and my friends and I got some pictures with Santa Claus (the real one). We also got a full group photo in front of the Christmas tree with all the exchange students, and the tree was decorated with flags from around the world so it was perfect. After a stop for lunch at what I think was a university we continued for another 13 hours back to our hometowns. I finally got back to Naantali around 5.30 am and it was colder then than it had been all the time in Lapland, hitting -15°C. In Lapland it didn't really get below -8° during the time we were up. And Naantali had a little bit of snow! It didn't last long, by Friday it was gone, but there was a little for a few days. I didn't get out of bed until around 16.00 on Wednesday, and went straight back to bed at like 22.00, and I was in so much pain from the combination of sore muscles and a few bruises from skiing and then sitting on a bus for 16 hours. But it was 100% worth it. Once again, I will put more pictures in the photos section so I don't completely spam here. I cannot believe that I have been here for over 3 months already. This post was meant to be a 3 month post but I had some issues with my computer (all fixed now), so it is a bit late. Sorry about that!
These three months have been completely amazing. I have done so many new and fun things and met so many people. Everything has been really good and I don't have anything really negative to say. We were warned before we left in our orientation that there was this homesickness wave. In the first few months everything is going really well, you're in a new place and it will take a while for the excitement and novelty to wear off. But it will, and maybe around the 3 or 4 month mark the homesickness will set in. Everything will feel weird and different, and wrong, and you may want to just go home and give up. But then after a bit of time things will start to seem better, and after not long everything is amazing again until you leave. I think I have been doing pretty well. There have been a few times that have been hard, there always will be, but I have gotten through them. I can't say I have been super homesick, I have been calling my parents less and even texting them much less, but there have been a few occasions where I just want to be where everything is normal. One of the weirdest things is that sometimes I will see someone very briefly, just out of the corner of my eye or as I ride by on my bike, and they will remind me a lot of someone. It could be anything, a style of clothing, a hair flip, the way they walk or talk, but it is enough for me to really think of someone that I know. And if I look again back at them or look a little bit more it is gone and I can't see it anymore. It can remind me of people that I don't really know very well, or people that I am really close to. It doesn't happen all the time but when it does its really weird. I feel like things are already starting to get a bit better, and they were never really bad, so I am happy about that. I have so many things to look for. For example in only an hour I am leaving to head to Turku to get one of four buses that will take me and many other exchange students up to Lapland (Northern Finland) for a few days. It is a 16 hour drive, through the night. It will be very long, but I am really looking forward to the time we will have up there. There are so many awesome activities planned! In December my family is going to see Lord of the Rings live onstage. I will be switching families on Dec. 1st, so that will be kind of nice to have a completely new start. I am really happy with my current family, but my next one also seems nice. At the same time I have a new period starting, the 3rd one starts on Dec. 3rd. And Christmas is coming up! I am super excited to have a Finnish Christmas, and learn about the traditions here. There are already a bunch of lights up around the town, and there's a tree that I'm sure will be decorated at some point that was recently put up in the old town right near my house. I also went to Stockholm with my family and a few friends in early November. I have one post that is almost done, I just need to add some pictures. I will try to get that one done along with one about our Lapland tour in the next few weeks once I am back. Autumn Break: Hamburg and Riga
School here starts partway through August, so we get an extra short break in October. It ranges from a week to only two days depending on the school and when it started. My school had only two days, so I didn't have school on the Thursday or Friday (Oct. 18/19th). I left on Wednesday the 17th with my host family, and we headed to Germany! We woke up really early to get to our flight at around 5am. Luckily Turku is a pretty small airport, even smaller then Victoria, so it didn't take long to go through security. We ate breakfast in Hamburg, then went to get a tour of the new concert hall, the Elbphilharmonie. Our tour was in English, and our guide told us all about the architecture and how it was built, or why things were designed the way they were. The main concert hall has 2100 seats, and we got to go in and sit in the top last rows. We had just missed a rehearsal but one guy played the marimba a bit, and it was absolutely amazing! He had 2 sticks in each hand, and even so far away we could hear so well! There also was an arched escalator that brought us up to what was called the plaza. It was really long, about 2.5 min. The Plaza had a full 360 view, you could walk around all the way. The stairs that led to the main stage were there as well. There were 16 levels, the last 6 or so had entrances for the main stage. Because all the foyers had such high ceilings they ended up skipping the 14th floor. It is a beautiful building, and I really enjoyed getting a tour. We visited a church called St. Nicolai, that had been bombed in WWII. All that was still standing was the tower and a bit of the frame. It was beautiful but also kind of eerie having it only really be a bit of a shell. On our way back to the hotel we stopped at the Rathaus (the government house) and looked around there a bit. On Thursday we also spent a long time walking around the city. We visited the St. Paul's district and Reeperbahn which used to be a not good area where the sailors would spend their free time when they got off the ships. Now it was better though and we were there in daylight. We walked through a section of a big park called Platen und Blomen. It had a lot of flowers and was pretty! We visited a church that had a tower we could climb up. We hadn't realized how tall it was. We got up the first part of stone spiral stairs, only to find we had much more above us. There were probably three more sections where we though we were almost there and then still had another section ahead of us. It was 123m tall, 544 steps. That is a lot. My legs were so sore when we finally got to the top. It was a small room with 8 windows and barely enough room for the 4 of us. The view was stunning though. We could see so far! That evening we met my aunt, uncle, and cousin for dinner. My aunt is my dad's youngest sister. I see them every three or four years, so it was nice to see them again. On Friday we walked around again quite a bit. We walked by one area that used to be the warehouse district, so there are a bunch of tall old brick buildings that have canals next to them and then sometimes bridges going across the canals. It was really cool, and it was neat to see the change in the walls where there had been repairs or additions done. We also visited multiple churches. That evening we went to the miniature wonderland. It is a bunch of landscapes or cityscapes with an incredible level of detail. Each is based on a place, so there are some from the Scandinavian countries, some from various places in the US (Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Rockies), Italy, Hamburg, and then a made up city. Every quarter hour for 3 minutes night fell. It slowly got darker and everywhere lights flickered on. In the daylight they then turned off again. There were so many little people, and so many moving parts including a railway system that ran through the entire thing, and an airport with planes taking off and landing again. We easily spent 2 hours there, and it would probably take a full day to look through everything there. I would say we thoroughly saw the first part and then rest we did look at but not quite as thoroughly. The next morning we flew to Riga! This was my first time ever being in a country that my dad has not been in. We had the whole day to walk around, and I think we managed to cover most of the city. It was really cool because it wasn't bombed, so there were a lot of really old buildings. The decorations on them and the colours were really nice. Surprisingly there were still many flowers around. In one park we visited we saw a tree that was a gift from Canada to signify 25 years since the re-establishment of diplomatic relations. My feet were pretty sore by the end of the day (uneven cobblestones are a lot harder to walk on!), but I had a really good time. I would say the whole trip was really really fun, and I had an awesome time. I took tonnes of pictures, and I will post some here and try to limit myself a bit as I took waaayyy too many , but I will put more in the photos sections if you guys are interested in seeing them! This weekend I went to go visit one of the other exchange students. Her name is Lily and she is from Lake country, near Kewlona. We first met each other in June when we flew to Ottawa to get our VISA's, and then met in the Vancouver airport and travelled the rest of the way to Finland together. She is living in Tampere, 2 hours away from Turku, so on Friday evening I was able to take the bus up there. On Saturday we spent many hours walking around Tampere. We went to one indoor market that had a variety of different booths. We got possumunkki from one, it was a bit like a doughnut and coated with sugar. She challenged me to eat it without licking my lips. That was much harder than I expected! We went to a Mexican place for lunch (a very late lunch), as well as walking around a mall briefly. We spent a bit over an hour in a museum which had a bunch of cool exhibits such has the history of post in Tampere, a bunch of computer or video games dating back many years, a record section (musical records), natural history, and a kind of creepy doll section with some very detailed doll houses. Walking around was very nice because at this time of year everything is so pretty with all the leaves changing colour and falling. It was very nice to see her again and get a chance to catch up on the last few months.
Here is another update from the last week!
Last week was called Päättöviikkö at school. It is a test week to end the period. As I mentioned earlier, the school year is broken up into 5 periods, each about 6 weeks. The first test was the previous Wednesday and the last class was just extended so we had more time to write it. Thursday was a normal day but then Friday and all of the next week we had only the exams. If you didn't have an exam (either you didn't have a class or the teacher said there was none) you didn't have to go to school. Exams were from 9.00-13.00, and we did have a lunch break in the middle. It depended on the class for how long you had to be there. My math exam I was able to leave as soon as I was done, but in my french class we had the exam before lunch then after lunch there was some feedback and self reflection as well as a video that was in a mixture of Finnish and French (with Finnish subtitles). So we were there until almost 1. Now the second period has started, and I definetely have harder classes. I have English (discussion based and 3 year students, lots of fun), Math (this period is trigonometric functions), German (beginning course), Music, Physics (will be a challenge because of the language I think I will be doing a lot of my own research), and Chemistry (also may be doing some of my own research but luckily some of the element names are very similar). I have only had the first week of the new schedule but so far I like it! On Saturday the 6th my counselor took me to a food and book fair. For the first 2 hours or so he showed me around, and introduced me to many people. I learned quite a bit about Mikael Argicola who is considered the "father of Finnish literature" as that was the booth that he was with, and then also about Aleksis Kivi who was one of the first Finnish novel writers. He wrote the tale "the seven brothers" which is a story that everyone here knows very well, and he is one of the earliest and greatest Finnish authors. I really appreciate him showing me around because I learned a lot and I met a lot more people that I would have otherwise. After I had about an hour to walk around on my own before we had to go, so I definitely spent a pretty good amount of that time in the food section as there was a lot of free samples and it was cool to see them preparing food. The Italian pasta stall had huge rounds of cheese, and they would put the hot pasta on the cheese and mix it up, in the process getting it cheesy as well. I couldn't understand much from the stalls but it was nice to look at pictures still. I did manage to find the one English book stall, Usborne Publishing which is UK based. The woman at the booth spoke fluent English and I had a chance to talk to her a bit, her friend had gone on exchange as well (maybe even Rotary, I can't quite remember). On Friday I realized that it was Thanksgiving on Monday. I had completely forgotten, and hadn't realized that much time had passed. It was a little bit weird knowing that I wouldn't be there for one of our bigger family dinners. I mentioned the fact that it was thanksgiving to my host mom, and she asked what sort of food we have, then she called her parents and we had our own dinner. I called my dad to ask him about cooking a turkey and a lot of other things (parents are so much easier than the internet), and he was very helpful. While we were on the phone my host mom was out getting food, and I spent a few hours the next day preparing to cook the dinner. I went from having helped cut up a few things and mash a bit of the potatoes to cooking a small thanksgiving dinner mostly on my own but I definitely had help. Sunday I cut up everything that needed it, so all I had to do on Monday was actually cook the food. We had a turkey breast (none of the stores had a full turkey), mashed potatoes (slightly lumpy and dry but they tasted good), roasted yams, gravy (my mom made it), and apple pie for dessert. I think it went very well and tasted good. I met my mom's parents for the first time and they were nice and they liked it too. On Sunday I went to a rock formation called Härmälän Rotko with the theatre group. A scene in the play is set there, so it was cool to go actually see it. It is basically a huge crack in the rock but you can walk through it and we could go ontop of the rock, and we were there at sunset so it was beautiful. |
AuthorHi! My name is Katerina, and I am on exchange in Finland for a year! Archives
April 2019
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