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. This last weekend (29/30) everyone in D1410 met in Pori for our inbound camp. There were 29 students, most who had come in August and were in Karkku and then a few from Australia and one from South Africa who came in January. It was also Porin Päivä (Pori day) so there were lots of things happening in the town center. We had a tour led by Kari (our youth coordinator) for the first part where we went to a very old fire station (Pori has burned 9 times) and by the river, old courthouse, and church. We saw a basket throwing competition which apparently can be a pretty big deal. Basically you throw a basket and see how far you can get it. One boy from Brazil gave it a try and did pretty well. We also got some free time do walk around on our own which was nice. About half of us had our flags out and were wearing them which was pretty cool because there were a bunch of different countries there, and I was also the only Canadian. While we were there we were divided up into 7 groups and had about 8 pictures that we had to take pictures of. We had until midnight to send them in. They were all things that you could be as creative as you wanted with, like 'someone swimming' which we had to find a way to improvise because it was cold. I had Declan (Ducky) from the US, Zoe from Argentina, and Nic from France in my group, and I had a lot of fun with them. There wasn't a lot of space on the beach but it was very nice to see and hear the waves. We had a few group challenges when we got to the camp where we were staying, such as a group drawing, a skit about rotary rules, and a game outside. For each they gave us some points (secretly so we didn't know how many we had), and then announced the winners at the end. One of the first things we did when we got to the camp was head down to the beach. The waves were amazing! In the evening our oldies (from Australia and South Africa who have been there since January) told us they had something planned. We all had to get into our swimsuits, and go outside. In the dark, and cold - barefoot. We were freezing cold. They then got us into a few groups, and would ask us questions. If we got the question wrong, if we were talking when we shouldn't have been, or even if we got the question right they would toss sour milk, flour, and eggs on us. We were a cold, sticky, slimy mess by the end. It was pretty gross but also a bit fun. Then we could go shower and we fit 30 people into a sauna that could normally fit about 20. After we had more time to work on our skits and preformed them, and then had sausages from the barbecue. We also had a ton of candy, and people were up all night. I went to bed at about 1am but I know some people went to bed closer to 3.30, my roommate Zoe came in at 6.30, and some people slept for like an hour on the couch before getting up at 8 and waking everyone else up. In the morning we visited a fortress and then went over some of the rotary rules again, and then headed pack to Pori to catch the buses back to our homes. Overall it was a great weekend and I'm so glad I got the chance to get to know everyone more!
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AuthorHi! My name is Katerina, and I am on exchange in Finland for a year! Archives
April 2019
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