Independence Day Dance

Last night my high school put on a dance to celebrate Finnish Independence Day, which is tomorrow. It was a ton of fun, but totally different than American high school dances. Instead of a lot of hip hop and grinding, there was Elvis and traditional dance. Of course, I still don't know how really, so it didn't work out too well. But it was still fun :D

From left to right: Me, Venla, Milka, Maiju, and Mari, drinking punch before the dance :)

Vipe, Venla's boyfriend, attempting to teach me to dance.

This crazy circle dance thing. You jumped and twirled, and I tripped over my feet a lot.

Santtu, me, and Vipe. Haha.

More pictures on Facebook :D

Lapland, part 2

After the dog sledding, we took a snowmobile ride over to a small hut and some reindeer sleighs. My camera was still dead at that point, but again my friends got pictures, so its all good. We all got a short round, and the reindeer pulling our sleigh was going crazy I'm thinking because it's antlers hadn't shed their velvet yet. They're definitely not like horses though, they are a lot more wild, and spooked really easily. It was a lot of fun though :)

After we went on the sleigh ride, we snowshoed back to the hotel and ate lunch. I grabbed some more batteries. Then we went to a nature center on the outskirts of Muonio.

All of the nature there was amazing. The snow was practically untouched, and it made everything not seem so dark in the Finnish winter. Everything was always a little bluish.

We left the nature center after watching a quick documentary about Lapland, and went next to the reindeer farm.

An old lappish woman gave us a presentation about reindeer herders with the help of a translator. She (on the right) is dressed in traditional Sami (similar to native americans) attire, and Anna (another exchange student) is wearing the 'reindeer princess' clothes. All over the walls in the cabin were tools reindeer herders used.

We went outside after talking with her to feed the reindeer lichen, which they eat the most of. They also eat mushrooms in autumn before winter to fatten up. I really don't know what was appealing about the lichen, it was cold and covered in snow, but the reindeer ate it up like it was chocolate.

There was only about ten reindeer in the pen we were feeding because most are still out in the forest. All reindeer are free range, so we saw a lot of small reindeer groups in the forest while we were on the bus. The herders notch their ears with specific markings to tell which reindeer is whose.

We left after visiting inside an old hotel on the same farm, and said goodbye to our oldies (the Australians, Kiwis, and South Africans that came last January) that are going back home in a couple of weeks. Afterwards we had a dance party (haha), then went to bed.

Today we went to Santa's Village, but I didn't get another picture because I've already been there. Instead I bought a couple more pins for my blazer :3

Well, hopefully that wasn't too boring to read. Another update soon, probably, because I'm moving to my next host family this weekend :D

Oh, and sorry about the quality of the pictures. Right now it gets light around 10 and dark at 4 in Kemi, and Muonio was even darker. I'm pretty sure the reindeer were blinded by the amount of flash going around.

Lapland, part 1

So, long time no update, right? But I have a good one for everyone :D I just got back from my trip to Lapland, and it was amazing. Unfortunately, my battery recharger is another thing that seems to be incompatible with Finnish power, so I didn't get as many pictures as I wanted. But I did get some still :3

The first day started out with me waking up at 5:30 on a Saturday morning and going to the bus stop. I decided not to complain though, because I soon found out pretty much every other exchange student had been riding since 6:00 the night before. Heh.

We arrived in Muonio, a town in Lapland of about 2,000, around 11. We ate then went straight to the ski resort.

I didn't ski though, because I didn't pay the money in time. What I did get to do is go sledding, which is better, in my opinion. Less leg-breakage.

Me and the rest of the small sled posse went for about an hour, then got bored, and watched everyone that was skiing fall down. We also attempted to build snowmen.

Awesome, right? I love my host mom's bright red snow suit. Haha.

The next day some people went skiing, but a lot of them stayed behind instead to snow sculpt with the sled posse, because the ski hill wasn't as fun as they thought it would be.

Me and my partner ended up making a snow reindeer, but I don't have a picture of the finished product because my first set of batteries decided to die right beforehand. I did manage to get a picture before we started. :)

The next day was for reindeer and dog sledding :)
My group started at the dog kennels. It was really loud and really cold, but I liked it a lot. Most of the dogs were kept in large kennels with huts, but a few were separated and kept on the outside because the didn't get along with the rest. There weren't any puppies when we went ): But all of the dogs were either Alaskan or Siberian huskies (or hushkies as our guide said).

All of the dogs were trained as sled dogs, and ran an average of 10 km a day. They were used by the resort we stayed at for sled dog safaris through lapland. All of us got to go on a short sled ride, but right before that was when my second set of batteries died. I have some friends that got a picture though, so I'll have it up soon :)

Hailuoto

Sunday night I got back from the district 1380 & 1400 camp :) It was in Hailuoto, an island of the coast from Oulu that is really pretty, despite the cold. Mostly, we just spent our time with each other, getting to know the other exchange students better. It was nice to be with people going through the same things as me, both good and bad. And now I'm more excited than ever for the Lapland Tour :D

There were a lot of windmills on the island, probably because there was plenty of wind. Those buildings are some of the shops the people that live there set up, and the hotel we stayed at is nearby them.

Me and Taria, from New Mexico, on the bus while taking a tour of the island. Unfortunately, the tour guide didn't speak english.

The lighthouse, and the hotel is behind it. We climbed to the top. It wasn't too bad, but the stairwell was really narrow so it was kind of scary :P

Just some scenery :D

This weekend Arja is throwing a Halloween party for me, and the rest of my host families are coming. I'll probably bake some Halloween treats, and I'll be sure to take pictures :P

Lapland is not too far off after that; only a month away! And we're going to have a bowling weekend with Rotex in a couple of weeks too. Lots of stuff to look forward too!

Kemin Lukio!

Life's been good in Finland :) I have people I know in my new class schedule, and my social life has picked up a lot. I went to a friends last weekend and ate 'tortillas' (they were actually tacos, but to Finns only the crunchy ones are called tacos. And tortilla is pronounced how its spelled

here, haha).

I passed my first Finnish test, which is good, haha. The written exam is on Thursday, but I'm not worried. That's the last day of my classes though, so I'm not sure how I'm going to keep up with learning the

language. Hopefully I'll figure something out :P

But, because my mo

m requested it like a month ago, I took pictures

of my school last night before my art lesson. Its really simple looking, and a lot of Finnish buildings look similar to it. This is the entrance and the front of the building :)

This is the main hallway. Usually, there's a ton of people in it, but because this was at like 6:00 pm, I was one of the only people there. On the left is where we put out coats and everything, because we don't get lockers here.

This is of the 'parking lot', its not actually a marked area, cars just end up parking there. The building in the background is where we eat lunch, which is free :)

And the last one is of the pink church, I took the picture out of a fourth floor window in the school. I just think its funny there's a pink church in town :P

Two Months

I thought I might as well write a new post, seeing as I haven't in a while.

I realized yesterday that I've been here for two months. It really doesn't feel like it at all. Time has moved so quickly, I can't believe it. Starting Monday is my second period in school, which I'm sure won't be difficult because my schedule is even lighter than last period. I have two Art classes, Math, Movie (apparently a class where you watch historical movies the entire time, haha), and English. I'm looking forward to it though :)

All of last week has been testing week for the average Kemi lukio student, but since my Finnish isn't at the level where I can read test instructions, I didn't have to take them. I sat at home instead mostly and worked on my Finnish book while drinking chocolate tea and watching Grey's Anatomy (yay!).

Yesterday I stayed at Paullina's, a friend of Aino's, and we all watched Youtube videos on 'How to be Gangsta'. They thought it was ridiculous, haha.

Hopefully I'll have more to blog about later this week!

Oulu Sleepover

So, spending the night in Oulu was a lot of fun. It only took an hour to get there by train, and I spent that happily knitting a thicker scarf for winter. It's already in the 40's regularly here.

Though we didn't really get to do a lot of sleeping. We stayed up until 5 am doing typical sleepover things, like movie watching (Finns think the majority of people in the States act like those in Dude, Where's My Car? I guess.), "Never have I Ever" (their "I Never"), and watching the VMA's and wondering why Kanye West has to be so stupid.

I forgot my camera at home though, so I didn't get a chance to take any pictures ): But here are some from the Kemi harbor to hold you over :)

Now I'm preparing myself mentally for the entire dead reindeer that's going to be delivered to our garage here this weekend or the next. Apparently they order them whole from the reindeer farmers, and butcher them themselves. I think I'm going to stay far away from that.

'Til next time :)

Salmiakki

There hasn't been much going on here that's out of the norm. Last weekend we went out to the summer cottage because my host dad chopped down a couple trees and needed help with splitting and cleaning up all the loose branches (guess my Dad's not the only one, haha). School has been pretty fun, and I watched a Finnish movie called Saippuaprinssi (The Prince of Soap) with Venla and Tiina. It was definitely the weirdest movie I've ever seen.

But, I thought I should introduce everyone to a Finnish obsession: Salmiakki. It's a salty licorice candy that they insist is better than chocolate. I think they're crazy. It is starting to grow on me though.

They have small chewy salmiakki, salmiakki shaped like fish, long salmiakki ties, powdered salmiakki, liquid-filled salmiakki, etc. It's kind of ridiculous. And you can't really compare the taste until you've tried it yourself.

I'll be sure to send some home for Christmas :)

I'm going to Oulu this Saturday for a Rotex sleepover, so I'll be sure to update after.

Thanks for reading!

Santa Claus

So, it might not be Christmas yet, but yesterday I went to see Santa :)

And I guess everyone was lied to about him living at the North Pole. He really lives in Rovaniemi.

It was a lot of fun. Its said that because 'Santa' gets so many visitors from around the world, he knows like 10 languages. He switched easily from Finnish to English when he found out me and Julia, a girl from Wisconsin that's staying in Rovaniemi, were American.

Here's some pictures from his village:

Rovaniemi is about 120km north of Kemi, on the Arctic Circle. If you're wondering about my hair, it was windy.

I thought this was kind of cool. I'm a long way from home, haha.

Conan O'Brian visited Santa, haha.

Me and Julia by the Christmas Tree.

These are letters from all over the world. Apparently when you write to Santa, it actually goes somewhere. There was a USA box :)

And here's my 'official photo with Santa'. We couldn't bring in our own cameras, but instead it was 25€ to buy the picture. Its actually kind of cool, but Santa jipped me out of a lot of money. Haha.

Update:

Arja made lingonberry pie!

I haven't tried it yet, but I probably will tonight with some tea. Looks good, so hopefully it tastes good too :P

Oulu

So, Oulu was pretty sweet :) I went shopping, and my feet hurt from the stone streets there. :P But it was really pretty. Unfortunately, it was raining all day, so between shops I had my scarf wrapped around my head to keep my hair from getting all funky. Aino and Mari (Aino's friend) said I looked like a terrorist. Haha.

I took plenty of pictures though :D

These are statues that are supposed to describe Oulu and its history. The beginning has like statues of trappers and fisherman, and it goes to artists and other types of people. Someone decided the little boy was cold I guess. :p

Seriously, all of the streets were like this. It was like it in Tampere too. I think it looks really cool, but its not fun to walk on after a while.

There was two main marketplaces open today, one inside and one outside. There was a ton of different stuff being sold.

Fish.

More fish. Aino said the salmon wraps (on the bottom left) were good. I don't believe her.

The top berries are lingonberries, Dad. Haha.

Aino said this is good too. They call them 'fish roosters'. I thought they meant roaster, because that would make more sense. But they all said it was rooster, as in a male chicken. I just know I'm probably not going to be trying one anytime soon.

Finns like to put stuffed reindeer in marketplaces and supermarkets.

The Lapland stall.

Here's one of the tents in the outdoor market. Most of them looked like this. It was basically all berries and other produce.

Aino didn't know why this statue was there, probably some sort of dedication to the police. I think it looks funny. :P

I couldn't get a closer picture of it, but there's a really old boat behind the front one. It looks like a pirate ship :) I thought it was cool.

And thats all!

Pulla!

Sorry about the lack of updates. I've been busy with school and everything :P But, I'm having fun :)

Tonight me and my host mom made Finnish 'pulla'. Basically, they were like different varieties of rolls. And really good, haha.

Here's how they turned out!

These were hard to make ): But they're good to eat. Hah

This is an 'ear roll', haha. I'm not sure why. It kind of looks like ears I guess? Arja said it turned out perfect though :D I guess I'm a pulla expert.

Half 'butter eyes' and 'ear rolls'.

These were my favorite, and they put use to the million blueberries in the freezer.

And that's all :) Tomorrow we're going to Oulu. I'm excited :D

More golf

So the rest of the school week went pretty good. I had to change around a lot of my schedule, so now I have English, Music, Art, Gym, and Math, plus the Counselor lesson that's only on Tuesdays.

Its pretty easy actually :) I just need to get some friends other than Aino and hers :P

Today I went to watch the rest of my host family play golf, because I've decided it definitely isn't my calling. We spent 5 hours on the course. It was long. But, it was super nice out :) And I took pictures! I met Beverly too, an exchange student from South Africa that's living in Tornio. We're going to hang out again soon :3

This is the family, preparing for the next 5 hours. Left to right: Aino, Arto, Antti, and Arja.

The golf course we were at was divided between Finland(Suomi) and Sweden. So there's this post marking the border :)

That owl-head thing is one of Aino's club covers, or whatever you call them. I thought it was cool. I don't like my face in that picture, haha.