The Past Two Weeks - Part Two

Here's the rest....with photo's

well the camp ended and we all swapped email address and names to find each other on facebook. we took a group photo with all of us...see.

On Tuesday (this week) I went with some Italian students and Anne-Mari to the castle, Ovainlinna Castle, in Savonlinna for a guided tour. There were so many steps in the castle and they were really high so being short wasn't a good thing. they were all uneven and whindy(is that a word?? i don't know haha). it a pretty cool place and people can even get married there. my teacher then said i should find a Finnish man so i can get married there. Anne-Mari had her children baptised there. Its a really pretty castle and the guide said that we should come back in winter when it has a layer of snow over it and it looks really cool. they actually use the space in the middle of the castle for their annual opera show in July. damn i missed it haha.

The castle had some really cool views of the surrounding lake and town. i took way too many photo's of the views but here are a couple.

Today, Thursday, Anne-Mari, the Italian students, the Hungarian students and myself went on other trip. I forgot my camera lol so no pictures sorry. There wouldn't of been any good ones anyway. first we went to Varpala which is a school which works with forestry. Then we went to this hotel where one of Anne-Mari's students worked and he wanted to show us around their little museum about the war between Finland and Russia and we walked through one of the actual trenches made during the war by the Finnish soldiers. We then went to this churh called Kerimaki Chursh and it is the biggest wooden church in the world. the outside looked crappy but the inside was really cool. it can sit up 3000 people at one time i think she said. it might have been more. We then went to this forest museum place called Lusto. on the way we went down this road which was narrow and curvy and it like just the road and on either side was a lake it was pretty cool. the thing that make me laugh though was n the radio they were walking about the 'Flight of the Conchords'. i was telling Anne-Mari about them being from New Zealand and she was telling me that they were talking about how their tv programme is going to start playing here soon *yay*. the museum was pretty ok. the best part was when we were all in the tree house and the hungarian girls and some of the Italians were putting on the little hats and they were taking photo's.

i got one of the hungarian girls to send me some other photo's to put on here but i have no more photo space... they arent that great anyway haha...these are the best two

The Past Two Weeks - Part One

hi everyone.........sorry i haven't said anything in awhile.

well not this weekend been but the weekend before, I went to this thing at the castle in Savonlinna where students from my tourism class were. It was cool, quite cold though. When I got their Heidi and Maria were making fishing lines and then Heidi and this guy showed me around the museum and outside. Then we watched this little performance which confused all of us. Then most people left and Heidi and I watched this fire performance. It was pretty cool.

Then this weekend just been, I went to my orientation camp in Jyvaskyla. I was on a bus for two hours then on a train for another hour. It was ok i guess. I'm glad I had Christa (a girl from Switzerland) with me to talk to. We ended up being late to Jyvaskyla and when we got of the train we got loaded onto this little bus with the other students and we ended up driving for another hour. When we got there they gave us food and all the exchange students were around one table and me and Christa kept looking at each other laughing because it was so quiet cause no one wanted to talk. In the end Kerry, a guy from America asked if there was anyone who was from an english speaking country and I said I am and he goes ok are you from England?!!! that was the second time that day someone had asked me that. We then went and played games up stairs to learn each others names. Then the camp leaders said go to bed whenever.....we stayed up talking, mostly me and Kerry, till midnight plus we had to be up by 8 to be ready at 9 for the planned activities for the day. We got spilt into two groups. I was with Ayshen from turkey, Barbara from Italy and Julian from Germany. It was SOOOOOOOO boring. All we did was talk and it was like being in a therapy session for the whole day. Caitlin told me before I went that it was gonna feel like we were eating heaps.....and she was right. Everytime we finished a session we would eat. They thought it was normal. I thought it was weird. We ended up being taught how to play a game called mölkky. Its when you have theses 12 sticks standing up in a certain order and you have to throw this other one at them and depending one how many you hit is how many points you get but if you only hit one down then you get the amount of points written on the stick then the first to get to exactly 50 wins. It was pretty even between the girls and boys winning. Everytime we had spare time we would play. The camp leaders were really nice.

more in th next one