My Time In Finland

Thank You

2009-06-21T11:36:00.000-07:00

I would just like to say thank you to everyone who has kept intouch with me while I have been here. It really helped at times. See you all soon I guess :D

Mid-Summer Festival

2009-06-21T11:20:00.001-07:00

This weekend was like mid-summer festival thing. It about how the sun never goes down here anymore.

It was fun. We went to the kiosk at the bridge and watched the bon-fire. We then went down to this hall thing where they had this dance thing on. I found out i cant dance for the life of me.

Then we went back to Heidi's parents place where we played rock band 2 till 4 in the morning.

Heidi and Her friend
Niko, Tommi, Tomi and Seppi standing with the bon-fire
Heidi and Tomi dancin
The drums for Rock Band 2
Heidi's friend who passed out like two seconds after arrving back to Heidi's parents place

Tampere Again and Särkänniemi

2009-06-21T11:08:00.000-07:00

Last weekend i went to Tampere again and I took my friend Christa with me.

We went to an amusement park called Särkänniemi. It was so much fun and soooo much better then Rainbows End.

We hung out there all day and we even got a see a dolphin show.

Then when we left the park, we went to this restaurant which is made up like an american diner. It was so cool.

Me and Christa driving bumper cars
Dolphins
Dolphins with rings on their noses
Cans of Coke i've never seen before. I had the Cherry one cause i wanted to taste it as i will neve rprobably taste it again.

Caitlin In Savonlinna

2009-06-21T10:54:00.000-07:00

Caitlin is another exchange student in Finland from New Zealand. She came and stayed for four days with me and while she was here, we went flying over Savonlinna. It was so much fun. But i think Savonlinna looked way better from above during winter as you saw in one of the other blogs

Caitlin and the plane
Caitlin wearing head-gear
Olavinlinna castle. It has a cover over it as they have set the castle up for the annual Opera Festival which happens ever summer in Savonlinna

The City <3

Helsinki

2009-06-21T10:29:00.000-07:00

I went to Helsinki with my friend Christa and her school. It was a school trip but i was allowed to go with. We went to these two museums.

One was a Walt Disney museum and was all about the different movies disney had made and it was actually quite interesting. im just glad they had things written on the walls about the movies as the quide was speaking in Finnish.

We then went to a museum about finnish history. It was quite interesting as well. We didnt have a guide on this one but it interestin just to look at the artwork.

We then got to go shopping and looking around the city.

My birthday and other friends birthdays

2009-06-21T10:13:00.000-07:00

So i had my 19th birthday here. it was fun. i had Heidi, Antti, Tommi, Christa, Rita, Taru and Tuulia at my host parents house and we just hung out listening to music and playing drinking games. It was fun. Then the ones who were old enough, Heidi, Antti, Tommi, Tuulia and I, all went into the city and hung out at The Rocks.
Leaving the bar with the sun coming up.

Then on the 30th of april, it was my friend taru's birthday and it was also this thing called vappu. I was hanging out with Rita and her friends thats night. it was quite fun Taru cutting her "Barbie" cake

Me and Rita walking through the city on Vappu with our free Ballons

The week after my birthday, it was my friend Antti's birthday and we pretty much did the same thing like at my birthday except we were at his place and we went to a different bar. Antti with Rita's sunglasses on.

Then a week later, it was Christa's birthday and Rita and I went and spent the day hanging out with her playing clue....i won twice :P. Her birthday was also mother's day.

Sweden

2009-06-21T10:01:00.000-07:00

Over easter in Finland, I went to sweden with my host mother and my two host sisters. We went there on a cruise ship type boat. It was really fun. Sweden was so warm compared to Finland.

here's some pictures

It says welcome to Sweden if you can't read it.

Tampere

2009-04-18T05:56:00.000-07:00

I went to Tampere with my host mum to see my host sister and her new puppy which is from Australia. While there i ended up staying with Katie who is another exchange student from New Zealand. We went and stayed out at another exchange students house for one of the nights too.

Then Katie and I went walking around the city the next day

.

Lapland pictures.

2009-04-18T02:31:00.000-07:00

Pictures with people at the disco at the end o the trip

At the Santa park

Arctic circle line

The leaders and Me

Lapland

2009-04-18T01:40:00.000-07:00

In February I went on an AFS Trip to Rovaniemi in Lapland Finland. Its near the arctic circle. After a 17 hour train ride with 3 stops along the way, we Finally made it. It was really fun. When we firs arrived we went to a museum and looked at Lapland history and on of the guides we had in the museum was actually from Australia. On the first day we went to a amethyst mine and dug for amethyst crystals. On the second day, I tried to snowboard which didn't work out very well then I went to a spa the next day and played around in the pools and then I went ice hole fishing the day after that but didn't catch anything. For the whole two hours we were out there we only caught two fish which were probably only like 15cm long at the most. then on one of the nights, the 4th night I think, we had a competition of dressing up the guys in our groups as girls then made them do a little show. It was hilarious. Sean from America won.On our last night in Lapland they put on a little disco thing for us at the bar/cafe at the ski slopes.....no alcohol of course. On our last day when we were heading back to Rovaniemi, we went and visited Santa. REMEMBER! Santa comes from Lapland in Finland. We also went for reindeer sleigh rides. It was funny cause at one time all of the reindeer went off with people of the backs of their sleighs then when they came back one of the reindeer's didn't have any people on it. They had been over taken by two reindeer sleighs which caused them to fall off. Then we went back to the train station and left for another 17 hour train journey home.

Heres some Pictures

Our Cabin on the train for sleeping

The Museum in Rovaniemi

Sleight thing that took us to the Ametyst mine

Cailtin and I in our Snowboarding gear.

Ice hole fishing.

Some of the boys....as girls.

Caitlin trying to heat up a sausage using her hair straightner :P

More pictures in the next one. I Have no more space on this one.

Joensuu

2009-04-18T01:13:00.001-07:00

On the 23rd of January, my contact Teacher Anne-mari took Me and my other exchange student friend Christa to Joensuu for the day while she was doing school work. We walked around the city and got lunch and went shopping.

<< We went to this place here, called Mr Bobcorn. Its a popcorn shop which has 18 different flavours of popcorn. From like apple to banana to hot and spicy to chicken lol. I brought some. It was really nice.

Some Pictures of Around the City

Heidi's 21st Birthday

2009-03-01T02:19:00.000-08:00

Birthday time :)

So on the 26th of January, it was my friend, heidi's, 21st birthday. Here they don't celebrate 21st like we do back home and we celebrated it on the 23rd of January as well. So like always we started off at Heidi's waiting for her to get ready. There was Heidi, Maria, Sira and Eve. For her birthday, I gave Heidi two pairs earrings, drawing paper and felt-tips. Heidi is a really good drawer. The guys, Tommi and Antti came over and hung out for a bit then they left and we went into the bar. We went to The Rocks then we walked down to Tamino.

Pictures

Eve and Heidi. They are Cousins.

Sira And Heidi.

Heidi and Sira Dancing at Tamino :P

New Years

2009-01-25T02:23:00.000-08:00

Well this was fun.

Like always I went to Heidi's place first and waited for her to get ready, like normal. We sat around talking and dirnking waiting then we went to Antti's place, like normal. we just sat around there to, talking and playing card games and listening to music. Heidi, Maria and I ended up walking down the road to Heidi's friends place at 11.30 but ended up walking back to Antti's place at like 12.30 because it wasn't very interesting there. So we just went back to Antti's place and listened to music and sat around talking.

heres some photo's

Me and Heidi
Playing a drinking game on Antti's floor.
Heidi and Tommi drinking.
Tommi and Tommi being silly.

Flying Over Savonlinna

2009-01-24T11:32:00.000-08:00

EXCITING

So my host dad works at the little airport here in Savonlinna and has his own plane. So a few days after christmas, we didn't have anything to do so he took me flying over savonlinna. It was sooooooooooo amazing. Everything was covered in snow. Oh and mum I took a picture of my school for you when we were playing haha.

here are some pictures....

The plane we flew around in.
The City

The main bridge in Savonlinna

Olavinlinna Castle. cool right??? haha

The building, second to the end near the water, is my school, Paviljonki.

It was so much fun. We flew around for about an hour.

Moving and Christmas

2009-01-24T11:05:00.000-08:00

Moving

Ok, so some of you might not know this but I am now in my third host family. Long long story but now I am with a really awesome host family.

So I moved to this family the saturday before christmas. It's a mum and a dad who have two daughters but they are 26 and 30 so they don't live at home anymore. I have met both of the daughters and the whole family is very nice and easy to talk to.

Christmas

Well christmas was quite different this year, one because I had just moved to a new family and two, because we celebrated it on the 24th not the 25th. The youngest daughter lives in Tampere which is more or less in the middle of finland so she arrived home on the same day as me moving in and the other daughter lives in a little near by town. She has 4 dogs. 1 dalmation and 3 other ones which i cant remember the name but they are huge. So it was my host mum, my host dad, my two host sisters, my host sister's partner and me. We had like normal food to what we have in New Zealand like ham, potatoes and carrots but then there was also swede and liver :S all the

vegetables were made mashed, seperately. the potato, swede and carrot was nice but the liver, i didnt dare touch.

We had dinner and then we opened our present. My host parents and host sisters got me presents, which I wasn't expecting but I didn't have presents for my host sisters, only my host parents.

It was really nice and heres a couple of pictures.

SNOW!!!!

2008-11-29T03:20:00.000-08:00

It started snowing here the other week so i took some photos from around the city to show you all. Its melting a bit now so it's very slippery and for someone like me who has like no balance at all it is quite hard to walk everywhere haha
Well here are the photo's

snow topped hills.

A bar to the right and hills in the back ground.

Olavinlinna castle with snow on it. very prettiful

snow again

the town center...they have christmas light all down the main road.

Tommi's Birthday Party

2008-11-15T09:02:00.000-08:00

On the 13th of November it was my friend, Tommi's, birthday. So on the 14th (friday) we celebrated it. For his present I brought him a 12 pack a beer haha. We started off at Antti's place, where we always are before we go out drinking, and we all sat around drinking and talking for like 5 hours until 1.30 in the morning when we decided to go to the bar finally. It was Tommi, Heidi, Evie, Yanna, Yanna's boyfriend, His friend and me. When we got to the bar we met up with Sari and Lotta (i think thats spelt wrong). It was a fun night though.

Here is some photo's from the bar.
Heidi and her brother and the birthday boy, Tommi.
Heidi, Lotta, Sari and Tommi
Tommi, Evie and Heidi

Tommi and Sari

Evie, Yanna and Heidi

Rasmus Concert.....

2008-11-02T11:16:00.000-08:00

About a month ago i went to helsinki for the rasmus concert and it was freaking amazing...the only thing was I went by myself :( lol loner....well i got in like the front-ish....there was this silly light in front of me....I was realllllly tempted to push it over but i didnt dont worry....there were two bands playing before the rasmus....the first was called mareko I think and OMG it was pointless....she was wearing a "dress" that bearly covered her butt and she kept going down really low and i feel sorry for the people in front of her lol....After her was a band called the von hertzen brothers.

They were reallly good I had only heard one of there songs before going to the concert but now I love them...They are also a finish band but they sing in english.

Here are some photo's

That isnt zoomed either....He was that close and sexy lol

groupness :)

Pauli and Eero
Aki

Pauli's mean-as guitar

That was one of the best times I've had so far in Finland :)

The Past Two Weeks - Part Two

2008-09-11T09:08:00.001-07:00

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

2008-09-11T08:37:00.000-07:00

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.

past few days

2008-08-25T01:41:00.000-07:00

Well in the past few days I havent done much.

I took some photo's while i was one the train of the country side and other stuff....like cars piled up on trucks on the side of the motorway.

I have learnt how to use chop sticks haha. On Sunday we went to a place called Mikkeli. It took 2 hours to get there. We had a really nice lunch and then we visited a garden place just outside of Mikkeli.

On Monday I was at my host mothers shop. I went for a walk for about an hour around the city. I went into a petshop and the guy started talking to me in finnish and I said I dont speak finnish to him in finnish and he said ok then walked away. Maria said most people in Finland are shy. It was my first day at school today. Thats going to be hard. I'm going to be riding a bike to school haha. Everyone in Finland rides bikes. Its crazy.

This is Fluffy. She's 4 months old. She's little and she likes to bite feet haha

hours of flying and first day in Finland

2008-08-22T11:06:00.000-07:00

wow

i'm actaully here. it took so long to get here but i've finally made it to finland. the flight from auckland to singapore was cool cause we got our own tv's and little remotes and we could watch anything...from new releases to tv programmes to even playing games. the airport at singapore was pretty cool but i think i ate something bad so the whole next flight from singapore to frankfurt (the longest out of the three) i was in a bad mood cause i felt sick and i couldn't sleep properly and they were the most uncomfortable seats in the world. my host family are pretty cool. my host mum has pink hair at the moment hehe. it looks pretty cool. well i'm off to bed. first proper sleep in a couple of days haha.

PEACE OUT FROM FINLAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!