Week Nine: District Camp

Honestly the beginning of this week was pretty rough. It was the start of the new term and we had all new classes. I had just gotten adjusted to my old classes when they told us it was time to change classes. I start school at 8:20 almost every morning now, which is a struggle (I miss 11:20 mornings). I went to Finnish lessons for the first time in almost two weeks and was totally lost. I liked my classes from last term much better. I did join a soccer team that doesn’t actually play games they just play together and it’s just to have a good time. The environment was really great. On Wednesday I went out after school with my second host family. We went to this giant mall and a hotel that looks over Helsinki for hot chocolate. The evening was really great and made me so happy. Thursday I went out with friends for one of my (Finnish) friend’s birthday. We went shopping and to eat together and it was a lot of fun. I got to know the girls better and they showed me good stores to get better deals on products. After hanging out all together a lot of people went home, but I went to my friend Sohvi’s house to meet her cat (softest cat ever). I’m really glad I went to Sohvi’s, I really like her and now that we have a class together I think we will be a lot closer.

Over the weekend we had the 1420 District camp in Suomenlina (an old military fort island off the coast of Helsinki). All of the exchange students from the district (even the kids who are in Estonia) met up to take a ferry to the island. After dropping our bags at the hostel we were staying at for the weekend, one of the Rotarians walked us around and showed us the highlights of the island while talking about the history. We went to the store on the island and bought as many snacks as we could and all played games together, eating snacks before we had free time to explore the island that afternoon. During free time I went with Laisha, Paola (from Mexico), Jasmine, and Roxy (from Germany), we all became fast friends and had so much fun together. We found really cool, dark tunnels that we explored, none of them had much in them it just smelled bad. We took so many pictures and all around had an amazing time. All of us made plans to hang out soon because we all live so close to each other. In the evening we all went back to the hostel for dinner and to spend time with everyone else. We had to go to bed pretty early because we had a Rotary charity event to save the Baltic Sea where we had to row in the ocean for one hour.

Waking up early the next day was awful especially when we ended up sitting around doing nothing for almost two hours when we got to the event, the rowing was great though. We all got to see Helsinki from a new perspective that was absolutely beautiful, especially since the weather wasn’t that bad. We had a nice lunch after the event on one of the cruise ships in the harbor and sold raffle tickets to the other people at the event. When the exchange students were allowed to leave we all walked to Kamppi (one of the big malls in the center of Helsinki) and showed the Estonians highlights of the city before they had to leave. We got coffee and hung out before we all left. Everyone was exhausted. I was about to go to sleep when my host dad ran upstairs and came into my room to tell me that he got an alert on his phone saying you could see the Northern Lights in Southern Finland. As soon as we could Ella, Mikko, and I drove to the lake where you are supposed to see them best. You couldn’t see much it all looked like a thin, long cloud across the sky with a tiny green tint. It was still amazing, but a little disappointing. At home we started to walk inside when Mikko yelled at us to come back out. We could see the green glow, much brighter than before, just over the tree line. There wasn’t much movement but they were changing every second. Mikko and I went to the stairs that look over the whole city (Ella went to sleep to prepare for school). Since there was so much light there the Aurora was really dim but you could see the cloud like shape stretching across the sky with its light green shimmer. It was amazing.

This week turned out to be really great. It was one of those weeks that make me realize why I am here.

Rowing in Helsinki