Week Fourteen: Friends Visiting and Thanksgiving Party

This week I planned a large Thanksgiving party for about 40 people (no alcohol don’t worry, Rotary please don’t send me home), including exchange students and Finnish people. My host mom rented a lake cabin that included three buildings for the party to be hosted. On Wednesday I went to see the cabin and plan where the main party would be held. The are around the cabin was beautiful, all of it right near the Baltic Sea. We decided it would be hosted in the sauna building where there was the biggest central room. On our way back from the cabin we stopped at the Leminkäisen Temppeli, which is a place that many people travel far distances to visit, it is a tunnel under large rocks, but when we went it was filled with water.

Thursday, Elina and Essi had a violin performance, and they both did an amazing job. Elina was by far the best of all of the kids there.

Friday, my friend Cata, from Argentina, came to visit. We spent the morning walking around Helsinki before I had to go to school for an hour to interview the Finnish rapper PaleFace for the PEEP program I am in. We are studying the rhythm in languages and will be presenting our information next week in front of students from Greece, Romania, and Slovakia. When that was done Cata and I went back to my house to start making food for the party. We made fudge, pumpkin bread muffins, chocolate muffins (they didn’t make it to the party), corn bread, and two kilograms of Mac and Cheese. Half way through our cooking time Reija, Cata, and I went to the store to buy food for breakfast Sunday morning and drop most of it off at the cabin. When we returned we still had hours of baking to complete, but Essi and Elina decided we should have a dance party instead, so we ended up dancing around the kitchen listening to Frozen songs for an hour. We were exhausted and sick of cooking, but had an amazing night that prepared us for the party the next days.

We had to pick up Jacobo (Spain) and Tanja (Germany) from their train coming from Mikkeli before Victor’s (Chile) bus arrived two hours later from Northern Finland. To kill the time we showed Tanja the main sites in Helsinki and visited the weird art museum again. We had a lot of fun just hanging out together, even though we got a lot of bad looks from the museum staff, especially when we started running around the museum to hide from Jacobo.

At the mall, Kamppi, we waited for Victor and Jasmine to arrive before we took a train to meet my host dad and go to the cabin. We had many things to prepare before people started arriving. The beginning was slightly stressful for me because I was heating up and making new food while I was trying to greet people at the same time. When it was finally time to eat everything calmed down a bunch and we had so much food. Later in the party my host dad organized some activities, like making groups form a human pyramid, to connect the Finns and exchange students, it wasn’t totally successful, but it got everyone in groups and working together. At first we all thought it was really dumb but we ended up having a great time. Like all Finnish parties, people were in and out of the sauna, while others were playing games and hanging out. People started to leave around 8:00 pm and by 10:30pm the only people left were the ones who were spending the night. We all went to sauna together and then went swimming in the freezing cold ocean (which was a disgusting color of green). Once we spent more time in the sauna after swimming we danced to Spanish music in the main room while clearing up some of the food. My friends kept trying to teach me how to dance and they were… somewhat successful this time. The rest of the night was spent in one of the main cabins talking in to the early hours of the morning.

Sunday was Father’s Day in Finland, so many people had to leave pretty early, but we had a nice breakfast together at the cabin with my host dad. It made me really happy because my host dad seemed to be enjoying his crazy, full breakfast table surrounded by teenagers from all over the world. Everyone left the cabin in shifts based on who’s trains left soonest. We all made promises to do this again in Spring and sent well wishes to each other until we see each other again in Lapland in two weeks.

This weekend was amazing and really helped me realize that I have so many amazing friends here that care about me. I know I say this a lot but this weekend was one of the best ones I have during my time here.

Leminkäisen Temppeli