Week 10: Swimming, Friends, School Concert

Monday I went swimming with my host family. It was the first time I had been to a public, indoor pool since I’ve been here, and it was quite the culture shock. In the locker room everyone got completely naked and stayed that way, they wouldn’t put on their bathing suits until they were about to get in the pool. They showered in showers without curtains and some where even dual showers where you would shower right next to a stranger, then they went off to sauna before going to swim. There were multiple pool rooms, one for laps, one of hot tubs, a kitty pool, and cold pool, a pool just for fun, and another room for the diving pool and exercise pool. We spent most of our time in the pool for diving. My host sisters loved jumping off the diving board over and over again. I swam around with my host aunt, just talking about all sorts of different things while watching the kids.

Tuesday and Wednesday I spent my time going to Finnish class or getting ready for the arrival of my exchange student from Spain. Thursday the exchange student, Afri, who had lived in my family in USA last year, was coming to Finland. I was so excited to see her again after nine months, my parents had bought her plane tickets to visit for our birthdays. I had made many plans of fun things to do with her over the weekend to show her the place I was doing my exchange. But, Thursday morning I got a text from my mom saying that Afri had gotten sick and wouldn’t be coming. Of course I was really disappointed but I understood that she was unable to make it. I spent the evening with my friend Kia instead after a really bad day (due to Afri not coming and other factors). Friday I went to Helsinki with my friends after school, we went to the National Museum and Kiasma (the strange modern art museum I visit frequently) with an bunch of the exchange students. I had a great time with the exchange students that I don’t normally hang out with. I stayed at Paola’s home that night and had so much fun.

Saturday we met up with Andrés (Ecuador), Sebastian (Mexico), and Valentin (France) in Helsinki, we got food before they went to see a movie (Paola and I didn’t go because I was going to see the movie with Finnish friends next weekend). While they were at the movie Paola and I got coffee and watched Netflix in the library. When the movie was over around 8:00pm and everything in Helsinki was closing, but we still wanted to hang out so everyone came to my home. We hung out there for a few hours before Paola’s host family picked her up, Valentin took a bus home, and Sebastian and Andrés decided to stay the night. Sunday we went back to Helsinki to meet up with Leeloo for a few hours in the afternoon before I had to go to a concert in Vantaa with friends from school. Surprisingly Andrés and Leeloo joined me at the concert. The environment there was really cool and I had a great time despite the fact that I was exhausted. I got to see some of my good friends from school perform and I met a bunch of really cool people that go to my school.

Leeloo and I