Week 11: Meeting friends, Climate Strike, and Americans

Monday morning college students from Illinois, USA were visiting in my Photography class. I jumped immediately to talk to the girls in the class. We bonded quickly and I talked to them about the differences between Finnish and American culture, I was invited to sit in on another class and meet another group of the Americans. Before my next class, I was on my phone between classes and saw on the Snapchat map that a boy who I had met over the summer who was doing his exchange in Spain was in Finland. I immediately messaged him, despite the fact we didn’t know each other well, and found out he would only be staying six hours in Helsinki before he went to Estonia with his school group. I jumped at the fact to meet up with him when he invited me to join their group. I waited to meet up with them at the Helsinki Cathedral. Since I wasn’t technically with the group I couldn’t join them on the tour bus, but I met them at the various locations they visited. I had so much fun hanging out with him for the day, and we actually became good friends in the few hours I was with their group. Later in the evening, my friend Linnea (Finland) came to my home, and we hung out at my home for the evening. Tuesday I went to a fancy cake buffet with Paola because her host mom had a coupon for us, followed up by an evening of watching Netflix at her home.

Thursday night I was invited to go to dinner and ice skating with the American girls. I had so much fun with them. It was nice to talk to other Americans again, they understood the pop culture references and the slang I used. They were all so nice and I wanted to see them again soon, but I wasn’t sure I would have time before they left Sunday.

Friday was the Student Climate Strike. Leeloo stayed at my home Thursday night and we met a bunch of friends in Helsinki for the strike at 10:00am on Friday. It was crazy to see so many Finnish people protesting, loudly, and close to each other but really empowering. I actually met a Finnish politician that almost won President in the last election, I had no idea who he was but one of my Finnish friends told to go take a picture with him, so I did. We met with different exchange and Finnish friends throughout the day. Together we went to eat and hung out in the library until everyone was really tired and decided to leave around 5:00pm. I stayed in Helsinki with Andrés though and we met up with three of the American girls who were in the city again. I was really happy to see them again and they actually showed us a place where you can buy cheap souvenirs in Helsinki.

Saturday I went to Linnea’s house, we baked and spent the day just hanging out.

Sunday the exchange students were going to meet and go skating in Helsinki for the last day the skating rink by the train station was open, but the weather was terrible when we all arrived. Instead we all went for coffee and hung out for a short time before heading home.

With the Finnish politician Pekka Haavisto