Week 14: Kruununvuori, Finnish test, Rotary event

Monday I was rushed to come back from Cata’s to go to a Rotary meeting I had completely forgotten about. I wasn’t feeling well, I had a large Spanish exam to study for, and I had to study for the Finnish exam I was to take on Saturday, so Rotary excused me from attending the meeting thankfully. My Spanish teacher also said I didn’t have to take the exam for her class, which was a major relief. Wednesday I had an English exam in the morning and then went to have lunch with Hilla, Andrés’s host sister, it was really nice to see her. We went for Indian food and after we went around Helsinki to hang out.

I had to go to Finnish class in the evening for the last time before the exam on Saturday, honestly I was so nervous for the test after that last class. Finnish is so difficult, but my teacher promised we would all do well and it wasn’t too hard.

Thursday I didn’t have school so I went with Andrés to this part of Helsinki that had abandoned buildings in the area. My friends and I had been talking about going and it had just finally gotten warm enough to go. No one else was available to go so Andrés and I just went. The weather was perfect and the place was right by the sea, it was so beautiful. We just explored the area, occasionally finding a broken building but mostly just wandering around. In the evening we went back into the city ate and hung out in the library. Friday I was supposed to go to Jävenpää, but plans feel through so I studied for the Finnish test and went to get my wallet from the train lost and found (I got it back with everything still there, even cash, I love Finland).

Saturday was the Finnish test. I had been studying everything my teacher had been telling us to, but I was still scared. My host dad dropped me off at the test location early Saturday morning. After waiting for about ten minutes with one Russian girl to take the test we started to get worried that no one else had showed up and the doors were still locked. It turned out we had been in the wrong location and needed to get to a different building fifteen minutes away in about two minutes. We ran as fast as we could to get to the testing location before the testing was closed. I was so scared we were not going to make it, we were very late but they still allowed us into the testing room since they hadn’t given out the papers yet. The test was in multiple sections the first being reading comprehension, listening comprehension, writing, and an interview. It was one of the hardest things I ever did. My friends and I understood little to nothing. Some of us almost started crying during test. Everything we had learned was not on the test at all, everything was incredibly difficult. I couldn’t understand any of the passages or the questions in the reading, the vocabulary was too hard. The listening comprehension was too fast and the instructions were not clear. The writing prompts were not understandable. The interview was maybe not so bad, I understood the questions, but it was hard because I couldn’t come up with the right words to respond. It was all around really bad. I spent Saturday night with my friend Julia. We explored her city and visited the lake where we had been ice swimming earlier in the year. We met up with Valentin (France) at Hesburger (a Finnish fast food chain) and hung out for most of the evening. Sunday Julia (she is going to Australia next year) and I got up early to go to a Rotary event in Suomenlinna. The inbound exchange students were meeting all of those who were going on exchange next year. We spent the day hanging out and eating food everyone had brought. I had a really great time, but once we returned to Helsinki I left early because I wasn’t feeling well. At home I went running with my host dad, as a nice way to finish the crazy week.

The abandoned buildings