April 2019 – Rivers and Roads

April

I am so behind, the rest of my blog posts will just be one month at a time, sorry.

So… this is the rest of April.

The next weekend we had a Rotary District Conference. It was mostly the exchange students sitting in the back of the room for a few hours waiting to introduce ourselves or understand what was going on. It was still really fun though. I bonded with people I hadn’t before, we went to a museum and hung out afterwards in Helsinki. That Sunday was a holiday called Virpo. It is the equivalent of trick or treating in Finland but on Palm Sunday. All of the kids dress as witches and then run around the neighborhood exchanging decorated sticks for candy. I actually got to participate with my five year old host sister and her friends. That evening was the Women’s World Hockey Championships which was intense. It was USA and Finland against each other, and Finland won…until they didn’t. For some unknown reason the goal that Finland got that allowed them to win was not approved and USA won afterwards. So many Finns were totally enraged, my host dad even joked about that idea that I shouldn’t go to school on Monday for my own safety. It was such a big deal here, even I thought it was wrong taking away Finland’s win.

I traveled to the city of Turku, on the western coast, with one of my friends from France to experience the city in Spring spring. We met up with a lot of the exchange students that area that are on exchange there and the day was amazing. I made a lot of new friends and had such a great time. We visited the main sights in the city and then sat by the river just hanging out. The next day I went to Järvenpää to visit one of my Finnish friends and spent the evening with her. It was, my now six year old host sister’s birthday the next day. We woke up early to prepare the breakfast and cake for her. We spent the day chilling at home until we travelled to Tampere in the afternoon to visit my host mom in a hotel where she was working. My thirteen year old host sister and I set up an Easter egg hunt for the kids in our hotel room (it was Good Friday) and prepared the second small birthday celebration for my sister. The next day we went to a Spy museum about the Second World War (it was so cool) before returning to Helsinki. Easter nothing much was done as celebration since Virpo (on Palm Sunday) is more of their celebration, so I hung out with my friend. We had Monday off from school too so I went to visit my host aunt and her kids for the day.

I went to Turku with school to see Hamlet. It was completely in Finnish and really strange. They had a modern twist that made it really interesting. It was really hard to understand though because there wasn’t the rhythm of typical Shakespeare because Finnish has only the first syllable is stressed so I don’t think the story line was exactly the same and it was a confusing three hours.

I traveled to the coastal city of Kotka for a day with exchange students from Helsinki and met with some people there. It was a really great day and the city was absolutely beautiful. All the traveling I have done in Finland this month has really helped me discover more of the culture.

Over the weekend many exchange students ended up in Helsinki all at the same time for some reason. One exchange student from Spain came to stay with me and a girl from Brazil. We visited the new exhibits at two museums in Helsinki multiple times in the weekend. Friday night we met up with one guy from Mexico who was visiting Finland (he did his exchange at my school last year). Saturday there was a huge group of exchange students in Helsinki. The weather was so nice so we hung out outside on top of these “bump” statues everyone hangs out on in the city. We were listening to music, dancing, and talking. It was so much fun, and was repeated with new people the next day in front of the Cathedral. We were out very late without even realizing it because the sun doesn’t set here until almost 9:30pm now.

The last night of April there was a large event in Helsinki to celebrate the beginning of spring. May first we have off of school to picnic, but the last day of April there is a large event. All of the college kids are in the city to celebrate “Vappu” which is Labor Day. There was a big celebration where one of the “college hats” was put on a statue in the main park in Helsinki. I went with a bunch of Finns and exchange students. It was so much fun, maybe one of the best nights of my exchange.

This month a lot of things changed for me, especially my attitude. The darkness had affected my mood so much and now the sun is shinning, it’s warm, and I’ve made some really amazing friends I am so happy. This last week completely changed a lot of things for me and I learned a lot about myself.

April was really amazing.

My friend from Mexico and I in Kotka

Screen Shot 2019-05-02 at 1.25.38 PM

Trip to Kotka with other exchange students

Screen Shot 2019-05-02 at 1.24.31 PM

Exchange students hanging out in Helsinki

Screen Shot 2019-05-02 at 1.23.47 PM

Turku trip to see my friend from Argentina

Virpo

Vappu

A boy from Mexico who was on exchange in Finland last year came to visit

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