travel – Rivers and Roads

Monday after the party was a great day! I saw people who were at the birthday party in the hallways and they were all waving and talking to me when I saw them. The whole day just made me feel really good about my time here. I felt like I had made friends.

I finally started my Finnish lessons on Tuesday, everything we learned was really basic stuff I learned at camp like the alphabet and numbers. Even though I knew what we learned it gave me more practice using the words. There are the other four exchange students who go to school with me in the class and the rest of the people are adults at least in their late twenties.

I get off of school at 12:30 on Wednesdays so Laisha (from Mexico) and I went to Helsinki for the evening before she had to see a movie with her host mom. It was really nice to have someone to just walk around he city with instead of going alone like I normally do. We went to a contemporary art museum together (no where close to as weird as the modern art museum) and just talked about our lives. We decided to hang out more since we are both tired of being alone all of the time. I really enjoyed my time with her. When Laisha left I got a text from Jasmine asking if we could meet up. We went to her school to talk in the library, but there were parent teacher conferences so we headed back to city center to meet one of her friends from Germany. I couldn’t stay long because the next day was Reija’s birthday and she would be leaving very early in the morning for a work trip. Essi made a card, Ella and Eedit made a coupon book signing up all of the kids to do chores, and I got her a picture frame to put our picture in when we finally take a family picture. We sang “Happy Birthday” and ate Daim cake from Ikea, it was a really cute celebration.

I saw Kinky Boots the musical, in Finnish, with my theater class on Thursday. We had a workshop with the lead actor in the beginning where he answered questions we had about the show and himself. Afterwards, we had a tour of the theater, we saw the dressing rooms, costume closet, wig station, prop tables, and other places in the theater that most people don’t get to see. Despite the fact that it was all in Finnish it was a really cool experience. We had an hour until the show started so I hung out with some girls from my class in the park near by. One of them is hoping to do Rotary Youth Exchange in the USA next year and her English is great. She actually made her friends speak English around me when we were hanging out. We took a lot of pictures and talked before the show. During the show we didn’t have seats together, but I was put next to another one of my friends from theater class who explained to me what was going on in the show. Even though I couldn’t understand most of what was going on the show was amazing. The actors had to much passion and connection to the story that was really powerful and made the show come to life. The message of the show was translated through the actions of the characters and the way the actors portrayed them. It reminded me of what I’ve learned in school at home, to act not only with your words but your actions to bring the character to life. I was truly amazed by what happened on stage that evening.

Friday, was a really long day with another Finnish lesson after school, I was just tired and feeling homesick. I was lonely and missing my friends and family when the day really turned around. Elina fell asleep on me on the couch all cuddled up, which I have to say was one of the best things ever. Once she was asleep I went to the basement with Ella and Eedit to dye Eedit’s hair. We just talked as we did this and it was great. Eedit had to wash all the hair dye out of her hair and Ella and I talked about school and our friends, it honestly made me feel so good.

I met up with Laisha early the next morning to go shopping in Helsinki. We went to the market in the harbor and walked around. We didn’t do much shopping, but a lot of talking, before I had to go meet up with Jasmine to go to Linannmäki (the amusement park I went to the weekend before). This week at the amusement park it’s Iik Week (Eek Week) which is like a Halloween celebration except it’s in September because it’s too cold for the park to be open in October. Jasmine’s host mom is the managing director of Linannmaki so we got all of the inside information on which haunted houses were the best and how the park works. I was not for the haunted houses, at home I love being in them but I do not want to go through one, but her host mom made us. I was terrified, we all walked in a line, I held Jasmine’s host mom’s hands and Jasmine was grabbing my back while her host sister and host sister’s boyfriend walked behind with her host dad. It wasn’t actually that scary, but the thought of the unknown was terrifying. Since Jasmine and I were totally freaking out in the haunted house her host family did everything they could to scare us the rest of the evening and it worked almost every time. I had so much fun that evening and we stayed until the park closed at midnight. I was so happy, it was a good distraction from the fact that the Moon River music festival was going on at home and I wasn’t there.

It was a pretty great week! I made new friends and had a lot of fun. I look forward to what next week brings!

Reija’s Birthday Celebration