Homesick? Who..me?

So every morning at 9:55 we have this morning announcement thing. So they speak for about 2 minutes about something, and then they play a song. I'm extremely confused over the whole matter and I hope someone explains it to me soon.

In other news, Meagan, yes, Meagan, misses Qualicum. WHAT! You didn't think it was possible? yeah well I'm homesick. I miss the ocean, and people and other things like the mountains, and waking up in the morning and not having to remember 'oh crap, how do I say that in Finnish?' and stuff. The weather isn't helping either. It's been gross and rainy and not exactly summer nor August. What I wouldn't give for summer and warm weather. I mean seriously, I'm wearing a turtleneck sweater right now. And pants. And I'm freezing my ass off. Which is not exactly August weather. AAHH!! I miss the lack of things to do in Qualicum, I miss just walking around town at night buying Monster (Oh, I miss that too) and doing absolutely nothing but running into people that I knew or could SPEAK to. It's ...I dunno. Maybe I just need to find something to do. I mean, knitting? That's pretty darn fun right now. Ah, I dunno. i miss being able to read asign and understand what it meant and not have to guess. I miss being able to communicate with people. I miss so much. The ocean is a biggie. And Friends. I miss you all so much, and I love you tons. big Huggs all around. I miss music. I miss band SO MUCH! I'm in the band thing here, but it's so different. It's ..well think of the band we threw together for the grad ceremony. It's like THAT, but with 7 guitarists, a pianist, a bass guitarist, me on flute (which is an interesting thing) and 5 people singing. We're doing stuff like 'Let it be' a nightwish song called 'walking on the air' or something like that, and a couple other tunes like that. It's just...I dunno. WEIRD. D-ROC and Stewie, you're genuinely missed. Those kids damn well better appreciate you or perhaps I might explain to them what they really could be having as an 'orchestra'. Seriously. Someone referred to it as an 'orchestra' . I didn't exactly think that was a swell use of the word. I miss hanging out with friends and parties. I haven't done anything like that here since language camp and I miss just hanging out with people and listening to decent music.

In other OTHER news, Finland won the hockey game last night. WOOT!!! Canada? Who's that? Oh right, I'm watching that game at 2 am tomorrow morning because it's just not the same watching the replay. Ugh, That means I'll be uber tired, but oh well.

Yeah. Sorry about the whining, but I miss stuff right now. Ack.

Ach! Mein Hobby!

Happy Anniversary Mommy and Daddy!!

Ach, German. Alas, it's hard. I'm getting some help from Tiia, although it's tricky. I'm kinda messing up german, english, french and finnish. It's fun, but I still have alot of trouble understanding what exactly is going on. Ah well...

I had cooking class at Hakkari today. Wooot was that fun....Two of the girls in my group are in my textiles class too so that was great fun. We found out there are people from 5 different countires in that class. There's a guy from Spain, a guy from Israel, a girl from Sweden, people from Finland (suprisingly?) and then me from Canada. Woot.

I got mail from my parents yesterday:) Chocolate chips, english magazine, and bank forms. I love you!!! Canadian chocolate is strikingly different. It's ..I dunno. It's awesome. It's been the source of amusement at home for a while. That and Anton speaking random words in english, like yes yes yes....it's cute. I'm going to have to make chocolate chip pancakes soon, and maple syrup...Mmmm...

And By The Way, How Much Is The Fish?

Ahhh my phone was really really really handy yesterday afternoon on my way home from school. I had to go to Hakkari for my knitting class, and then I was trying to get home. So I did as I usually do and hopped on the first bus heading north. Alas, this bus that I had jumped on headed on to the freeway. Enter a little panic. So it ended up in Tampere, and I didn't know if it was going to go to downtown or not, so I just got off at the first stop and called Annina. Luckily she was in Tampere, so I walked for about 45 minutes into the downtown area of Tampere. hehe. All was well, but I should probably figure out which bus I should take on Mondays how. Evidently not that one.

Last Thursday I went to my first Rotary meeting. I ate dinner before I went, and I wasn't aware that I was being fed there. So as I was sitting at the table, a MASSIVE piece of lasanga was put infront of me. We're not talking like a big piece, it was massive. It was about 8 inches long, and 4 inches across. So I'm panicing again. I know it's Finnish custom to eat everything on your plate(as they GREATLY emphasized in Karkku), but this was looking pretty damn impossible. So I started it....I couldn't actually finish it, and I felt really bad about it. lol. I didn't want to give them the wrong idea or something....Then I was telling Annina about this, and she started laughing. Apparently it's not like that, and it was okay. Heheh oh well.

Saturday afternoon my family went to Pori, a town on the sea. Not the ocean, the sea. lol. BIG difference. So we were staying at a family friend's house over night and then coming home Sunday. So we hung out, went to sauna and then swimming in the ocean, ate food, slept, ate food, watched the Olympics, ate food...It was a lovely weekend. We ended up leaving Sunday night at about 8pm, and we got home at 10 pm. Actually, Annina, Jannica and I got home at 10. My host parents and Anton got home at about midnight and they had all our bedding and clothing with them, so we were kind of screwed. Oh well, I ended up talking to my parents for a bit and hanging out.

Monday was school. School was fun, and then I had knitting. I'm knitting a scarf, but I'm absolutely horrible. Apparently everyone takes knitting here, and being that I've never really knitted anything in my life, I'm a little behind. Oh well. I also woke up with a cold. UGH. So I've been ridden with a cold, and my nose has been running like an Olympic sprinter. About that fast too. My host mother almost didn't let me go to school today because I have a teensy-weensy bit of a fever, but I'm fine. Absoluelty dandy.

Oh, on the way home Sunday night, we were listening to this band called Scooter, from Germany. They've got this song called How Much Is The Fish. I throughly recommend downloading it, or ugh, listening to it....It's rather fun.

Pori?

Apparently I'm spending this weekend in Pori at a family friend's summer cottage. Heh, summer. It was a chilly 11 degrees last night after the hockey game. Yeah, I went to an Ilves game with Tiia, and it was great fun. The Ilves lost which sucked but we had fun, so it's okay. Paul Karyas little brother Steve plays on that team, so we brought our Canada flags and displayed them like the proud Canadian and almost-Canadian that we are. Lol.
I just found out that band practices are on Tuesdays sometime.....So I'm looking forward to that. Wheee band. I miss it already. Anyways, school calls again, so toodle-ooo.

OH! The exchange student from Germany (Katrin) who's living in my house got there...yesterday evening. She gets my room which is cool. Ahhhh I feel replaced:P but it's okay. lol I hope she likes it there...Qualicum is really small, although so is Tampere actually. It's a big city, but everyone knows everyone and what they're doing, so one really has to watch their back...lol

Eppu Normaali!!

So I bought a cell phone on Saturday and with it came 4 free tickets ( a 4€ value) to an Eppu Normaali concert. So rather than waste them, I went with Annina, Jannica and Helianna. They're a very finnish rock band from the 80's or so. We were defiently some of the youngest people there that weren't kids of fans...so that was kind of different. I had alot of fun though, and their music was pretty good too. After that we walked into the downtown city and wandered around. It was a chilly 8 degrees though...in August. It was pretty damn cold.

Sunday was chill, we just kinda hung out around the house. I went for a run (*gasp!*) with Annina and Jannica...My legs STILL hurt from that. We ran from our place to the school in saaks and back. Then we went biking to the K Market to buy some hair dye for Jannica. We dyed her hair blonde and brown, and it looks great. OH! lol. my host father and brother were burning some garbage in the fire pit, and it was really smoky. I guess from the freeway it looked like the house was on fire, because the fire department showed up. lol. Apparently a motorist called in and they decided to check it out. So that was the excitement on Sunday.

Monday was school. We had an assembly thing after lunch, and the principal randomly asked me to make a speech infront of the school. So I walked up there and introduced myself to everyone....It was kind of suprising, and I had no idea that I was going to have to do that. Oh well, I survived.

Yesterday I got my schedule FINALLY. I'm taking German, French, English and art here at Lempäälän Lukio, and I'm taking cooking and textiles at Hakkarin Koulu which is the equivalent to our elementary-middle schools. So that should be interesting. I got my books today, which I'm planning on catching up on my work soon. German is so cool, but different which is good. I've been getting English, Finnish and French confused already, but I'm getting used to it. It's cool, I bought my books in finnish today. Gold star for me!

Mmmm Food. Bring On The E.S.K.

Heh. Big Macs are called El Grande Maco's here. I laughed so hard when I saw that. They also deep fry their MCD'Sapple pies too which I found weird. That's nothing compared to the food I had for lunch at school today though....Spinach and Egg Soup. That's right, soup. It was not exactly the flavour combination I was expecting as I spooned some into my mouth, and I got a weird look from Helianna, but I can learn to like it.

So school....I wasn't registered, so I get to deal with that next week. Until then I'm following Helianna around which isn't that bad. I mean, Chemistry sounded like it was going to be uber hard, but it makes the most sense behind english. Heh british english that is. It's funny.Uhhhhmmm what else has happened..Oh I'm at my house now, in Lempäälä,and its acutally closer to Tampere than Lempäälä. I take the city bus to school every morning which isn't bad, it's about a 15 min ride. Tampere is 10 minutes, although apparently my next host family is practically inLempääläwhich will be nice. I have a sweet bus pass though, and with thatI can go to Tampere and Lempäälä and stuff. I get my very own cell soonwhichI'm excited about. I'm the only person in my schoolwithout one right now, and with it I get more freedom because I can be contacted and stuff. So that's good....Uhhh...Last night, party in Tampere. Down at the river everyone goes to hang out before school offically starts. So that was fun, I hung out with Jannica and her friends because Annina went dancing. Only a couple months until I can go too though:)

OH,they don't have peanut butter here. I miss that...and understanding what people are saying. It's weird, I don't know exactly how to explain the feeling. It's like being left out of everything but you can still pick up a couple words here and there so ...It's tiring doing that too. I had 8 hours of school yesterday, and I came home and took a nap. Yeah uh...Oh, forgive me if I don't email you back in perfect english or right away.

Oh yeah, I have the cutest little host brother. He's 3, and I can't talk to him because his finnish is better than mine. I have the vocabulary of a 2 year old. Teletubbies are in finnish though, and I can almost follow that. Heh. TV is in english or french with finnish subtitles except for the news and stuff which is just in finnish.

I'm sure I forgot something though....

Sauna

Okay, so I did went to sauna the other day right? Yeah, I went to sauna again last night, but instead of doing the 'North American' way, I went Finnish style. That's right, I totally sat naked in a hot room full of steam and sweaty people stark-bleeping-naked. I have to admit it is alot more comfortable feeling than wearing a bathing suit. Bathing suits just kind of ...I can't think of the word....ride up? not exactly, but sort of. It's just generally not as comfortable wearing a bathing suit. I have to admit it was pretty damn scary walking through the door into the sauna. You have no idea what or who exactly is on the other side, and it's a little intimidating. It takes a whole lot of guts, but hey, I did it. There were only three of us girls who weren't Finns who did it, all three of us from North America. The part that scared me the most was forgetting to put on my bathing suit before running down to the lake to go swimming inbetween sauna, so there was some major double-triple-quadruple- checkage going on. Oh, BTW, sauna's are usually only female or male. The only exception is family sauna's where everyone just sits together.
We've been having this homemade non-alcholic beer (olut) during lunch lately. It's very sweet, and i'm not really a big fan of it.
I get to finally meet my host family tomorrow which I'm kind of nervous about and kind of excited. Finns are usually very shy people, and I don't want to seem too loud or anything...Ahhh it's going to be so much fun:D

Finland!

I'm in Finland:D It's awesome here. It looks alot like BC but it's so flat. The 'mountain' is maybe 50m high. The lake is really nice, I went swimming in it last night after sauna. Sauna was awesome, and the saunas in Canada aren't really saunas compared to these. It's just...awesome. The food is good. It's different, but it's kind of the same types of food prepared differently. Mmmmmm so good.

So the trip over here was great. I spent 10 hours on a plane to Frankfurt, and because we crossed the north pole, the sun didn't set that night. It was just insane, but sooo cool. The sun stays up until about 11pm, and it doesn't get dark until about midnight, and then it's light again by 4 am. It's weird because I can't really look at the stars all that often. Frankfurt was neat, although I was just in the airport. I almost kind of missed my plane because they changed the gate on me and I didn't know, so I guess it was a good thing that I just kind of randomly looked at the board thing posting the gate numbers and whatnot. I saw a tank go down the road thing, and the german customs guys made fun of me because my patches and stuff weren't sewn onto my blazer. But hey, I survived and Im alive. Oh, I spent about 7 hours in the Helsinki-Vantaa airport waiting for the bus to bring us to Karkku for language camp. A bunch of other students and I walked around and looked around. We found a Shell and I was going to see if they sold Monster here, but no one would walk across the big road with me. So, I'm not sure of that yet, but I'll find out soon. It took about 3 hours to drive to Karkku, so we arrived at about 3:30am. I got 2 hours of sleep that night(sunday), but those were half of my 4 hours of sleep since thursday. Yesterday was awesome, and I went to sauna. It's awesome, I want a sauna at home. A REAL sauna though, not the wussy pansy-ass ones we have in Canada. I'm talking the ones with the löytyt:D

Well, I should be getting back to class, but email me!!! I'll try to find time to email you back.