Oktoberfest!!

I just wrote this out and then the internet crapped out on me so here it is again. Forgive the less-detail, I'm getting tired.

I went to Tampere after my 45 minutes of school today. I met up with Sasha(also a Kanadalainen like me) and we walked around KoskiKeskus and downtown. We ran into Marion who was on her way to Finnish lessons, and joined us, forsaking the Finnish lessons. Not even a block later, we ran into Mike who's currently living in Hämeenlinnä and is up here for a week visiting his host brother in UofTampere. So that was cool, we hung out and saw this Oktoberfest wagon, pulled by horses, with a small brass band on it. So we started dancing to the music and we called Lucas(from Germany) and he heard the music, so that was cool. Then we sat on the steps outside the old church-clock tower thing by Keskustori sunning ourselves. It was a balmy 12 degrees and some of us stripped down to our spaghetti strap shurts and we basked in the bright light and warmthness. I ended up leaving early because I was supposed to have a Rotary meeting tonight, but it was cancelled as I found out just as the bus went on the freeway, so I couldn't really go back.

'Eat what Jesus did: Fish, whole grains, and vegetables'

That's from the reading comphrension part of my English test today. It was an article about how people who eat junk food are fat, and stuff about that. Not suprisingly, they really only talked about how people in USA are dealing with it, but it was interesting none-the-less. My teacher also showed me the final exam that the 3rd years wrote. It also had some interesting articles in it, way better than my English exam last year. There was one on why more girls don't go into computer science and one on mushrooms in Britain. Pretty darn interesting.

Yesterday after my English prep class I went to the city with Hellu and we went to KoskiKeskus(the mall in Tampere), where, suprise suprise, I found pants. My jeans have been getting rather thin and I've been on the look out for a deal on pants, being that they're fricking expensive here. So we were looking in i.C. and I saw these cool pants. I checked out the price tag before falling in love with them(as I've learned to do here...I saw this really cool sweater for about 90€ and it wasn't like uber fancy or anything). My jaw dropped. 7.90€, and they were 39.90€ before. So I tried them on and I ended up going back to get a bigger pair because the first pair were too small. When I was there, the woman from the store was there re-tagging all the pants. Checking out the new price, I braced myself. 3.90€. It was absolutley insane. I ended up getting two pairs, being that they were so cheap, and I needed new pants anyways. It was insane, I still can't believe it.

Tomorrow, I will have been in Finland for 2 months. It's crazy, it doesn't seem like I've been here that long. I can definetly tell that my Finnish has improved though, I understand WAY more that I did when I first came here. It's pretty cool, being that I haven't taken any formal lessons or anything aside from Karkku. Although I did learn alot from German and French, and a little from English. Don't get me wrong, I still have a long way to go, but I understand a lot more than I did 2 months ago. I can have a short conversation with my sister in Finnish, and ask simple things, which is really cool. It is frustrating sometimes though, like when you have a complex thought that you just can't express to someone or explain, although I'm getting better at that. I've been asked how to explain so many words, and it's hard sometimes. Some of the words I've never heard before and that makes it pretty damn hard, because I guess that since I'm a native speaker, people kind of assume I've heard every word before, but it's fun. I got 'matrical' yesterday. According to www.dictionary.com it means 'of or relating to a matrix'. Although I totally forgot the word 'term' existed. Everyone has been asking me what 'jakso' was in English, because we start a new one tomorrow....and I didn't know the word for it. Ah well, life goes on.

Just a little fun break...

because I just failed a french exam, and I needed something to do, so here's something kinda fun.


Given Name:: Meagan Kathleen
Gender:: Female
Age:: 17
Date of Birth:: November 5th 1986
Marital Status:: Single and lovin' it.
Hair Color:: Dark blonde and purple
Hair Type:: It's kinda straightish but it flips out at the bottom.
Eye color:: Greenish blue
Height:: about..17ocm I think, which is about 5'6
AIM/AOL Screen Name:: ulkomaalainen..or palapaloozaa because I've used it for pretty much everything so far...

Favorites…
Word(s):: Heh. The word on the Cheerios box that's about 27 letters long. I'm not even joking about that, or exaggerating. Oh ,I miss saying 'Eh?' because it's pronounced the same way as 'ei' in Finnish ,which means 'no' so it's kinda weird for people to understand.
Language:: Currently....I'm not sure. Russian sounds really cool, but Finnish is wicked too. Wicked hard:P
Food:: Sushi, salmkiakki, chocolate, rye bread
Drink:: ED
Band:: toughie. Dark Tranquility, Opeth, Matthew Good, Children of Bodom
Singer:: No idea.
T.V Show:: Sex and the City, Pelinaiset(it's like, football women in english. soccer-football, not american football...),
Movie:: Don't make me pick one....Mary Poppins, Equilibrium,
Pet:: Cat
Animal:: Cat
Number::5
Telephone Number:: 0445545461
Holiday:: Halloween
Weather:: Sunny
Flower:: Daffodill
Scent:: Fall.
Color:: Black and Red
Celebrity:: Pikku G! lmao...uh no idea really.
DVD:: Isn't this like a movie?...

Have you ever?
Kissed the same sex?: Not in a sexual way
Had Sex?: Nope
Gotten detention?: Yuppers
Got Grounded?: Yup
Cheated On Someone?: Nope
Were Caught Cheating?: Nope
Lost Your Wallet?: Nope
Lost Your Cellular Phone?: Heh not permanetly lost. I've lost it as in, forgot where I put it, lost it, but I found it again.
Spied On Your Mom And Dad?: Only when they were talking about me:P
Were Caught Doing something wrong?: Not exactly...heh.
Cursed At Your Parents?: Yup
Been In Love?:*shrugs*
Been Loved?: Yup
Used a Friend?: Yeah
Been Used By A Friend?: Yeah
Lost a Friend?: Yeah
Been Cheated On?: Not that I'm aware of, but probably not.
Been To the Emergency Room?: Heh. Yeah. Good ol' bleedin' nose.
Broken a Bone?: Nope

Are you...
Lesbian/Gay?: Nope.
Bisexual?: Nope.
Somewhat Attractive?: People don't seem to run and hide when I show my face outside most of the time... does that count?
Depressed?: Nope.
In Pain?: Nope.
Worried?: Nah not really.
In Shock?: A little.
Exited?: Yup.
Happy?: Yeah.
Obsessed?: With what? Probably not.
A Drug Addict?: Nope.
A Smoker?: Nopers.
An Alcoholic?: No
A Loner?: No more than the average person who doesn't speak the language of the country that they live in.
Loved?: Hah, I answered this one already.
Hated?: Oh probably.
Wanted?: Who knows?
Unwanted?: Ah probably.
Shy?: Not as much anymore.
Bored?: I've been at school for about 3.5 hours, about 1 hour of which I needed to be here, I just need something to do.
Having Fun?: Yeah.
Listening To Music?: Nope
Watching T.V?: Nope
On the Computer?: Is this supposed to be rhetorical?
Doing Homework?: Homework? What's that?:P
Single?: And lovin' it.
Taken?: Nope.

Choose:
Chocolate or Vanilla?: Chocolate.
Dog or Cat?: Cat
Sleeping or Awake?: Sleeping right now. I really should go to bed earlier when I have to be up early, but I ended up watching TV with my sisters and knitting.
Sunny or Gloomy?: Sunny
Dark or Light?: Light
Pretty or Ugly?: Pretty
Wanted or Unwanted?: Wanted
Burgers or Hot Dogs?: Burgers
Sitting or Standing Up?: Lying down.
Computer or T.V?: TV. I've learned some new Finnish words from watching TV
Noise or Silence?: A little noise.
Boys or Girls?: Guys.
Virgin or Non-Virgin?: If we're talking about margarita's, then non-virgin...:P
Slut or Decent?: Decent
Nice or Mean?: Nice
Stupid or Smart?: Smart
Shy or Funny?: Funny.
Rain or Snow?: Snow
Cold or Warm?: Warm
Cat Fight or Fist Fight?: Fist
Gum or Candy?: Candy. Mmm salmiakki
Juice or Soda?: Pop.
Beer or Cigarette?: Beer. Cigarettes are bad for you. They cause cancer. And so many people smoke here.
Old or Young?: Young
Boring or Fun?: Fun
Numbers or Letters?: Letters:)
Bath or Shower?: Sauna:P
Dry or Wet?: Wet
Sex, Drugs, or Rock and Roll?: Rock and Roll.
Wearing?: Jeans, shirt, shoes, watch, glasses.
Watching?: My spelling get really really crappy.
Listening To?: The physics class study for their test tomorrow.
Staring At?: Computer screen
Eating?: Already ate lunch, mashed potatoes(what a suprise, potatoes!) and ground meat, salad and bread.
Drinking?: Nothing.
Smelling?: Nothing.
Tasting?: Nothing.
Thinking?: To go to the city..or not....or go...or not...
Mood?: Mentally tired.

Who was the last person...
You Talked To?: Hellu
You Listened To?: Hellu
You Looked At?:Ivy
You Touched?: Hellu
You Hugged?: Hellu
You Kissed?: Malcolm...
Had Sex With?: N/A
You Instant Messaged?: Darren
You Text messaged?: Tiia, for about the 50th time this month.
You Were On the Phone With?: On A REAL Land Line Phone:My parents from the airport in Helsinki. On My Cell Phone:Annina
You Lost?: Are we talking lost as in 'Where am I?'-lost, because that would have been me. To make a long story short, wrong bus, wrong time, wrong location.
You Missed?: Aww my family in Canada
You Needed?: No idea.
You Loved?: Well I still love everyone I loved before. Like my mommy and daddy and my sister and my brothers...and Matthew too I guess:P
You Cried with?: Sad cried:On the phone with Steve. Laughing Cried: At the thought of Steve in a black corset.
You Laughed With?: Myself, over the thought of Steve in a black corset. It's not my fault, he wrote about it in his LJ.
Yelled At?: Oh, when Hellu and I were looking for Hellianna, I stood on the balcony at school and called her name for a while.
Who Pissed You Off?: Yahoo Photos. They should die for offering really crappy services. And Shutterfly, they gave me about 15 free pics, but other then that, they suck too.
Who Made You Happy?: Hellu, being all excited to see me and running up behind me and hugging me.
Who Made You Sad?: My host mom's friend who was planning on getting an abortion if she was pregnant. A little background info, she is mildly handicapped and she was worried about doing something wrong while she was pregnant, and the baby would have had a 50% chance of being handicapped as well. She ended up not being pregnant though, so that was good news for her.
Who Made You Cry?: Myself. I was having a hard week and I was missing pretty much everything from back in Canada, and it wasn't exactly all sunshine and smiles. I was frustrated with not being able to communicate with people in Finnish and not being able to understand anything at school and just generally frustrated. But I've gotten over that, and I'm slowly beginning to understand a little bit more of everything.
You Said Hello To?: Hello...haven't said that in a while:P Hellu.
You Said Goodbye To?: That either. But my host mom on my way to school today.

Wow, that totally took me about 40 minutes to do. Ah oh well. Well, I think I'm going to the city now, so drop me a line if you actually read this, because I'm curious. I know my family does, but who else, if anyone?

Särkänniemi!!

On Thursday our school band had our first performance...It went pretty well, we only had a couple little mistakes and one major one, but it got worked out and we survived. Nothing uber bad.

I figured out the picture problem, and I've got them up now, although I'm going to be moving them all to photobucket.com because I'm really not completly satisfied with shutterfly. So that's a work in progress to be accomplished during this next week, being that I have 3 exams and 5 days of pretty much nothing. The exams here are more like tests. I have about 40 minutes to write each of them, and they're totally not bad. I'm probably going to do pretty bad on them, but it'll be okay. It's the experience, not the final result that matters. That's cliche I know, but it's still true.

Friday night I went to Ulpa's house to watch movies with Suski, Helianna and Hellu. It was fun, we ended up talking about boys and stuff for about 2 hours and only watching Bad Boys 2. It was fun.

Yesterday I went to Särkänniemi with Annina being that it was the cheap day. So we went there and walked around looking at the animals because the actual amusement park was closed. We saw Muumies singing too, and we might have danced a little....and sang....lol. We went to the aquarium as well, because it was half price:D Woot. After that, we were in Koski Keskus and we ran into some of the exchange students from around the area. I ended up going for coffee and Jenga at Cafe Europe with them and hanging out for a while. That night, I went to Enter, which is a little coffee house in Moisio with Suski, Hellu, Ulpa, Miska and some other people. That was pretty fun, we tried to play Monopoly but it didn't really work out. Around 10.45, this guy came in who was a little intoxicated. He started asking me questions about why I was speaking English and not finnish. So I told him I was from Canada, and he started hassling me about how Canada kind of beat Finland in the World Cup of Hockey. So that was good for some amusement...He kept asking me to speak German which was kinda funny.

Stupid Yahoo

So I spent a good 3 hours today working on my photo page on my website. Little do I know, that Yahoo Photos has decided to not let me use them to host my images, NOR will they let me write anything by my pictures in there. Geocities is free, I like that...But Yahoo Photos is crap. I hope they realize exactly HOW frustrated and angry I am with them right now. 3 hours!!!! GONE! and it's not like it's a mistake I made or anything, they show up when I first made it. It just won't let you get the photo from their site. I'm going to hurt them soon. Stupid pieces of crap.

In other news, our school band has a performance at school tomorrow. That should be pretty fun. We're playing some fun music, and it should go fairly well. I'm pretty much playing flute in a rock band, so that's kind of different.

Awww...Did The Dingo Eat Your Baby?...Heh. You look like a turtle.

Friday night I was in Tampere with Annina at this second hand store where we were looking for stuff. I found some uber cheap hats from Lapland that I picked up there, rather than spending 12€ on IN Lapland. So we were leaving, and these two guys came up and asked us where this store was, because we were speaking english. Turns out they were from Khazakstan, and in the circus that's in town right now. So we walked over to the store with them and talked to them for a while, it was really cool.

Saturday I went to Pajulahti Sports Center for a district weekend camp with the other exchange students in 1390. I met the 'oldies' from Australia and New Zealand, and hung out with the other ones I met in Karku. That was wicked fun. We played pesapallo, which is 'Finnish baseball' but it's insane. You have to bounce the ball on this circle before you hit it, and then you run to where 3rd base is in American baseball, then to first, and then way over to kinda by third again....and then to run around back to home. I'll try and make a diagram in paint during my break tomorrow at school. We also threw boots, which is apparently a Finnish thing too. Boot throwing competitions, woot. We went to sauna after dinner, a whole bunch of guys and girls in the first sauna thing they had (co-ed sauna=bathing suits. Sorry to disappoint some of you...lol). Turns out that THAT was a womens sauna, as some woman walked in to use it....Luckily we told her there were guys in there before anything shocking/embarassing happened. So then we all went into the men's sauna and just hung out there. We went in the lake too, and me and some girls had a water fight in the shower area. Heh, the showers here have the handle-shower things, and we were spraying each other. Wicked fun. We got the sauna up to about 120 Celsius thanks to the guys dumping so much water on. Ah well, it was all in good fun. We sang this german song too, which was fun. You have to sing in the sauna, it's just what you do. And there's always a part of the song where you throw more water on the stove, so it's always fun. Then after we got changed and whatnot, we ended up playing the 'Pony Game' for a good half an hour. It was so much fun. Basically, you run around on the inside of a circle of people singing THIS : "Here we go, Ridin' that pony, Runnin' round, that big fat pony, here we go, ride that pony, this is how we do it: front to front to front, oh baby, back to back to back, oh baby, side to side to side, oh baby, this is how we do it!" and during the front to front to front, you do that with the nearest person...it's like a dancing game. It's so much fun. Then we had a bonfire down at the lake, on this rocky point. That was fun, we made these pancake things in the fire, on these frying pans on big sticks. So that was fun, except for the fact it was fricking cold, and my bum was wet from the logs we sat on...and the smoke that went in my eyes, that made me cry...and me stepping in the big puddle behind the log that soaked my foot. But it was fun. The Rotarians went to bed at about 11pm, and left us at the firepit to hangout and whatnot. Then we went and partied in Raymond's room. He had a balcony. And 2 apples and a juice box. So we sat on the floor on pillows and hung out until about 3 in the morning. It was really chill, I mean, it was about 1, and the tutors came by to tell us to shut the door so they couldn't hear us talking. We finally left at about 3am ish, and went to bed. I woke up at 8 to Lucas (crazy 197cm blonde German) hitting our door with a wooden broom. So we went for breakfast, and 3 cups of finnish coffee(read:coffee so strong that you practically have to chew it. I'm not even joking) later, I was awake. Ish. We played some crazy games, and got prizes. I won this bottle of Finnish shampoo that smells like tar. Apparently it's good for your hair. I'll comment later about that. Heh. I took the train home from Lahti after getting a ride into town with about 5 other people and a Rotarian driving. So there were about 10 of us on the train. We got on the train, but we were in the 2nd carriage, and we needed to be in the 8th, so we had to walk all the way there inside...which was interesting. I hate walking inbetween the carriages, it's freaky.You have to press the buttons to open the doors, but you can see the ground under you, and it's just weiiiird. Then we switched trains in Riihimäki, and got on the 7th carriage and our tickets said our seats were in the 14th. We basically decided to take this empty compartment that we found, and hung out in there. Then when we got to Tampere we went to Hesburger and hung out and played some Playstation 2 until busses, and host parents came to bring us and our stuff home. I walked down to Keskustori and hopped on the bus...and now I'm here!!!

Pajulahti is a sports training facility just outside of Lahti, where they had the world ski jump finals in 2001 (I think). I saw the ski jump, and it's the highest thing I've seen in Finland yet. Lahti is also on this drumlin(another stupid english word I know) left behind from the ice age....My counsellor spent about 15 mintutes explaining this to me, but basically it's a mound of dirt that a glacier didn't push far enough before it melted, and it's there. It's along this line that separates the 'lake area of Finland' from the 'coastal area of Finland'. It's actually alot more interesting that I make it seem honestly.

Perunat, Pommes de Terre, Potatoes.....

Today was a first for me. It was something that I had never done in Finland before, and I'm sure this day doesn't happen very often. I was in awe at what I had accomplished after I realized the fact. My jaw dropped open. I was in shock. It was.....amazing. I never thought the day would come. It was....well I'll tell you.




I didn't eat a single piece or portion or teeny-weeny tad of potato today. None. What so ever. Nada. Zilch. Zero.

Lol. I don't think the food at school had any potatoes in it. It was 'lihakass-something' which is meat cassarole. Moose meat cassarole, with noodles, and cheese. Mmmmm it's really good. Especially with lingonberry jam. They COULD have thrown in some potatoes, but I don't think they did. On the other hand, this guy DID come door to door selling 7 kilos of potatoes for 17€. That was hilarious. It was totally unexpected.Door to door potatoes....Only in Finland. Just like lions and tigers in Kenya....Heehee.

533? 88( 15 (00_ 700!!!

Hyvä Kanada! Mä rakastan sinua!!

Current music:Tool- Lateralis in my head. Again.
Current location:School ATK room, upstairs.

I was up at about 2am this morning to watch the Canada vs. Finland final game of the World Cup. So I watched the first period, and decided to set my alarm and then take a nap until the second period started. Well, apparently I slept through my alarm, because I woke up at about 6.30. The tv was still on, although it was just the 'no programming' thing, and the sun was shining. I was like, 'What? Why isn't the game on?' and I looked at my phone, and went...'Oh. Crap.' But turns out Canada won 3-2, so I'm happy about that. It was a good game, what I saw, and it's not like Finland was completely creamed, so it's all good. I think. Tiia threatened to beat me up after school today if Canada won, but I highly doubt she can do that. Heh. Acually, I should watch my back anyways. lol. ´

I was pretty tired this morning too, although I did get about 5 hours of sleep which is pretty good. This one guy in my cooking class got about 2, because he watched the whole game, and didn't sleep before hand. Oh, we made the most interesting thing in cooking this morning. It was this potato-onion-mushroom-cheese cassarole thing. It wasn't bad except for the mushrooms, but it was pretty weird. The cheese was the really good soft cheese that is just amazing. It's....kind of like cream cheese, but it's more hard, and has a bit of a different flavour. Mmmm it's soo good in soup, or on rye bread.

Yesterday I helped Ivy find her Finnish class in Tampere on the bus, and then met up with Annina and Jannica in the mall. We picked out some yarn for scarves, and then went home, and spent a couple hours knitting, watching out Tuesday TV. All the best shows are on Tuesday nights, so we have a girls knitting and TV night thing going on. Sex and the City, Mile High, America's Next Top Model....It's pretty darn fun. Heh. Knit. Darn. lmao. I need more sleep.

I love my phone. I have no idea how I lived without a cell phone before I came here. It's insane, I use it all the time, what with trying to figure out what exactly is going on with this weekend( Turns out I can't get a ride to Lahti with Jorma Kunnas, so I have to find a ride there or take the train...) or finding people in Tampere... It's crazy. I can't believe I survived without one.

Well, I should be off to go stuff my face again today. Lunch is usually pretty good at school, although occasionally we have something that I really don't care for. Most of the time, I eat it anyways, with the exception of the spinach egg soup stuff....It's the first thing I've eaten here that I really didn't like, enough to not eat it again. Well, I don't think I'll have another fish either.....unless it was prepared differently. Blech. Anyways, leave me a message or email me, I really enjoy reading them. Honestly. If you email me, I'll email you back too. I promise. It might take me a couple days, but I promise, I will email you back.

Three Words: Garage. LAN. Party.

This evening I went out with some friends. They came by my place on their bikes, and we biked out to Koma's place, and then decided to go hang out at this guy's place where a bunch of people were. So we hopped on the bus and went there. We walked into the garage where they hang out, and I was like...Whoa. Holy crap. I thought it was going to be a couple people hanging out eating food, drinking drinks, looking at a thing in bag....Hah. Au Contraire. 8 computers, 7 guys, Counterstrike. Woot. It was insane, I totally wasn't expecting it, and I had alot of fun. It was wicked cool. We cranked some decent music and just hung out for a couple hours.

Heh. Let's play a game. My family isn't allowed to play, I already told them sort of. This game is called....

Guess Meagan's New Hair Colour(s)!!!!
Guess what colour(s) Annina and I dyed my hair today, and I'll give you a prize. I'll give you a hint. One colour is.....not a colour I've dyed my hair before. Ever. And it's wicked cool looking. It's uber sweet.

oops! He Did It Again.

'who made these lights, some sort of MUNCHIN people?...the ceilingis 10m high and the lights are 1m off the ground...WTF!!!'

After school I went to Tampere with Annina where I bought a bag to keep my stuff in on my way to school and around town, and then we went to Hesburger. I heard these people speaking english (loudly and fluently=foreigners) at a table a couple tables over, and I went over to find out where they were from and whatnot. Turns out the four girls have been living in Finland for 13 or so years, one from Iran whose family lives in Canada(Niagara Falls, where Annina has been for the past year), one from Hungary whose family is in Finland now, one from London whose family is from Morocco and Finland, and one from Tanzania whose family all lives in Finland now. They're all going to university here now(they're in their 20's). So that was cool, we spent a couple hours talking with them inHesburger and the coffee place next door. In Hesburger when me and Annina were bringing our food to their table, this guy tried to take my drink, thinking that I was going to throw it out. So we ripped a coupon for a haircut out of the paper, and brought it to their table, seeing as the one guy had gotten half his hair cut, the other half was still long, but it wasn't a happy long. So that was good for some laughter and whatnot.

I hope no one noticed....

I did my Rotary presentation today. It went fairly well. Aside from me losing about 6 of my slides about Qualicum. I saved my Powerpoint presentation to 4 floppy disks because I couldn't find a CD-R to save my life this morning. The one disk wouldn't open (and no it wasn't the little toggle thing on the side:P), so I lost those, but it was okay, it wasn't anything important (the Trailer Park Boys slide was saved!!!....oh and the family pictures too.), just pictures of QB I swiped off the internet. So that went well after that, I stumbled and stuttered through my speech that I painstakingly had Annina help me translate last night/this morning. I showed pictures, they apparently understood me. Actually, the president said that I had really good Finnish for being there only a month. So that was cool. Oh, then I got home and went to throw on some sweatpants...and I realized hey...I must have forgotten to do up my fly after tucking my rotary dress I mean shirt into my pants. LOL So I thought that was rather humourous indeed.

Today at school was the day the 2nd and 3rd years got to bully the 1st years. So we've been walking on tape lines, and if we hadn't been on the lines, we were called up to the stage in this assembly today, and then made to dance. Then they decided to tape each homeroom class together, and then race us, backwards, across the stage. Heh. Guess who fell...Yours truly. Ah well, it was all in good fun. They squirted us with water guns and stuff, but it was pretty cool. It's like a school tradition in Finland, and I forgot my camera, so I'm sorry. But I'll not try not to forget anything else.

Hahahaha...

Yeah, so I just finished my Rotary slideshow thing. I'm sure I've forgotten something but I can work on it later. Who knows when, but sometime. I realize that I have pretty much no pictures of home, and thanks to Matt who promised me he'd send me about a million pictures that I have stuck on Mom and Dad's computer at home, I had to bum them off the internet. On the other hand, in my search for pictures of Qualicum, I found pictures from about 5 years ago of people I knew(Mr.Temple and Adam Howard in the OLD middle school, the one that they tore down this year). That started some laughter from me, and several weird looks. Oh well, I'm used to it. I also found some pictures of Mr. S there which were found somehow from the band site. I also found about 5 pictures of the concert band, all of which are from about 2 years ago, back in the day when James(gasp!!) was still in band. Then I realised that I had some from Commencement, so I threw those on there. It's really haphazard and what not but meh.

I also played flute at this multicultural discussion meeting for this woman that Jorma Kunnas knows. So I played some French Canadian songs and otherwise butchered Canadian Folk Song Rhapsody(I'll bring it back, I promise D-ROC). I thought it was a for fun thing, but she decided she wants to give me money for it(which I'm totally not complaining about. Woot.) and she had no money on her, so she wanted my bank account number. Lol. So this woman I don't really know has my bank account number. Ahhhh it's hilarious. It was cool though, I got to play some fun music.

A Fellow One Who Speaketh Little Finnish

German class was offically a good thing today. German brought me the gift of music. We were listening to German music, my teacher was telling us the bands we were listening to, and as the good student I am, I was paying attention(hahha)....and I went...wait. hold on a sec. my ears just picked up a word I knew. WTF. Did she just say RAMMSTEIN?....Yeah, I totally listened to about 20 seconds of a song today. That helped make my day.

For a couple weeks people have been wondering when the student from China will be getting here. So today, I was sitting in the auditorium thing, and I was like,wait. She doesn't look Finnish. She looks rather...Chinese....So I walked over and said hi, and turns out, she IS! She's in 4 of my classes, including the ones at Hakkari, so we went there today, and she's cool. She turns 17 tomorrow,and her english is pretty good. So that was uber cool.

Dresses!

Woot. I went dress shopping this morning with my sisters. Marianne bought a b-e-a-utiful wedding dress....and Annina got one for the olden days dance thing in February. I also picked one up for the dance thing too, because they were uber cheap. I mean, it cost me 100€ for this gorgeous dress, and if it wasn't on sale, it would have been about 500€. Hence, the dress shopping. So that was good for a couple hours amusement. Then I went back to Tampere with Tiia and her friend for a movie. We saw Kuningas Arthur, a grand movie. I had seen it in Canada, but I saw it again, and loved it still. I like the movies here, they have finnish and swedish subtitles but spoken english, so it makes sense to me, and I can still pick up a couple words in finnish too.

Homesickness sucks. I hate the emotions that are running through me right now, it's insane. On one hand, I'm totally glad to be here. I have fun, and it's really cool, I love it here. I'm doing things I never thought I would be doing, and it's totally cool. On the other hand, it's tough being here. I don't have many friends, and I feel bad about not being able to speak finnish to people and I don't want to force people to speak english to me, but my finnish is really not there yet. I try to speak finnish when I'm out, like at McDonalds or something, and poeple just speak english back to me. It's frustrating. Sometimes I would really like to just be back in Canada with everyone, and be able to talk and do things, go out and see friends, and play xbox and hang out at the beach. I really miss that, and it's weird not having that. It's weird not having friends who you have little jokes with and when you say half a sentence your friend can finish it for you. It's weird when you have to finish it yourself, and then explain to people what's so funny. It's tough. I see things and then think, 'I totally have to tell so-and-so about that shirt that guy was wearing that said 'Jesus is my homeboy' or about the KKK Market ' and then realized that, oh, right, I won't be able to laugh when I tell them or I'll miss the expression on their face. It's the little things like that that I miss so much right now. It's so frustrating. I miss everyone so much. I miss the stupid p.o.s. town of Qualicum with it's small everything, and the way you can cross the street and not worry about the cars not stopping. Or the way there's only one bus so you can't take the wrong one, nor can you get lost. I miss everything. I miss the ocean so much. I miss the smell of it(it indeed has a lovely smell)and the sand at the beach, and the mountains and everything. I miss not getting lost on my way to French every day. I miss understanding what's going on and what people are saying. It's weird to be somewhere different. I've never really moved anywhere in my life, and this is so different. I've never been out of Canada before I came here. It's such a shock to my system right now. I've been here a month, and it's starting to get really hard. Don't get me wrong, there's no way on earth I'm coming home before July. I'm going to stick this out, it can only get better. I just need to keep busy, it's at night that I miss Canada the most. Not sure why, I just do.

Achtung!

I've got this presentation to do next Thursday. 15 minutes of Finnish. To be entirely honest, I'm scared out of my skin. I'm basically going to make a powerpoint presentation and read off of a piece of paper. The pronounciation thing is a bit of an issue though. It's a phonetic language, but I have a hard time with the double consonants and vowels. I mean, jeeze, the difference between saying I'll see you tomorrow and I'll kill you tomorrow is the length of a vowel. So I have to be careful...I won't say anything bad, I know THOSE words, but ...Ach. Oh well.I'm sure they'll understand.

I learned something at Rotary last night: Women aren't allowed to be part of Rotary in Finland. Kind of shocking actually, being that Finland was one of the first ( maybe the first) country in Europe to allow women to vote. That explained the lack of women in the club. I'm the only female there unless it's a special occasion and wives come along. It's rather interesting actually...

I've been keeping busy with school and learning my languages. I'm learning alot of finnish through my german class which is cool. Although I was pronouncing things wrong in French class today. I saw 'types' but I pronounced it as if it was finnish so it was 'toop-'a's' so that was good for a laugh. I've learned to laugh at the stupid mistakes I do, it saves alot of wasted frustration. Laughing is good too. I've laughed so much in the past week. Lots last night, thanks to stinky Steve. :P

I've written letters, some of them have been mailed, some of them haven't yet, some never will...So that's that issue. I don't have several people's emails, so if you're one of those people, email me your addy and we'll get you some snail mail.

I went out for dinner with my family tonight to RAX, an american style pizzabuffet (no that's not a typo,that's what it says on the sigh). All you can eat pizza. There was this weird pizza that was 'vanilla marshmellow'. It was....different. It had the marshmellow things that they have, they're 4 different colours all stuck together in a rope like thing...It's kind of like a dessert pizza thing. Oh, and I found a place to get root beer. Apparently you can at this american pub thing down the street from RAX. So I'm going to ahve to check that out, I miss having the option of a root beer float. And crispy onion rings. I had some tonight, but they were...soggy. Not so pleasant.

Woot. Salmiakki is awesome. Salmiakki gum is better. I discovered that today. Mmmmmm good.