2 buses

9 countries (Sweden Denmark Italy Germany Monaco Austria France Netherlands Belgium)

17 days 

90 exchange students

AND ONLY 5 DAYS LEFT TO WAIT :DD

5 DAYS TO GO...

Only 5 days left until there will be around 89 exchange students, 2 busses and 2 and a half weeks travelling europe....I am so excited words can not describe how I am feeling right now as I have been waiting for this trip to come for so long and now that it is actually here, it doesn't feel real :D 

Will keep you updated about the tirp. 

EURO TOUR...

In 20 days time I with around 90 other exchange students will be embarking on our 3 week Europe trip. I am now even more excited than before as we just received our itinerary  for the trip it looks amazing. The trip is going to be so much fun I cannot wait for it :D 

BRING ON EURO TOUR 2012!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The countires in which we will be visiting during the tour include: Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Monaco, Italy and Austria. I will keep you informed about the trip!

Summer Cottage...

The Summer Cottage

This Saturday I was invited to my first Summer Cottage so far. Most Finnish people have a summer cottage where they visit regularly during summer times. Summer cottages are usually on the lake and are a place to just relax, sauna and swim. 

This time I went with the Salminen family to help them clean and get it ready for summer. By cleaning I mean raking all the leaves up and digging up rocks from the ground to make the ground more even to walk on. I tried elk for the first time for lunch as we had elk soup. It was really nice! Then we had smoked fish for dinner with Finnish sausage, and potato salad. Was delicious :D It was a wonderful day visiting the cottage with them and to Finnish the day off what better way than with a sauna!!! 

10 weeks old

The smoked fish we had for dinner

FINLAND DURING APRIL...

Another wonderful month has once again been and gone. The year is going so quickly and there is still so many things I have yet to do.

MY BIRTHDAY

The cake Jenni made me

April brought about many wonderful experiences. It started off with me celebrating my 18^th Birthday. Jenni made me a cake which was a jam sponge layer cake, which she decorated with the word ONNEA which is congratulations in Finnish. My birthday fell during the middle of test week at school although luckily for me I didn’t have a test so I was able to stay home and have a lovely day with Anne. We went out for dinner to the restaurant in Heinola where I was able to have a steak. It was so good!!!  After a busy first week of April, the month was only just beginning.

                                                                                     EASTER TIME!

One food that comes out around Eater time is Mämmi. It is made of rye flour, malted rye and dark molasses. It is one of those foods that you either love or hate. It looks rather disgusting as it is a dark brown/black colour and is rather gooey. But I didn’t mind it when I had it with vanilla cream.

For Easter I went to Oulu which is 8hours North West of Heinola. To get there I was lucky to be able to get a lift majority of the way up by a friend of Anne who was going up North for Easter as well to visit her family. When we arrived in the little city of Pihtipudas, the place her parents lived, I was invited to their place for dinner before getting the bus the rest of the way up to Oulu.  The dinner just kept coming. First of all we had the main meal which consisted of Finnish meatballs, mash, watermelon salad, salted raw salmon and bread. After dinner we had a Finnish smoothie. It’s served in a bowl as you eat it with a spoon, as it has berries and other things in it.  After I thought I was finished I was given a glass of Jaffa (a Finnish soft drink a little like fanta) whilst the coffee was being made. Once the coffee was ready I sat back at the table for karjalanpiirakka with egg butter, pula and an Easter egg shaped frozen chocolate cake thing, with a cup of coffee. After all this food it was time for me to leave and go to the bus station. Though as I was leaving I was given 2 little chocolate blocks, a bottle filled with Jaffa and some more Karjalanpiirakka for my journey on the bus. After a 3 hour bus trip from Pihtipudas I had finally made it to Oulu and met the other exchange students already there. In Oulu we walked around the city and caught up with each other again as it had been ages since we were all last together.

At the tori police with Rachel and Vanessa in Oulu

DISTRICT 1390 CONFERENCE

On the 14^th to 15^th of April I attended with the 40 other exchange students in district 1390. During the weekend we listened to some presentations and speeches (which were mainly all in Finnish so I didn’t understand majority of them), about different things that clubs of the district were doing both locally and internationally. At the conference there were 5 guests from a Taiwan rotary club who were at the conference gaining information which they could then take back to their local rotary club. In the afternoon of the Saturday the exchange students in groups went across the road to the architectural design museum of Jyväskylä. After a visit of the museum we returned to the hotel where we were staying to get ready for the governors ball which we were attending that evening. Before the ball we attended pre drinks (where we had a berry frappe) where we shook hands with the governor.  After this we entered the dining hall where there were 3 long rows of tables all set nicely. The exchange students all sat in one row where we had a lovely dinner consisting of an entree and a main and a dessert. After dinner we watched a comedy performance by a Finnish group, which was then followed by some dancing.  After the ball the exchange students headed back to the hotel where we all chilled together catching up again to end a wonderful day. The following day we had a few more presentations before a closing ceremony before it was time to say goodbye to all the other exchange students and go back home.

ANZAC DAY

I wasn’t able to attend a service or anything so I decided to make ANZAC biscuits for my friends and school and for Anne and Jenni to try. Everyone really enjoyed them

               A SUNSET IN HEINOLA AT 9PM TAKEN BY ME ON THE 30^TH APRIL 2012

ST. PETERSBURG RUSSIA!!! 

(I know its a bit late though thought you might be interested about it)

The big thing that came to finish off the busy month of March was the TOUR TO RUSSIA! It was only a 4 day trip but it was so much fun. We visited different museums such as the Hermitage and the anatomy museum of creatures, saw the winter palace, column of Peter the great, some of the 27 draw bridges of which Saint Petersburg has during our tour around the city, as well as shopping along the main street and some more shopping in a market in the part of Russia which used to belong to Finland before the winter war, on our way home. During the nights we spent in Saint Petersburg we lucky enough to go to a folklore performance in an old palace with traditional Russian dances and dress. The last night we were in Russia we went and saw a Russian ballet about the life of Johannes Sebastian Bach. The ballet was good though it wasn’t a classical ballet like swan it was more contemporary dance but it was still wonderful to see. 

Bus buddies for the trip
Peter, Lurdes, Cindy and I 

Peter and I at the Ballet 

Winter palace  

A few of the many Russian dolls in the shop

3 MONTHS IN...

I know that I am 3 months late to start a blog but you know what they say 'Better late than never!' So here it goes...

My journey to Finland started on the 22nd of January 2012, I flew out of Australia with 13 other exchange students from my district as we said goodbye to everything we knew, to begin our year abroad for an opportunity which ultimately will change our lives forever. 

3 months in and I am already able to say that I have already had some of the most amazing experiences possible and have met so many wonderful and astonishing people from all over the world! I have been places that I before only ever dreamed about visiting, I have experienced a whole new culture and way of life and have woken up to how different the world can be if we get out and actually experience it for ourselves. 

Swimming Hole in the ice

Some of the things I have experienced already include:

Winter Palace St. Petersburg Russia

• Swimming in an ice hole
• Rolling in the snow 
• Finnish sauna
• Finnish school's 
• Visiting St. Petersburg Russia
• Experienced temperatures of -30 degrees Celsius
• Meeting people from all over the world
• Mämmi (a traditional Finnish Easter food which is made of rye flour, malted rye, and dark molasses)
• Ice fishing
• Finnish food (consisting largely of bread, potatoes, milk)
• Seeing the Northern lights from my bedroom window
• Salmiakki (salty liquorish)
• Visiting Helsinki, Oulu, Lahti, Pihtapudas, Karjalohjan, Tampere, Karkku plus more
• Wanhat (Finnish prom for the 2nd graders)
• Penkkarit (Final school day for the 3rd years)
• Vappu (1st of May celebrations)

This is just some of the many wonderful things I have done so far. If I was to mention it all you would be here for days just reading about it all. I will let you know the many more experiences I am sure to have throughout my year in Finland.