So much.

I feel like so much has happened recently and I haven't updated anything. I'm so bad about updating this and writing in my journal. Especially the journal. It's just so time consuming to write out everything that I want to remember, and my handwriting is just so bad so if I really want to be able to read it, it will take me like half of the time I have in Finland to actually document everything. So maybe I'll just start updating this way more and not writing in my journal. Ok, that was a bit of a rant. I apologize. 

This will probably not be in the correct order at all, and maybe I've already written about some of this in a previous post, but oh well. 

The farthest my memory can remember right now that I haven't written about is the day that the first year students were all forced to dress like animals once they got to school, and do strange things during the breaks between classes. I guess the third year students were in charge of it all, and it was to celebrate the fact that they only have 100 days left of school. The only thing I'm really positive about what was going on is that they had to break up into groups (based on what animal you were... tiger, panda, or parrot), and draw one of the teachers. The pictures were definitely interesting. And it was funny to see everyone (or hear, more likely. They were dressed in trash bags, which were extremely loud) dressed like animals. But I felt completely out of place in my classes that were all first year students, since I was the only one not dressed up, and part of me wished that I had to dress up too, but it's all good. (Sadly, no pictures. Sorry.)

So I totally thought that a Finnish class I plan on taking started last week, so I got all excited and told everyone "my Finnish class starts today", but then got home and realized it didn't start for another week. So that was kind of depressing. But now it officially starts TOMORROW. And I'm positive about that this time! :)

On Friday, I went to watch a floorball game with my host sister, Emilia. It was fun to watch since it was something I had never seen before. But.... 

These were Masku's extra players (the team from where I live)....

And these were the other team's extra players....

Needless to say, it wasn't a very exciting game, and Masku kicked some ass. The other team didn't even have a coach with them. But floorball seems like a fun game, and I'm glad I went. 

After the game we went to Hesburger with some of my host sister's friends, and we ended up staying there just talking for like 3 hours. One of her friends reminds me so much of one of my good guy friends back home, it's ridiculous. Like same exact mannerisms and just the way he acts about everything. Being around him really makes me miss the one he reminds me of, but hopefully we can be friends too. 

At one point at Hesburger, my host sister and her friend decided that everyone needed to talk in English from then on. So then no one wanted to talk and it got all quiet. One of the guys just said "i'm speechless.", it was funny, but of course that didn't last very long. But it was worth a shot. 

When I got home from that, I got on Facebook and found out that there had been a bomb threat at my high school back home. The guy had sent out an e-mail to tons of people in the school district, and targeted specific people and it was just really though out. It pretty much completely freaked me out, and I didn't really know what exactly happened or how anything ended, so I didn't sleep much that night. It's so weird being in another country when something like that happens back home, especially when you don't know all the details. It's just strange to know that you can't do anything to help anyone back home, and I just sat there waiting to hear more information about it. It really didn't help when the next day, my internet here didn't work, so I was pretty much not in a good state of mind all day since I hadn't heard anything from home. But thankfully everything turned out okay and no one got hurt. 

But the day that I was worried about back home with no internet was also a very fun day. It was the district welcome party for all of the exchange students. We met up in Turku and then went to a beach to grill some makkara (sausage), and just hang out together. There was about 30 of us in all, and it was so good to be with everyone. The people that I was talking to most of the time talked about so much stuff. We ended up calling ourselves "the deep dark circle", because we talked about a lot of really deep subjects. (Like religion, what we would do if someone back home died this year, if we were worried about anything happening on the anniversary of 9/11... stuff like that) It was good to talk about stuff like that with people that understand you and are a lot like you. Every exchange student already has so much in common, and a lot of our beliefs on everything were really similar. It's like every exchange student has a bond to each other because of our choice to be an exchange student. But we also talked about other things and had some fun, we're not downers like that ALL the time. It was also a really nice day out, and the place we were at was pretty beautiful too. 

Today I went to my host mom's brother's summer cottage to have coffee and some snacks. He and his wife were really nice people (not that I've met anyone in Finland that wasn't nice...). Venla and her friend Arto went with us. Arto is my host mom's friend's son (the host mom's friend also went today), but this kid is amazing! He's 13, and his English is incredible! And he definitely wasn't afraid to use it! He says he learns most of his English from TV, so I guess TV can be a good thing. He was so interested in the US and asked so many questions. It was great to have someone be so willing to talk to me about everything! He was a really nice kid, and keeps saying I need to come over more often so he can practice his English... And he also says he loves to cook, so I won't complain about that! :) 

Now to the completely out of order and random stuff:

I went to play frisbee golf last weekend with my host mom and sister. I had never done it before (despite my mom's many attempts to go play in Cadillac), and it was really fun!

Last weekend I went shopping with some of my exchange friends to get some stuff that I needed... And some stuff I really didn't need. But, I'm taking some of the stuff back, because it took me forever to decide whether or not I really wanted to buy it, and then I did, and now I regret it and am taking it back. Typical me. I should've known I didn't really want it since I debated getting it for so long. 

After shopping, we went and had dinner at a pizza place. That's where I discovered this.... 

Pineapple Fanta. Best pop I've had in my entire life. SO good. And normally I don't even like pop. But I do love pineapple, so it makes sense. Also... pizzas here don't come cut. So we pretty much demolished it, but it was good. 

I almost hate to admit this... but I'm craving some processed food. Everything here is so fresh, but I just want some chips and some frozen dinners. Doritos sound amazing. Also chicken nuggets.

And they put ketchup on everything here! My host sister made pizza the other day, with ketchup as the sauce instead of tomato sauce. And the ketchup is a lot different. It's really sweet and not at all like Heinz. 

I mentioned before how they always play a song at the beginning of the school day, and the other day they played one that just kept saying "nami nami makkara" over and over. Which means "yummy yummy sausage". Everyone was like what the hell is going on. But it was funny, and at least I understood it! :) 

OH! On Friday, I pretty much understood all of my math lesson! I was so excited! & I also came so close to actually answering one of the questions.... in Finnish. But I wasn't 100% positive that he was asking a question. But regardless, I was really proud of myself. Even though it was a lesson on something I learned like 4 years ago. 

My host dad's dad came over today. They give all of their grandkids 10 euros a month, and they gave me that money too. I thought it was so sweet, because he said that I was one of their grand kids now, but they don't speak any English so we only ever exchanged like four words in Finnish. But they're both so nice, and I can't wait to be able to have conversations with them. 

I'm sure I could come up with more random things to tell you, but I'm tired and can't think of anything else at the moment. So this is it for now. Hope you enjoyed it!