UGH.

The title of this blog has absolutely nothing to do with how my life is going here. I love it here! But "ugh" is how I feel when I think about writing a blog. I despise it, but try to keep up on it for people back home. Now that I actually have things going on here, I hate taking the time to write a blog, because I don't want to half-ass anything.

So it's pretty much been about 20 days since my last post, and so many big things have happened.

First of all:
I went to Helsinki for a weekend. We stayed with some friends of my host family (two different friends, actually, so two families) and they were all really interesting people. In the first family, the woman was a professor of stem cell research, and the man was an entrepreneur where he sells fancy wines to companies, (that was a bad explanation, but you know what I mean) and the daughter had been an exchange student in California. The second family, only the mom and son were there, for they are in the process of moving back to Finland from China.

But we were just touristy and went around Helsinki taking pictures of and with everything! It takes literally FOREVER to load pictures to my blog, so please just check out my pictures on facebook. I'm pretty sure everyone back home that reads this has facebook, and if not, send me and email or something and I can send you some pictures by email.

I really liked Helsinki though. It was sooo much different than Turku. It was an ACTUAL city, with like people on the streets everywhere, and a subway, and tram. It felt good to be in a city for a bit. We went down to the harbor and went to the markets (both indoor and outdoor), and I can definitely say I will be going back to the outdoor one, and pretty much getting all gifts there for people before I come home. It was really neat stuff and I wanted it all! Not sure how I will decide what to get... but I'm not too worried about that yet.

The weekend after that we had syysloma (or autumn holiday... for those of you non-finnish speakers). For the holiday, we got two days off of school, and so we went to the summer cottage for three days. We just relaxed, went on a hike (in search of a moose.. but no luck... however, we did get some mushrooms!), went to sauna and then swam in the sea. We also went into the town and took a look at the open coal mines that they have (pictures on facebook).

This weekend I went to something called European Youth Parliament.. but I'll make another post about just that hopefully later on this week, because I want to explain it really well.

Now: how's my progress with the language and life and everything going?

Language: Pretty damn well I think. I understand SO much more, as long as people aren't talking extremely fast or mumbling. I'm starting to speak more Finnish with my host family and it gets easier to do so everyday. I have noticed thought that it's hard to speak "Finglish", which is pretty much English, where you add in all the Finnish words that you do know to make a sentence. It's hard because your mouth just moves differently in each language, and then I stumble all over my words.

Friends: SO many more people are talking to me at school and starting to open up. I no longer feel like I never have anyone to talk to between classes, and I'm glad that I'm starting to make actual friends. My idea of what a friend was changed so much from what I thought back home when I once got here. It went from "people I hang out with outside of school", to being "they smiled at me/sat with them at lunch" to call the a friend. But now, my idea of a friend has changed again. Now it is "who can I go up and talk to between classes/who starts conversations with me first/who makes plans to hang out outside of school".

Life: Just amazing. I'm keeping busy, and have something to do every weekend up to the one after my birthday (December 7th). However, I have a feeling that I am, unfortunately, still a victim of jet lag. I can hardly ever fall asleep at night until like 1 or 2 in the morning, and then am tired all day, until it gets to be like 8 o'clock at night. I don't really know how to change this endless cycle, so if anyone has any ideas, PLEASE let me know! I'm desperate.
I've gotten a gym membership, so I'm hoping that working out will make me tired enough to fall asleep at a decent time.

Food Choices: I definitely like a LOT more foods than when I left. Examples being tomatoes, which are now my favorite part of a salad, and cucumbers, which I used to HATE, but now find myself craving them from time to time.

But now I'm tired after a long weekend of EYP (blog post to come) and can't think of anything else to say. Hopefully now you're happy that you know I'm still alive and doing well with life in Finland!