Welcome to Finland!

I'm in Finland! As of 9:40am on Sunday, I am finally here. 
A little bit about the trip over... My first flight was delayed about 40 minutes, and I had a scheduled 3 hour layover in Chicago, after flying out of Grand Rapids, so 40 minutes wasn't bad. So I got to Chicago, and met up with about 20 other exchange students, and we all flew to Helsinki together, after our flight was delayed about 1 & 1/2 hours. But it was all good. We just sat around talking and getting to know each other before we were spread out all over the plane. The plane ride went really well, and the food was actually a LOT better on the plane than I had been expecting. When we got to the Helsinki airport, the first thing I thought was "WOW. It is really clean and REALLY quiet." It was morning, but not super early, so I'm not exactly sure where all of the people were, or if it was always that way or what. But it was a really nice change compared to O'Hare airport. Also, there was a spa/sauna in the airport, so it was obvious we were in Finland. Going through customs, I was a little worried, and expected to be asked questions about what we were bringing with us and being sort of interrogated, but it was SO laid back. They just asked for my passport, asked where I would be staying, and that was that. Didn't even glance at my bags or anything. After customs, we met up with the Rotarian and about 3 other exchange students that were already there. Then, I called my parents (of course), and just sat around waiting for more students to come so we could head to Karkku, but we all just wanted to sleep. Once we got on the bus, we stayed awake until we got to the country, I guess you could call it, and there were no more Finnish signs or buildings, then we pretty much all fell asleep. We got to camp and were told the rules of the camp, then got to put our stuff in our rooms (which are very nice, I thought that it would be either more rustic, or a lot more dorm-like, but it was neither). On that note... so far I REALLY like Finnish design. It's all very modern, yet simplistic. Anyways... then we got to eat, which was really good. But I'll post more of the details later, this is basically the "I'm here, this is what it's like & my first impression" blog. But there was an evening snack that night, but I ended up going to sleep at 6pm, and sleeping all the way until morning wake up at 7:30am. So I'm much more awake today, and I think jet lag will be gone by the end of the week here. I'll post pictures and more details on everything later. Hope everything is going well in America :) 


OH, I forgot to talk about the title of this blog. One of the speakers here, whenever she talks about some sort of custom in Finland that all of a sudden everyone starts talking and thinks it's completely different than where they are from, she just said "Welcome to Finland!" So now, whenever something happens that we don't quite understand, we just say "Welcome to Finland", and we all know exactly how each other is feeling when we say that. I think that pretty much explains it. If not... post a comment and I can try to word it better. But for now, my computer is dying and I want to post this before it does!