London and Spain 5/12-5/20

We flew from London to Tampere on Tuesday night and spent the night in the London airport. On Wednesday morning we got up at 6am and went into London for the day. The weather was crappy and I overall wasn’t too impressed with the city, I think because it wasn’t really what I expected. But, we walked to the London Bridge, Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and Platform 9 ¾ from the Harry Potter movies. We were only there for around 8 hours but I was surprised at how much ground we covered in such little time. Our flight from London to Madrid was at 7pm that night. This is the second time that I had flown through London and I noticed their security is pretty intense. I, for some reason, always get tagged in security and I am very well used to the security pat down searches I have done every time I fly. BUT, this time the pat down was more like a 2-3 minute rub down from the security lady. I was really freaked out after and felt extremely violated, I even called my dad. Jackie was watching and a few other people stopped to watch, as well…Jackie said it was disgusting to watch and looked like she was giving me a bath with my clothes on and no water.
We landed in Madrid around 10:30pm and went straight to the hostel. I was a little nervous because the hostel was run by a bunch of young Spanish guys. It was fine though…I think I pin young Spanish/Mexican looking guys as shady just from stereotype, but they were really nice. We had people from all over the world in our hostel, Argentina, Australia, Austria, etc and seven of the eight beds in our room were filled. The next morning, I found 2 maps of Madrid and found the places we wanted to go. We went to a monument called Plaza de Espana, the Palacio Real where the King lives, the Catedral de la Viaducto, Puerto del Sol, Plaza Mayor, Banco de Espana, Puerto de Alcala and the Parque del Retrio. The Parque del Retrio was really nice, that was my favorite part of the trip and we stayed there for a while that day. In the mix of seeing all of those things, I got a 1E heart shaped croissant covered in chocolate that was almost the size of my face….amazing :) On the way back to the hostel we walked down Gran Via, the main street for shopping in Madrid. That night we stayed in the hostel and talked with the new people that got there. Turns out there were 3 other girls from Michigan and only 2 of them came together; one girl lives with 2 girls who graduated from my high school at MSU, small world. I talked with them for a while. Talking with them was actually like something that was “really familiar yet really different” because it has been so long since I’ve talked with someone face to face that has the same accent, uses the same slang, talks just as fast and has the same kind of “broken English” as I do. It was cool to notice that it was strange to hear someone talk they way I do.
The next morning, we met Walter, an extremely flamboyant guy from LA. He came to get coffee with Jackie and I (by the way, the coffee in Spain is better than any other coffee that I’ve had) We wandered around Madrid for a while with Walter then the 3 of us went to Parque del Retrio and rented a paddle boat. On the way to the park, Jackie noticed a 50E bill missing from her wallet; I checked mine and noticed that I had 50E missing as well. We sat down on a bench to figure out what happened and as we were panicking 3 Asian women come up to us saying “massage? massage?” we told them no over and over, but they did anyways. We were too worried about the money to deal with the Asian women. So now, we are panicking in the middle of a market with Asian women rubbing our backs and digging their elbows into us...and Walter too. After a few minutes we realized it had to have been a girl in the hostel who took the money because no one else was there (she took our toothpaste, too). Then, as we were walking we saw a bunch of African American guys selling knock off designer purses and sunglass on the street. The police drove up and they all ran, probably 20-30 of them. But, one police officer walks up to Walter, he is African American too. Walter says to the office “nu uhh, I’m from L.A” while waving his finger like a teenage girl with an attitude. Needless to say, this was not what the officer expected. After the park, we met with Steven, our French friend who was in Finland with us and also responsible for my concussion haha, and his friend Damian who is also French and studying in Madrid. The five of us went to eat; Jackie and I got paella, a Spanish dish with rice, vegetables and some kind of meat. We ordered ours with chicken but instead they brought us some kind of dead sea creature. I really had a hard time eating it because I’m not a fan of creepy crawlies in my food! Then, we went to an old Egyptian prison, the guys loved it, I didn’t find it all too exciting but the view of Madrid was really nice! We wandered around a little more and Walter left to find his friend. We went into a Ham Museum…a shop where everything is pork…sandwiches, dinners, full pigs, etc (and not a real museum). The place was huge and all of the walls were lined with dead pigs. Good thing you can’t get swine flu from being around dead pigs or Spain would have a problem. I found it disgusting, especially since I don’t like pork. We later realized that there are shops like this all over Spain, but Spanish ham is really popular, although it looks raw. We went to the hostel to grab our bags and went to the bar for a beer with Steven and Damian; just like the coffee, the beer was probably the best beer I’ve had…not that I’ve had a lot ;-) At around 1am, Jackie and I headed back to the airport. We tried to sleep but it was too cold.
We flew into Barcelona the next morning. Our hostel was hard to find and I found a little old man on the street corner to help us. I noticed he would stomp his foot after every English word he said correctly. After he showed us where to go, he kept pinching my cheek and I was getting laughed at by everyone sitting at a red light at the intersection but I thought he was really funny. That day we went to the Gothic part of the city and down to the beach. We stopped for churros, which they dip in melted warm chocolate. Then we walked to the board walk and back to the hostel. That night we went for a walk with Emilia and Maxim (Emilia is from South Carolina and Maxim is German) they were also in our hostel. I was warned by the owner of this hostel that I stick out like a sore thumb with my blonde hair and pale skin. He also told me that the Spanish guys will be looking at us because they never see blonde hair. After a few days, I learned that if I speak Finnish to them then they leave automatically because they assume I can’t speak English or Spanish. After a while we would just count in Finnish and see how long it took them to leave and they had no idea we were even counting.
The next day we walked to the Sagrada Familia, a church designed by Gaudi. Then we walked by a monument that is on every postcard but it just looked like a huge bullet in the ground. On our way back we walked through a really nice park and got some dinner.
The next morning, I had really had enough of Jackie. We planned to go to the beach that day but she decided she wanted to go to Starbucks and shopping (both of which I don’t like). So, she went on her own and I planned to meet Mark, an Australian guy in our hostel, at the beach. I got to the beach and was slightly concerned with the weirdos walking around. So, I found the part of the beach that had a ton of old people. I layed down between 2 old naked women; I figured they would be the last people to bother me and no one else would come over if I was between 2 old women who had nothing on. And, I was right. After and hour or so, I went back to shower. I tried to stay in doors for the rest of the day because the sun was so intense down there. That night, we went for beers with some people from our hostel…a Swiss girl, a German girl, an Italian guy who are all studying in Portugal and a Canadian girl who is working in Ireland.
We checked out of our hostel the next morning and tried to walk to the Olympic Stadium where they Olympics here in 1992, I believe. I made the mistake of giving Jackie the map and we got lost. So, we had just enough time to find our way back to the hostel for our bags and to get to the bus station to go to the airport and never made it to the stadium. We flew from Barcelona to Bremen, Germany that night. The flight was rough, we hit 2 air pockets which drops the plane a bit and it feels like the plane could crash. I hate flying, although I’ve gotten better with all the flying I’ve done since I’ve been here, but after that I was ready to get off. We met Greg in the airport because he and Jackie are going to Amsterdam and Paris and Marjukka (my tutor) her 2 friends and her mom, they were visiting her brother in southern Spain. We all stayed in the airport that night. One of Marjukka’s friends had a blow up chair for the water that we blew up and 2 people slept on. Marjukka’s mom was so lost in the airport because she only speaks Finnish and that was the first time she had ever left Finland. We flew from Bremen to Finland at 6:30am then took a train and a bus back to Jyvaskyla. Marjukka’s dad picked her, her mom and I up from the train station and he drove me to my apartment.
Overall, the trip was really nice. The weather was around 80-85 degrees and sunny the whole time!
Only 9 days left in Finland!
When I peaked in my mail box today I saw a stack of colored envelopes, which were all birthday cards! Thanks to everyone who sent one :)

London Pictures

London Bridge

London

Big Ben

Westminster Abbey

Buckingham Palace

Where the Harry Potter movies were shot

Spain Pictures!!

Parque del Retrio (Madrid)

Banco de Espana (Madrid)

Walking down the street in Madrid

Where the King lives (Madrid)

Barcelona

Barcelona

Sagrada Familia

Near the beach in Barcelona

Onnelliset äidit Päivä (Happy Mothers Day)

I have a Mothers Day story
Last weekend I bought a Mothers Day card to send home to my mom. There was no one around the store to translate, so I just picked a cute one. When we were eating, I was writing in the card and I ask a woman to tell me what it said so I could write the translation. Turns out the card says "Flowers for Grandma". I know the word for grandma, but in Finnish they add their prepositions onto the end of other words, in this case 'for' was added onto 'grandma' so the word looked totally different to me.

Turku and Stockholm Story!

So. Jackie and I left our apartment to get the 7:25am bus to the train station. For some reason, the bus times had changed that day so we had to call a cab to take us because we didn't have time to walk. We met Gunter(Austria), Tereza(Czech Rep.) and Dalma(Hungary) at the train station. We took a train to Tampere then changed and took another one to Turku. On the train from Tampere to Turku, a battery exploded in Tereza's bag and there was a small fire in her bag with a lot of smoke; it was because her bag was sitting in the sun. We got to Turku and found something to eat, which took a good hour because no one could agree on anything. After lunch we went to sit by the river then went to a Cathedral. On the way to the cathedral there was a massive parade of people from young to old wearing what looked like American Boy Scout uniforms. We tried asking, but were never able to figure out what it was for. From the cathedral we walked to the other side of the city to the ferry station. We boarded the ferry around 8:00pm. We didn't have cabins on the way there, but we did on the way back. So, we sat in seats that were like on and airplane. The ferry was 11 hours. I had never been on a boat like that before and I was surprised at the size of it! Jackie and I walked around after we left the dock; there were 2 restaurants, 2 cafes, a huge tax free shop, a dance club and some other stuff. We were walking the opposite way the ferry was going, so as we were walking I looked out the big window and nearly fell over. We tried to sleep that night but 11 hours in one seat wasn't working. We made a stop about half way through and a bunch of people got off the boat. So I hoped over and slept across 2 seats. When I woke up Tereza was on the floor in front of me between the seats cocooned in her sleeping bag. Gunter, along with the rest of the people in our area had also moved to the floor. We got to Stockholm at 6:30am and got a much needed coffee. We changed our money and decided what to do for the day. We left around 7:30 and walked to the old City Hall. We got into some trouble here with other tourists because Dalma peed in a bush because she couldn't hold it and it was so early no where would be open for her to use a bathroom for another hour or so. Then we headed to the hostel Gunter, Tereza and Dalma were staying at. I have a friend from high school who lives in Stockholm so Jackie and I stayed with her. After the hostel, we went to two churches then stopped at a grocery store to get some bread and meat and had lunch in a park. We walked back to the hostel to get out bags and shower then went to meet Elin at her apartment. Elin, Jackie and I went to dinner then down by the water so Elin could show us where to go in the morning.
The next morning, we met back with the others and went to the Royal Castle. As we got there the changing of the royal guard ceremony was starting. This was neat, but sooo long. After the ceremony we went into the Royal apartments. Then walked through old town, Gamla Stan. After, we went back to Elin's apartment to get our stuff while the others went to the hostel to get theirs. We walked around the other side of the city center for a bit then Elin walked us to the ferry.
This time we had cabins, which were on the very bottom deck...the cars were even above us. There were big metal things in the hallway and we asked what they were for. The woman said "Well, if the ship goes Titanic those close automatically so don't stand there our you'll get squished and die." Which is funny because if you don't get squished by them you are going to drown, anyways. But she said "Don't worry, there are no icebergs", we told her that is also what they thought on the Titanic. We went to sit in the cafe area for some coffee after getting on the boat. Gunter and Tereza had been eating a package of cookies all day and they gave me one when we got coffee. I took one bite and recognized them as being the same cookies we give our residents at work to keep their digestive systems working regularly because they are loaded with fiber. I asked to see the package and asked them if they knew what digestive meant because the package said "Digestive Cookies" on it. They thought it was a cookie flavor; needless to say after a whole package of cookies, they had a rough night. We walked around the boat a little and took showers. We went into Tereza and Gunter's cabin to play Uno. Which I didn't know, but Uno is different all over the world...and we play probably the least entertaining way. After that we went to sleep. Everyone had a really hard time sleeping because they said the boat was loud but I never woke up once. We got into Turku at 7:30 and walked to the train station for our train back.
This trip was when I learned the difficulties of traveling with other people. After the first day, we all nearly killed eachother. However, Stockholm was really nice and it is huge! We were only there for 2 days but we really should have planned to be there for around 4 because we didn't even see nearly the whole city.

I have taken my last exam for the semester, so I am finally done with the exception of a short essay. However, I have been done with lectures since April 8th.

Next Stop: London on tuesday...Spain for a week...Finland for a week...back home on May 29th! Its been 5 months already! yikes!

Turku and Stockholm Pictures!

Turku

Turku City

Turku

Turku City

If you touch the horse it is supposed to bring happiness

Yes, this is how we slept on the ferry for the first night

Near city hall: Dalma, me, Jackie, Tereza

Stockholm

Stockholm

Stockholm at night in front of the theater, Jackie and I

Elin and I

Parliment building on the left

Royal Castle

Changing of the Royal guard

Changing of the Royal guard

Gamla Stan in Stockholm

Gamla Stan

The story part of Stockholm will come in a day or two!

VAPPU!

I have noticed that Finland is like day and night between summer and winter. Everything is completly different than when we first got here. In the first 3 months we only saw the sun around 6 times. Now, we have 17 hours of sun a day and getting another hour each week and a half and never any clouds in the sky. Also, everything looks really different without any snow. At our first week of orientation they told us that Finns perfer "silence is golden, talking is silver" because they are extremely shy and keep to themselves; but that it would change in summer. No sooner than the weather got better, suddenly the Finns are out and really talkative.

Finland in January

Finland in April


Vappu- I really can't even explain the maddess we experienced in the last 2 days, but it is like nothing I have ever seen. Yesterday, was all day drinking for the entire country and by entire country I mean everyone...families, old people...everyone. Jackie's finnish family called her at 1:00pm to see if she had started to drink because they already had, and they have 2 young kids. The city center was packed with people and the biggest party in the center was at the church (not inside). Everyone was walking around totally drunk and crazy. I am not too big into the drinking so for a sober person to be watching this...its nuts but it was Finland like I've never seen before and never expected to see. At 7:00 we went to a goodbye barbeque for Barbara and Lotte, 2 Dutch girls. Barbara's parents came to visit her during her last few days and she took them into the city that day, her parents found the celebration pretty interesting. We cooked some Finnish sausages, which are horrible but good if you burn them, I think anyways. Then we went to Marja's, a finnish girls house for a party, once again, everyone was completely drunk. From there, most people went back to the church but I went home because I was exhausted.
Today, at noon, Jackie and I met Marjukka, our tutor, on the Harju hill. This is a huge hill in the middle of Jyvaskyla where the Vappu picnic is, more commonly called the hangover picnic. The hill was completly packed with people...eating, drinking, dancing, playing games, etc. The ESN group was right at the top so most of the exchange students were as well. The Finnish students all have overalls (really jumpsuits) covered in patches and are different colors based on what they study....white is business, black is sport/health science, orange is IT and so on. They wore them yesterday and today. When students graduate from high school, most of them buy these white funky hats. Everyone had theirs on today to, even all the adults. We hung out there and had some food and beer for a few hours. Jackie, Anastasia(Russia), Nikos(Greece), Jim(France) and Steven(France) and I went into the city, which was packed with people. There was food, candy, ice cream and some jewlery and clothing tables on the street. We went to Salsa and got some pizza then headed to the beach on the lake. Then, we went to the fair that is in town but it was nothing too exciting, we got some ice cream and headed home. Right now, it is 11:30pm and there are still drunk people screaming outside after almost 48 hours of party. But, Finland is known for its excessive drinking abilities haha.
This website explains Vappu, I'd recommend reading it :)
http://www.finland.com/main-201-id.do


Just a small part of the hill

We really have no idea...these appeared today, all over the place.

On Sunday, we are spending the day in Turku(the former capital) then going to Stockholm until Wednesday morning. I will have more fun stories then!