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!

Joensuu and Helsinki!

Joensuu

Merel and I left to Joensuu on Monday morning. Our train was 3 hours; we got into Joensuu around 1:00pm to find it was rainy and much colder than we expected. I was told there is a place in Joensuu where we could look up family records so we walked around the city (not that big) to find it. We walked into a bank, the post office, stopped a police officer on the street, went into another random building then to the town library. The library finally gave us the address of where we needed to go. We made the mistake of having lunch since it was almost 3 and we hadn't aten since breakfast. We showed up at the place at 3:45 and it closed at 3:00. We talked to a guy who said I would need some kind of permission before I could look anything up but he couldn't tell us anymore. So, we decided to come back at 8:30 the next morning when it opened. We walked to our hostel, which was in a scary part of the city...I thought, Merel didn't think so. After dropping our stuff off we walked about into the city center and wandered some more. I have found that a lot of the cities here look really simular and are all set up with the city center in the middle and then residence surrounding it. We decided to see a movie that night. So we bought our tickets and got some dinner. We went back to the movie theater and the girl working said the boys dropped the 2 kilometer long film role so they cancelled the movie and we could see another movie starting at the same time. We ended up seeing The Boat That Rocked. On the way into the theater, we saw the film that was dropped although it looked like someone dropped it then rolled around in it. After the movie we walked back to the hostel and took about 5 minutes to get into our room, the guy in the room next to us actually had to help us get in. It was my first night in a hostel and I learned that disposable sheets are like cardboard. The next morning we got up and went back to the records place. We explained to 3 women what we wanted to do and they all up and walked away and went to their desks without saying anything. After a few minutes we weren't sure what to do, so I asked if we would be able to look and they told us we had to be patient. So, we waited...and waited some more. A lady came in and said a bunch of words in English that made absolutly no sense at all. I told her I didn't understand so she said "the man will explain". So, a man came in to explain that we couldn't look up anything unless we knew someone who currenlty lived in Joensuu or pay them 21euros per hour to look up extensive family history. Now, this man was the exact man we talked to the day before who would only tell me I needed permission and nothing else. We were pretty frusterated he didn't tell us yesterday. So we booked it to the train station and went into Helsinki.

On the bridge heading from the trainstation to the city center

City Center

City Center and art museum on the right

City Center

heading out of the city

Helsinki

The train was a long 5 hours. We got to Helsinki and went to find the Temppeliaukio chuch that looks like a pile of rocks that Grandpa told me about. We found it and as soon as I was about to take a picture, a tour bus pulled right in front of me...I did get one though. After the church we walked around the city center, which is a lot of shopping and designer stores and the market place. From there we took a ferry out to Suomenlinna, an island fortress in the Helsinki Harbour. It was built in the mid 1700s when Finland was under Swedish rule. We stayed on the islands(4 of them) for a little while and had some food and cider then went back into the city for dinner and took the train back to Jyväskylä. We got back around midnight.

Temppeliaukio Kirkko (church)

inside

inside

Helsinki City Center

Old church in Helsinki

City Center

Helsinki train station

Helsinki from the ferry

Military Base on the island

on the island

where we had our snacks and cider on the island

Back in Jyväskylä

I met with my finnish family this morning at 10am to go to the symphony practice. I was not too thrilled about this but Jaime and Elizabeth(2 other American girls) really wanted to go. We stayed for an hour and a half then went to Viherlandia, the largest garden center in Finland. It was nice, but once again not my thing. Although, my mom would have loved it :) We walked around for just a few minutes then went upstairs for lunch. We had a long lunch and decided that next month they would teach us how to make pulla bread and a finnish dinner. Today we noticed our finnish moms talk about us a lot in Finnish, when we are around. They asked us how we knew they were talking about us and we told them that our names are the same in every language. Although, they are always laughing when our names come up :-P
Thursday, last day of April, and Friday, first day of may, is the celebration for MayDay (Vappu in Finnish). It is the end of winter and beginnins of summer. I have been told this is one of the biggest celebrations in Finland short of Midsummer and Christmas. My tutor sent me a link about the holiday from finland.com...and it says Vappu is a party in the streets and Vappu without alcohol with like Christmas without presents..haha. Jackie's finnish family gave her a can of pea soup and told her is in Finnish tradition and she had to eat in on Vappu.

I have an accent?

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty boring days since I wasn't feeling too well and pretty much just went to school for lunch and came home to relax. Although, on Tuesday, I met with Gunter to plan our trip to Stockholm which will be on May 3rd. Tuesday night, Greg and Florian(Germany) came over for dinner. I get made fun of a lot for having a "twangy" accent and sounding like I'm from the south (so, apparently no one has actually heard someone from the south talk before). Like most people, I would say that I don't have an accent. When Greg and Florian were over, I was talking to my mom on skype. Greg said that her accent was so thick he could hardly understand her, and Greg is from Canada. And Wednseday night I watched Marley and Me with Rami. Thursday was our last Stammtisch, this one was planned by all of the countries. Although, the theme wasn't so great. We took a spin off of the MTV series 'Pimp my Ride' and had a 'Pimp my Bike' contest, since everyone in Jyvaskyla rides bikes to get around. The weather had been sticking to around 30 degrees and on Friday it hit 50, so after lunch Deirdre, Shane, Nikos(Greece), Jonas(Germany) and I headed down to the lake, which is still frozen, then to the Coffee House. We thought Friday was amazing for weather, we woke up on Saturday to find it was 62 degrees which felt like summer. Jackie and I went into the city to go shopping and get ice cream from the vendors that are now on the side of the streets(which I love!) in the center. However, the ice cream flavors here....Slamiaki (black licorice)..pear..some strange ones. That night, we went out to Club Night for another goodbye party. We got there to find it was 12euros enterance, so Jackie and I decided to get something to eat and walk home. Just after we got home, so did everyone else. Apparently, the party was horrible and it was a techno fest. Good thing we left!
When I got here in January, the sun was coming up at 10am and going down at 2pm. NOW, I am woken up every morning at 5am because the sun is up and it stays up until around 9:30pm. Every week we get about an extra hour of sun.
Tomorrow, I am going to Joensuu with Merel to hopefully find some information on the family...and maybe some actual family as well. Then, on Tuesday we are going down to Helsinki for the day.

New Experience: Finnish hospitals

Wednesday and Thursday last week were studying for my exam on Friday. The group that went to Russia got back around 1:00am on Friday morning. After my exam on Friday, I walked back to my flat in a blizzard, a white out actually, I couldn't even see right in front of me. I watched Taken with Greg, Shane and Deirdre. Then we picked up a few more people and went for pizza. On Saturday, Jackie and I went into the city for coffee and some shopping. I went to sauna for about an hour then Jackie, Steven and I walked to Roninmäki, the other student apartment complex on the other side of town. From there we went to Bar 14 for a going away party. On the way, I was sitting on the back of Steven's bike. He hit a bump going down the hill and I fell off and hit my head. The next morning, I still wasn't feeling too well so we went to the hospital. There was a pretty big language barrier; most of the doctors didn't speak English. When I registered, we had to find an English speaking person and when I saw the doctor, we were saved by the online finnish-english translator. However, I do have a concussion and some pretty bad cuts and bruises. But, I am feeling much better now. The only rough thing is that I had an exam this morning.

A story from last time that I forgot to add. My friend, Shane, hadn't gotten his hair cut since we has been here. Anastasia, Deirdre and I said we would cut it for him. The other 2 girls cut a little then wouldn't do anymore, so I ended up cutting his whole head (i've never cut anyones hair before) but after 2.5 hours, I must say, I didn't do too bad. I have some before and after pictures!

Durring

Before

After

sorry for the absence!

Last week, was pretty much studying, working out and more people going home. We had the last Club Sensation party at Kharma on the 7th. The theme was change your sex; most of the girls didn't dress up except for drawing mustaches with eye liner. But, the boys were really a little too excited about it. The picture is me and Gunter, he won the prize for the best outfit. I wished I could have dressed up but I only stopped by because I had class from 8-4 the next day.

Most of the exchange students went on a trip to Russia this week. The visa was wayy to expensive for me to go, because I am American. On Saturday, we had an Easter barbeque in our apartment complex; an Easter bbq in the snow :)

We were freezing while we ate, so we all had a sauna after. On Sunday, Meagen (Canada), Lotte (Netherlands) and I walked into town and bought some Easter candy and coffee. Finland celebrates Easter Sunday and Easter Monday. Monday morning, Meagan, Lotte and I tired to go swimming but the lady told us it was 5euros because it was Saturday. We said, no it is Monday, but she kept telling us it was Saturday. So, instead of swimming, we walked into a coffee shop for some coffee and pulla. Once again the lady at the coffee shop told us it was Saturday. So, I asked if tomorrow was Sunday or Tuesday, she didn't look to pleased with that question but told me Tuesday. We never did figure out why it was Saturday but we think they meant that stores operate on their Saturday schedule because it was Easter Monday. Monday night, I went to Rami's (Finland) apartment for dinner. He made a traditional finnish dinner, minced meat and macarooni. He told me how to make it, it is pretty easy. We had tea after dinner then watched Slumdog Millionaire (really good). We are going to try to go swimming again tomorrow and hopefully the price will be normal and it won't be Saturday ;-)

I am planned another trip! From May 12-20 I will be in London for a day then Madrid and Barcelona, Spain for 6 days! I am also planning to go to Stockholm, Sweden to stay with a friend from high school for 2-3 days at the very beginning of May.

Hyvää Syntymäpäivää, Mummi! :-D ((Happy Birthday, Grandma!))