Hyvää Joulua! - Merry Christmas!

Terve kaikkille,

Minä tiedän joka minä tarvitsen kirjoittaa uusi viesti, mutta se on joululoma ja minä haluan olla Manninen perheen kanssa (nykyinen isäntäperhe). Minä vaihtan perhee keskellä joulua ja uusivuosia, ja minä olen surullinen lähteä Manninen perhe, mutta olen jännittynyt tavata ja asua uusi perheen kanssa!

Uusivuosin jälkeen, minä kirjoitan viesti joulusta ja lomasta!

Kiitos olla kärsivällinen! Hyvää joulua, ja onnellista uuta vuotta 2014!



Hello everyone,

I know it's about time I wrote another blog post, but right now it's Christmas holidays and I want to spend as much time as I can with the Manninens (my current host family). I will be changing to my new host family between Christmas and New Years. I am very sad to leave the amazing Manninen family, but am also excited to get to know this new family!

After New Years I will write a blog post about my crazy Christmas holiday!

Thank you for being so patient! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Lapissa - Lapland

Last weekend, I was in Lapland with 145 other Rotary Exchange Students. It was the first time I had seen almost all of them since Karkku, so it was amazing to see everyone. Some people have changed since the last time I saw them, and some haven't changed at all.

The camp took place in Muonio, which is quite far north! (Muonio on google maps: https://goo.gl/maps/RrBBl) We saw reindeers, many reindeer(s?), and even got to ride in a pororeki (reindeer sled)! We also went to a husky "farm" as you might call it, where they breed sled dogs for the various trips they offer. None of the dogs are sold from the farm, they are raised for the sole purpose of being sled dogs. We also saw Santas Village, which I had already visited with my host family back in September, but it was quite different with all the snow on the ground!

The first two days of the trip we visited a ski hill. I put a lot of emphasis on the word 'hill'. Where I'm from in Canada, we have mountains everywhere you look. I also live a few hours away from the Rocky Mountains (http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalliovuoret), so I know what a mountain looks like. Finland has no mountains. Thankfully, I knew this before signing up for the Lapland trip, so I chose to cross-country ski instead of down hill. I had only done it a few times before many years ago, so I was quite a sloppy skier. I still had a nice experience skiing around the little trail and, occasionally, falling on my butt.

The main part of the trip was really spent bonding with the other exchange students and sharing stories about our new lives. I had an amazing time in Lapland and cannot wait for the Russia trip!

And now, here are some photos from the trip.

The sky in Lapland has this very mystic glow about it everywhere you go. At least, when the sun is around it does, which is approximately 4 hours each day :P

The "ski hill" with either the sunrise/sunset behind it. In Lapland, you really never know which one it is :D

Me and my American friends practicing our "Finnish smiles"

PORO! (REINDEER!)

A nice view of Reindeer butt during the sleigh ride

Can you spot the real reindeer?

Standing on the Sverge/Suomi (Sweden/Finland) border! 

Revontulet - The Northern Lights

" Claire! Äkkiä! Äkkiä äkkiä äkkiä! Tule tänne! Katso ulkona, on... "

" Revontulet "

Olen vielä nähnyt revontulet Kanadassa, mutta siellä se oli heikko ja tylsä. Täällä oli erilainen. Jolloin minä olen nähnyt revontulet, olen huutanut 'MÄÄ MENEN ULOS!' ja olen laittanut minun kengät nopeasti. Se oli kaunein asia olin ikinä nähnyt. 

Minä olin ulkona puolituntinen, katsotaan revontulet. Minä en osaa unohtaa tuo päivää.

"Claire! Quick! Come here! Look out side, look at..."

"The Northern Lights"

I'd seen the Northern Lights before in Canada, but in Canada they were weak and really quite uneventful. What I saw in Finland was very different. When I came to the door and saw the beautiful green lights in the sky, I screamed "I'M GOING OUT!" and threw my shoes on. 

I followed my sisters out to a field near our house to better see the lights, and stayed there for probably about half an hour. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my entire life. Behind the shimmering green colours you could see many stars in the sky. As I watched the lights dance I saw a shooting star slide across the sky. If I hadn't felt so darn cold, I would have thought it was a dream. It was truly the most amazing and breathtaking thing I had ever seen in my whole life, and I will not forget it. 

After the beautiful light show I ran to bed because I had to leave for Lapland at 4:30 the next day!

Vähän Halloween - Sort of Halloween

>>>>English below<<<<<

Tänä Perjantaina (15.11.2013), minun lukio oli pukua päivää, kun opiskelijat pukeutuvat kaltainen julkkis ja videopeli, kirja, ja elokuva ihmiset. Minä pidän todella Halloween, se on minun lempiloma, no tänä päivä oli mahtava!

Myös, koulun jälkeen, minä olen mennyt katsoa ilotulitus Kempelessa. Kanadassa, joka Halloween, minä menin katsoa ilotulitus, no se muistutti minua Kanada.

Minä olen yllättin kuinka monta opiskelijat oli pukeutua! Minä olin tosi onnellinen joka yli puoli teini-ikäiset olivat jonkinlainen pukua. Se oli mahtava päivä, ja minä haluan kiittää kaiki joka autivat! Kiitos kiitos kiitos :D

Ja nyt englanti, koska minä tarvitsen...


Finland doesn't celebrate Halloween as we do in Canada and North America; no one dresses up, no one trick-or-treats.... NOTHING! This was an extremely depressing fact to me, because I adore Halloween. So, when I found out my lukio was having a dress up/ theme day, I jumped for joy!

This Friday, November 15th, the students were to dress up as either a celebrity or a character from a video game, book, or movie. I had been told by some of the other students that "probably no one is going to dress up because Finns aren't really into that kind of thing," so I had really lowered my expectations. I can proudly say that more than half of the lovely teenagers dressed up in some kind of costume! I was ecstatic!

Later that day, I went with my host father and some of my host siblings to Kempele to watch a little firework show. Every Halloween up until a few years ago, my family and I would go down to the Lavington Fire Hall and watch a big firework show after filling our bags full of candy. The exploding spectacle was quite nostalgic, and I enjoyed it immensely.

And now for some hilarious/ awesome/ horrifying costumes some of the kids had at my school.

Link (me) and my friend the Mad Hatter!

Pikku Myy, a character from the Moomins

Dexter Morgan

Pamela Anderson herself (that's a man, btw)

How homework is done at MULU

This is what I wore on October 31st. I "dressed up" as a Finn. Straight hair, button up shirt, sweat pants, and the essential wool socks. Every little bit counts, right? :)

Elämän suomessa - Life in Finland

As of today, I have been in this beautiful country for 3 entire months. It feels as though I just got here, but also that I have lived here my whole life at the same time.

As the previous blog post says, my language learning has steadily progressed, but I still speak terribly. Those rumors you heard are true: Finnish is hard! The language is so different from Germanic languages that sometimes I just laugh. I find I'm having to re-wire my brain as far as creating sentences goes. Until recently I've been trying to relate everything to English, French, or even German, but with no success. With Finnish, I have to start from square one: a blank slate.

For those of you that are curious, here is a list of some things that I've found particularly challenging or different in my language learning:

• Articles: they don't have 'em! This makes speech easier, but at first I was always saying "yksi", their word for "one" as my own little article. I got over this eventually.
• Prepositions: they don't have 'em. Their "prepositions" are either endings put onto words, or "postpositions". But even the postpositions don't live by themselves, you still have to put an ending on your word (usually an 'N')
• Gender: they don't have it! They don't even have "he" and "she", just "hän". Everything is totally neutral in the language. This is great for me, but can make learning English quite challenging for most Finns. He/she mix ups can be very entertaining sometimes!
• The partitive word ending: my arch nemesis. English has nothing like this, but it can kind of be related to a more complicated object direct in French. I get this wrong constantly.
• The alphabet: this was very challenging at first, but is now quite easy. Here is a video I've found of the Finnish alphabet. It's not perfect though. Note the very different pronunciation of the letters "j" and especially "y", as well as the additions of ä ja ö. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAc8Z4pfhFo&feature=youtube_gdata_player
• The nonsense words: every language has them! Finns are very partial to the word "niin"... No niin, niin, niinkö, eikö niin, ai niin are some of their favorite phrases. "No niin" is a word that can be used to mean... Almost everything. It can be "is that so", "really", "well well", "now then", "well then", "so", and "huh". When in doubt: no niin.
• Words are pronounced as they are written. There are no silent letters like you find everywhere in French. This is handy when someone says something I don't understand, because I can normally find it in the dictionary very easily.
• When you decide to learn Finnish, you're really signing up to learn two languages. They have written and spoken. Spoken is kind of like English internet slang. They just chop letters out if words, leave out endings, or just cut out words. Almost no one speaks "written Finnish", so my spoken sentences containing both written and spoken words often make my friends laugh. I go from toddler to president in a matter of words!

I know I seem to be 'thankful' for a lot of things, but I feel I cannot emphasize this enough: I am so thankful that the students in my school and town are so cooperative and helpful. I have many friends who are always willing to help me out, no matter how weird or confusing the question is. From attempting to explain Quantum Physics, to helping me translate todennäköisyys, to even showing me how to make coffee, every moment they help me is a moment they could be doing something else more productive. Every second anyone spends with me is thoroughly appreciated, and I hope everyone knows that. Minä rakastan minun pieni koulu Muhoksella, and I would not change it for anything in the world.

Mahtava - Awesome

The reason I haven't really been updating my blog is because I have been experiencing what I'm calling "extreme language learning". What's that, you ask? Let me describe something for you first...

Oh my god, I know the answer. I thought. I can answer this question. I can do it. This is it. I shot my hand up. Saikkonen, my physics teacher looked at me, paused for a second, and said "Claire?" seeming to draw out the "a" in my name. I took a deep breath and said "kahdeksan piste nolla kertaa kymmenen toista." "kyllä" he said, smiling. I let a slight smile show on my lips, but on the inside my brain was having a dance party in my skull. YEAH BABY!!! You're the master! Achievement unlocked tothemax! Take that Finland! I had just answered "eight point zero times ten squared", but I might as well have cured cancer. I spent the rest of the class floating on a cloud of euphoric bliss. I didn't even bother paying attention, it was no use to try; I was way to busy giving hi-fives to each of the neurons in my brain.

In case you haven't guessed, my language skills have improved immensely. Since the beginning of the second jakso, I have actually understood what was going on in class. Admittedly, most of my courses are on things I have already studied, but it still feels awesome. This jakso I have Math, two music courses, PE, English and two Physics courses. 

The subject of the math course is Probability, which is essentially just a class full of word problems. To say my homework is painful would be an understatement. 

The most common response of the kids at Muhoslukio when I say I'm taking two physics classes is looking at me quizzically and asking "why?" I'm in a second year physics class that is all about acceleration and force, with classic problems and situations. I love this kind of physics, so I can't complain (side note: this is the class I was in during the above description of me kicking the Finnish language in the pants. I mean that in the most affectionate way possible). 

My other physics course I have with the third years is quantum physics. I frequently grin at myself during the class and think well, Claire, you're attempting to learn Quantum Physics in Finnish. "And for my next act, I will be teaching myself the Cello as I skydive." Know that it is absolutely ridiculous when I say that I have legitimately learned stuff in that class. Honestly. I'm not even joking. My very basic background I received in High School helped me out a little at first, but the material was very quickly very beyond what I had learned. When I'm not laughing at myself, I'm staring down the teacher and absorbing every gigantic word he spits out, and sometimes I learn something new.

So yeah, this is my life right now. It's pretty awesome. Here, have a photo:

Kesämökki Pudasjärvellä - Summer Cottage in Pudasjärvi

On the way to Ullan Vanhemman kesämökki (Ulla's parent's summer cottage), Ulla played a CD of children's Finnish songs. I was happily listening to the CD, having no idea what the songs were about, when suddenly I recognised one. The tune was very familiar, but I couldn't place it. Then, I herd them say "puff" and I knew; this was Puff the Magic Dragon. I was a little bit too excited, honestly, and made my family listen to it again, because I wanted to see what I understood. Yeah, I only got "puff" and the occasional word, but it was still great!

The next two links are the Finnish Puff song. The first one is the original that I listened to, the second one is more... Upbeat? I dunno. The second one has lyrics, which I find handy, but probably won't help any of you English folk at all :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKz9X8VMZ84&feature=youtube_gdata_player

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbM6HK5lhg4&feature=youtube_gdata_player

My time at the actual cottage was very nice, though I had more homework than I would have liked. The weather was also less than agreeable, but that was alright in the end. 

The most eventful thing this weekend was the Savusauna (smoke sauna). This is a sauna where there is no chimney, so all the smoke stays inside the little hut. It took about 5 hours to warm it up, and once it is done heating you let all the smoke out and let the fire die out. Because of all the smoke the walls are totally black and you're not supposed to touch them, which is sometimes hard when you're stumbling in the dark! I learned that, a hundred years ago, women gave birth in saunas like this. It makes sense, but it had just never occurred to me, and I thought it was a cool little factoid!

The old savusauna, no longer in use, but still looks cool!

"Are you ready for savusauna?" my family asked me, and I was totally down. I became very not down when I asked the temperature of the sauna and they responded with "120℃." My jaw hit the floor. THESE FINNS ARE GONNA KILL ME, I thought. I almost passed out when they said "it was 140℃, but we figured that was a little hot." And so, after saying my goodbyes and updating my will, I walked out to certain death... But came back alive! I really enjoyed the Savusauna, even though it sometimes hurt to breathe. I felt like I had been baptized in fire, to be all dramatic, but it was truly amazing. Honestly though, the best part was walking out of the sauna into the 3℃ air and thinking that it was not nearly cold enough outside. I really wanted a snow bank to dive into, or even better a frozen lake! But no such luck. 

A look inside the sauna

Because there isn't any body of water nearby, this is a little "swimming pool" was made beside the old sauna.

So there you are, my fun and frightening weekend at a cottage. Next week is koe viikko (test week), and I'm gonna study for my English test!