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.