Puoliväli - Halfway

Yep, you read it right. I'm officially half way through my exchange. Holy crap-on-a-cracker. I was not prepared for this realisation.

I am now used to the quiet of my new host family, and though sometimes it is great to have some peace, I really miss the chaos of the Manninen family. I also really miss the kids; they were a great excuse for me to not do my homework... haha! The weirdest part about changing families was that I had made myself a system, a routine, which was completely flipped on its head; I had certain chores that I would do in the house, and certain places I'd put my things, and now it has all changed. I almost felt more culture shock changing between Finnish families than when I first arrived here. Thankfully, the Pulkka family has sauna as often as the Manninens, about once every two or three days, which was a real life-saver. My new host mother and father are very nice, and I enjoy spending time with them. I only spend about two months with the Pulkkas, which is disappointing, as I won’t have as much time to get to know them and feel comfortable and at home. But these are the cards I’ve been dealt, and I can’t change them!

Just over a week ago, my floorball team played in a tournament in Utajärvi. Oh yeah, I should mention: I'm on a floorball team. Last jakso (semester) my PE class played floorball and I volunteered to be the goalie. I had a lot of fun and I guess I was better than the average girl with no experience, because when my school made a floorball team they asked me if I would be their goalie. I agreed, and we had a practice where I attempted to figure out what the hell I was doing... then three days later we went to a tournament. Talk about baptism by fire!! I admit, I played rather poorly, but I learned little tricks from watching the opposing team's goal keepers. Despite my crap skills, our awesome team won all three games we played! GO MUHOS! We will be playing in more tournaments and games soon, once our exam week is over. Floorball is not the same as floor hockey, as I know a lot of you are assuming. I’d get into the details, but most of you probably aren’t super interested… but here’s the Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floorball)

This is my Floorball helmet. Note the design on the forehead... I thought it very appropriate

Oh exam week, how I adore thee... This jakso I had two Physics courses, Geography/ Earthsciences, Finnish Language, Music, and Dance class. My Finnish course is called äidenkieli, which means 'mother language'. This is a course for people who have spoken Finnish their whole lives. It's like English class in Canada. What the hell was I thinking? I've written three fairly awful essays this jakso, two were about 200 words, the other closer to 650. These would be a breeze in English, or even French, but they take me quite a while to write in Finnish. I learn a lot from writing the essays, and one of them my teacher actually took the time to correct my mistakes. I learned so much from her corrections, and also felt like crap at the same time. Oh well, constructive criticism is better than none at all! We also wrote part of our final exam today in school; it was the grammar part of the test (meaning we had to put commas in the right places, change the capital letters, all that kind of stuff…) and I GOT 50% ON MY TEST!! Oh my goodness gracious I was so damn excited. I don’t think anyone in the class at that moment was as happy as I was, because I passed the test! Awe yeees…

In the next few weeks, some interesting things will be happening at my lovely school... First off, the third years are currently spending their last week in school right now, and then will write their final 'in school' exams. The 13th of February is Penkkarit, the day where the third year lukio students are 'kicked out of the school'. On this day they dress up in crazy costumes and weird outfits and such. They also write a song for their teachers which they perform for the school. After that they all jump on a bus and throw candy at people on the street. This is too weird to make up :P I'm not 100% certain how everything works, since this is my first time in the Finnish school system, but this ritual happens every year. I'm really excited to see what will happen, and will give you blog readers many photos and a synopsis.

On the 14th of February, the day after the third years are kicked out, the second years perform in something called the vanhojen tanssit, which translates to 'the old dances'. The performance is sort of like a celebration of becoming the oldest in the school, and is sort of like Finnish prom. All the second year girls are fussing over the dresses they will buy and how they will do their hair... I'm going through Grad all over again, but this time I'm letting myself enjoy it. It helps that we get to dance, because I frakkin love dancing! I am honestly extremely excited for the 14th, and will be extremely sad when it is over. I want to dance all year :( I'm sure a lot of you Canadians have many questions about how this works, but right now I couldn't even answer your questions with much certainty. Trust me; there will be a long post about the dances, pictures, and maybe even videos! GAH! I feel like a 6-year-old girl at Christmas I'm so excited.

And now I really should get back to studying. Can’t promise another update anytime soon, with WANHAT (vanhojen tanssit), and exams and everything. The next post will be pretty long though. A lot is going to happen very soon!