August
4-6
2012
TRAVEL: On Friday night my parents and I decided to drive up to Chicago and stay the night for the ease of travel and not being rushed on Saturday morning for my departure flight. Although saying goodbyes were hard, excitement had started to build. I still couldn’t believe what was about to happen! I traveled with other Rotary International Students and as we went along in our travels and connecting flights, we met up with other students. Throughout the flight things went well and fairly quickly, but as time went on it became rather confusing with the time difference and I kept having a difficulty keeping track. By the time we all arrived in Helsinki we were already so messed up. Once we all got to our luggage we got on a bus with a bunch of
other exchange students from all around the world and
we all made our way to a couple hour bus ride to start
our journey to language camp in Karkku..
Every one of us was SO tired with tons of mixed feelings of everything, but most of all excitement and curiosity was above anything else. The thing is, most of us were completely on a different time zone. I’m currently 8 hours ahead of everyone back home in Illinois; some are 7… some maybe 10. It all varies and depends on the state/country. So you can see how basically we were all completely out of it! When we arrived we all went straight to dinner and had our first Finnish meal. It was different than what I’m used to at home but also not too different. Just think of really healthy, balanced meals. That’s what Finnish food is. We all emailed our parents to let them know we were safe (VERY important thing to do!) and once we all visited with one another and met new all of the students, teachers, and tutors we had an evening snack then went
to bed pretty shortly after that.
First days of Camp:
· Maanantai - Monday
Waking up was a bit of a dream… or to be more practical, it was something quite opposite of that. It was like waking up from a dream. After a full nights rest I was feeling a lot better than I had the day before but that was just the side note, the main fact was I was actually finally in Finland and yes, I really am going to be living here this next year. Still now, it all seems a bit un-realistic. I’m sure this feeling will go away soon… or perhaps not, it might just all seem like one incredible dream that I won’t wake up to for a year. Following me? Perhaps not, but this all makes sense in my mind.
Breakfast was a rather traditional morning meal including open face sandwiches (grain bread, ham, slice of cheese, and vegetable… such as cucumber, tomato, or red bell pepper) and porridge. Here at camp I feel like we have more choices for different kinds of food, which I’m curious to see what the difference will be between here at once I get to my host homes. And then last but not least, kahvi (coffee) is ALWAYS available! If you don’t already know how popular kahvi is here in Finland… well, you better go google it.
Afternoon Khavi
After breakfast all of us students went to Info about camp and then split up into our assigned classrooms where each room has a teacher and then there are small groups of 4-6 students per 1 tutor. In my class our teacher’s name is Mimmu and I have to say we got the best teacher. She’s incredibly interactive and shows many ways to learn quickly but also in a fun environment that will make the material being taught easy to remember. I am excited to see how far we’ll all come along by the end of the week.
“Finnish is not hard. It’s actually very simple. It’s just a very different language.”
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