kiwi night

Goodness, I really fell out of my "blogging" habit...Anteeksi ! Uh, well I guess I'll re-cap again for you :] I left off on the 18th, so lets talk about Sunday, if I can remember what I did. Which as of right now, I can't....Hm, sorry, guess it wasn't too exciting ! So monday :] Well, I had the day off of school because my school decided to extend the holiday 'til Tuesday, but I was also invited by Maria's english teacher to come and talk to her students. My first class was a class of fifth graders, so they actually understood most of what I was talking about, but then I had four classes of third graders who have such a small englsih vocabulary, it was really difficult to come up with a half an hour's worth of talking that they could actually understand. I mostly talked about my pets and my family, as well as my favorite foods and colors, so it wasn't too bad. But I'm actually going back this tuesday to talk to four classes, this time all sixth graders ! So it should be quite fun really, because they'll be able to ask and answer questions. So afterwards I went home and about an hour later I met up with Chet. We climbed up this big hill thing, which had a really gorgeous view from the top, and attempted to make a campfire ! It was fun, and we were there for like two hours, making like three fires, and gathering numerous amounts of wood which we didn't end up using at all...but it was fun. On tuesday I only had one class, but it was also Jason's goodbye chill night, so Annina and I worked on his presents and what not after school. The chill night was actually a bit awkward, because nothing was planned, so we kind of just stood around telling stories for the first hour and a half. And then we played signs until 7. It was a good party, root beer and all !, sad to see him go though :/ But this tuesday we get to meet the new missionary ! I'm excited for that :D Um, wednesday. I had psychology. And then at 3 Maria, her friend Sara, and I had a movie day ! We watched Brother Bear :] In finnish, but Lauri was kind enough to put on english subtitles for me (: I was supposed to have a dress appointment this day, but it got rescheduled for this Monday [tomorrow]. So on thursday I really didn't do much at all. In the evening I went to the EuroMarket with Anna, just so I could get out of the house. It was fun though, I love grocery shopping. On friday I didn't have any classes at all, but I still went to school and sat at a table and played cards by myself for an hour and a half before lunch. Yeah, fun fun :] Um, I came home and took a shower and then Maria and I went out for pizza at the local pizza arcade place. Then that night I worked the concession kiosk at the Hockey Hall ! It was the parent night for Lauris team, where the parents of the players work in the concession stands as part of community service. But Anna had gone to Tampere this weekend, so they asked if I would do it. I took Petra along with me, to translate and help out :], and we got to work with Julia, a girl from my psychology class ! It was so much fun ! And I actually understood what people were telling me and ordering, I was so proud (: I can't wait to do it again. And then today, I went on a girl scout trip with Maria. We drove about an hour away and then walked the circumference of an island for four hours, randomly stopping to cook food or drink something. It was fun, a bit boring because I had no one to talk to, but not too bad. We got home around 3, I showered and got dressed and then took a bus downtown where I met Annina. We then bussed to Jyskä to Piia's house ! We played this game called "knock-out" for a bit and then we went inside, ate popcorn and kiwis while playing yahtzee ! it was really fun, I love going to Piia's house :] And now here I am, about ready to go to sleep. Tomorrow I meet my second host family, the Viertola's ! I move to their house at the end of november, I'm both excited and nervous at the same time, but I'm sure it'll be fine. Have a nice night, sorry for the long drought...And congrats to Micah, my littlest brother, who just won ASB Vice President for his Elementary School !

i don't even remember...

Oi! It has been quite a long time since my last post, sorry to all of you who have checked back for feedback on my whereabouts, life has been crazy, but good :] I think I left off on Thursday of last week, so I guess I shall move on to Friday, if I can remember what I did...I had finnish lessons that morning, and I rode my bike to them, taking the long way around the lake. It's awfully pretty, I hope I get to do it a bit more before it gets too cold :] Afterwards I rode home and ate some lunch and then made plans to go on a biking adventure with my dear canadian friend Chet. It was really fun actually, although Juuso took the bike that I normally ride so I had to settle for the single gear, no hand brakes, flat tired, too tall bike :] I somehow managed to lock the bike in place when I parked at the Euromarket to wait for Chet, but when I tried to unlock it again, I couldn't seem to figure out how. So here I am, standing with Chet, trying to figure out how to unlock the stupid thing. We finally figure it out after about 15 minutes of flipping the entire bike over trying to see how it locked, and so off we went just riding all over Jyväskylä for 2 hours. It was really fun :] I don't really remember what else I did that night, I don't think anything too special...Um. Saturday. Well, Annina has this friend Roosa who lives about 150 km northwest from here, and she is coming with us to the festival that I'm going to on my birthday weekend ! She came up to Jyväskylä on Saturday however, so I got to meet her. We went shopping all day on saturday and then went to Chill Night to hang with the guys. We played card games, scum and BS, but they were both really fun :] Roosa was really sweet so I'm really looking forward to this festival thing in Turku. On sunday I didn't do much in the morning, but around 1 or so, Petra and Pinja came over and we hung out and ate some apple pie and ice cream that Anna made for us. At 4 we all left to go see Lauri's hockey game which was really fun actually. There was this one annoying lady who wouldn't stop clapping though. And it was really really loud clapping, and even when nothing happened she would just sit there and clap for literally five minutes straight. After the game was over Petra and I walked over to the swimming hall where Maria and Pinja had lessons, but instead of swimming she and I watched the Water Polo game that was going on that night ! There was a finnish team [of course] but the other team we couldn't really figure out where they were from. Some of the boys had finnish names, but the coach spoke broken english to them, and then like spanish or something to the rest of them ! We decided that they must have been the english speaking Spaniards living in Finland. :D Well, they won, and the finnish team lost, but it was really fun to watch :] Monday ! I didn't have much else to do so I went downtown and spent the day shopping with Annina and Roosa again ! At 2 30 we met up with Piia who begged us to go with her on a "date" with her ex-boyfriend. I guess it was just like a catching up sort of thing, and it turned out to be really awkward for Annina, Roosa, and I because we just sat in the coffee house, listening to the conversation that Piia and her ex-boyfriend were having. But oh well, she was glad that we came along :] I don't think I did anything afterwards, just hung out at home :] So on tuesday, I woke up and baked cookies ! I found out that it was Petra's birthday, LAST tuesday, so I told her I'd make her cookies :] That afternoon Anna also took Maria, Juuso and I to the new plantetarium in Kokkola, about 15 km away. It was really cool, but kind of boring, it was all in Finnish. I mean, I tried really hard to figure out what they were saying, but I ended up sleeping through the last half...Juuso slept too me so I didn't feel toooo bad...Afterwards Anna took me to Chill Night and Juuso to his hockey game. Apparently word got out that we planned on baking at this chill night because when I got there the placed was packed ! There were probably 20 people there, compared to our usual 6 or 7. But it was a lot of fun, we baked butterscotch haystacks, with wayyy too much sugar, it was kind of nasty. But Annina and Roosa had baked delicious Pulla, and of course, my cookies :] Then we played Signs, which is sort of like the name game we played in youth group a lot. Yanno, the "belle loves stewie" game ? But instead of names you have a certain sign that you have to pass around without the person in the middle catching you. It was really confusing at first, but was fun when it got going :] I woke up on Tuesday crazy excited for the day because....duh duh duh....I was going bowling with Piia, Annina, andddd Joonas :D So I was super excited. Plus, afterwards, Annina and I were going to go to Piia's where she was cooking us Italian food and then we were going to camp out in her backyard inside a tent ! But in the morning Anna also asked if we could go material shopping for my dress because there was a store that was having a sale on materials ! So we went to this little shop downtown and I found the most gorgeous green, satin material ever. I bought uh, 5m ?, of it I think...But it's really pretty and I'm going to go get measured and what not by the lady who is making it sometime this week ! After we bought my material Anna drove me to Piia's where I dropped off my stuff and met up with Annina. And then Piia drove us over to the bowling alley which along the way we picked up Joonas :] We went bowling, which was pretty much the same [and get this, the backdrop of the lanes was the exact same as the one at All Star Lanes in Silverdale!] But anyways, here you pay for the hour in bowling and just bowl as many times as you want for as much as you payed for. So we bowled for an hour, in which I came in last place :/ But successfully bowled both right and left handed, so go me ! Piia threw an absolutely perfectly straight ball every single time, if only she threw it faster, she would have gotten strike after strike. Joonas had this crazy bowling technique, but it ended up getting him second ! And Annina somehow managed to come up with a bunch of talent in the second game and surpassed me :/ But I had loads of fun, so that was cool. Then Piia said that I could invite Joonas to dinner as well, so I did, and he came ! While Piia cooked, the rest of us attempted to set up the tent on Piia's porch ! It was quite hillarious, but fun none the less. And then we all sat down to eat the most delicious pasta everrr. I swear, Piia should be a cook. After eating Joonas ran home, literally, and the girls and I piled into the car and drove over to one of Piias' friends' house. Along the way the girls asked to listen to Mikey's new cd which I had been telling them about. So we listened to that as we drove to Sara's house. They really liked it, as do I, and you should definitely check out his music. http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=103009162 When we got to Sara's house we walked inside and talked for a bit and then spent the next hour singing ! Sara played the piano while the girls and I sang along with it. We sang disney songs, Finnish songs, Avril Lavinge, you name it. It was super fun and I recorded a bunch of it, so I'll get those up soon enough :] After our singing, Sara made us pancakes and then the girls and I headed back home to Piia's. We set up camp inside our tent, enjoyed some pulla and rasberry cakes, and then climbed inside the tent. Piia's parents kept telling us to put on more and more layers of clothing because it was so cold outside, so we looked like snowmen when we were finally allowed outside. We stayed up talking for quite some time, about all sorts of things, the usualy "Tent talk". In the morning Piia's mom made us eggs and hotdogs on toasted buns, and Piia made tea :] It was so cute ! I loved every minute of it. I however, was leaving that mornig with my family to Konnevesi so I had to be home around 10. After quickly packing some clothes and my toothbrush, Juuso, Maria, Anna and I piled into the car and headed for Kuopio, about 2 hours away. We stopped at this poshy hotel, went in, had a buffet style lunch, and then went to the pool inside. Only, the word pool doesn't exactly fit. There were four pools, two hot tubs, and a water slide ! One of the pools was actually located outside, but you had to swim though a tunnel from the inside to get there. The Finnish people just love going from hot to cold...crazy ! After about 2 hours of swimming, we went back inside, went to sauna [of course], and then showered and left ! We then backtracked our way to Konnevesi, about an hours drive, and finally arrived at Harri's parents summer house :] We spent the next two nights there, mostly spent playing hide and go seek or chasing the dog around. Juuso and I took a couple bike rides, and I've found that he's actually a pretty cool kid for being 13, and has surprisingly good english :] So it was really fun hanging out with him all weekend. Anyways, so we just got home today, and I am definitely ready for some sleep. Although, I'm waking up at 3 to watch my redsox hopefully win :] The game last night was absolutely terrifying, but so gooood ! So yeah, tomorrow I'm not doing much, just planning Jason's going away present because hes leaving next monday, like for good. He's going home to the states, so Tuesday is his last chillnight, and I need to make him a gift. Plus, on Monday, I've been invited to visit Maria's english teacher and talk to all her classes ! So I need to work on what to say to a bunch of third graders who can't understand me :] Fun fun ! Anyways, hope you enjoyed this super long post ! Hyvää yotä :D

nelkytnelja - 44

It is indeed thursday evening, and yes, I am aware of the fact that I have not blogged in four days. My blogs might actually become fewer and farther inbetween I'm sad to say. But I can still recap the last four days for you, so here goes ! Monday. Let me think, what did I do monday. Hm, well I went to school, nothing to exciting happened there, I played cards in the hallway with Barbara, the Italian exchange student. After school I went with Anna and Maria over to Maija's house for Ennas', the little baby that we went to the zoo with, first birthday ! It was really cute, Enna is a really adorable baby, so she was fun to play with. And Maija is really sweet, so shes nice to talk to :] I think that might have been all that was exciting on monday...sorry for the lack of details. We ate some rather delicious pulla [poo-la] that Anna had made that morning, its a very traditional finnish sweet bread, and it usually has cinnamon inside it and sugar on top, its really tasty. I'll learn the recipe and make it for you when I get back ! Okay so tuesday. I only had english that day, and it was the first class. But there was an extrafriendly wasp in our english class, and yes, I was freaking out. I hate bees, but so do a lot of other people, so I wasn't the only one ! After english I came home for a bit because I didn't have another class until finnish lessons at two. I watched some TV, made some leftovers for lunch, and took a shower. Then I headed back downtown and went to finnish lessons :] We did the basic stuff, just learning different parts of speech and grammer rules and what not, nothing too special. Afterwards I walked on over to the Mormon church for chill night :] At first it was just Annina, Jason, Stewie [the new guy, his real name is Derek, but his last name is Stewart. And I call him Stewie because Annina first told me that Stewart was his first name. and yeah, that was pointless, but you get the idea !]. So we just talked about different things and about the fact that our school celebration had 15 articles over the course of the week written about it in various newspapers and magazines, and guess what ! Annina and I were in one ! I'm getting a copy of it on saturday, so I'll mail it to my parents and hopefully they'll show it around :] We didn't get to talk to any reporters, but we're in the picture ! And then there's an article with my friend Sam in it, I'll send that as well. So ask them to see it if you'd like to. So, after talking about how popular we were in Jyväskylä two other girls showed up and we made popcorn ! It was really dry, and not very salty, but it wasn't tooooo bad. And it was "USA" popcorn ? I dunno. After a while Mike and Maiju showed up and we all decided to play badminton ! We sort of had a tournament going on, but it kind of died after a while. Annina and I didn't do half bad ;] I went home around 6 30, ate some delicious tacos, I think I showered again, and then I went to bed. Moving on. I have a late start on Wednesdays, so that was nice. I went to school around 9 30 so that I could chat with people during our break before having psychology. Psychology was fun, we talked about heredity and genes and what not, interesting stuff. Afterwards we had lunch, which looked terrible but didn't taste too bad. It was some sort of fish soup I guess...I dunno, but we had this really good sort of "sour rye bread" stuff that was amazing ! And I found out we had it at home too ! Crazy. After lunch Annina and I both had a break so we were gunna head downtown, just to walk around. On our way out we ran into Piia ! So she came down with us as well :] She just got back from a one week trip in Italy, visiting her boyfriend. [he's finnish, he just moved to italy ? or something like that...] So she told us all about her trip and the wonderfulness of it all, and she brought us back Italian chocolate ! She's so sweeeet. After a while they both had to return to their classes and I set off for finnish lessons ! They were in the tiny rooms again, but it was fun all the same. I didn't do anything that evening, except go for a bike ride, and other random things around the house, so theres not too much to tell about I don't think. So let's talk about today ! I had psychology and english this morning, fun classes :] And I have fallen in love with our coffee vending machine at school. It's 60 cents for an 8 oz cup, and you can get all sorts of different kinds although most people tend to get a cappuchino :] But it is utterly satisfying, and piping hot ! I came home and founndddd MAIL ! I love getting post, its so...surprising :] It was a nice letter from Sonna Keatley, thank you so much, anddd Mikey's new CD. I listened to it over and over and over again, it is really quite amazing. If you didn't know already, Mikey Moore, one of my great friends back home, recently put out his first CD called "its all for you" and is in stores now. Go. Buy. It. It also has a really pretty cover design :] I got kind of bored just sitting around the empty house, so I hopped on my bike and went over to a little island that Petra and I found a few weeks ago. It's probably 2 km from my house, and is really cute. I brought my laptop [to listen to music] and my bible and a notebook. I sat right next to the water against a nice big tree and just blasted good songs while reading parts from Ruth, Jeremiah, and Luke. It was really nice, I felt like a storybook. I was there for about an hour before I got too cold from the wind, so I packed up and started home. On the way I saw some swans so I stopped to take some pictures, they were gorgeous. I hung out with Maria for a bit when I got home, she got her school pictures back today, they're so cute ! I'll try and send one to you, mom and dad. Around 4 I was still antsy to go do something so I thought I'd just take a little bike ride up to the store and back, but when I got to the store I felt like going a bit further and eventually made my way around the whole lake ! I got lost a few times, I took a couple of wrong turns, but I eventually found my way around :] Its probably about 11 km in all, and it was so much fun. I was singing my little heart out, just belting out different parts of different songs, sometimes just "la la la"-ing, but I was having a blast. And it acutally is a lot harder to sing and ride than if you were just riding, so I think I got a pretty good workout :] I came home, took a reallllly hot shower, and proceded to post this blog. I'm sure there is more to tell, but dinner awaits ! I'm not sure when I will post again, maybe this weekend, maybe next week. Our school has sort of a "fall break" and we have from this saturday until the monday of the following week off. So 10 days of no school :] I've made some plans, I'll make sure to take some pictures, have a nice weekend !

nelkytkolme - 43

soooo, its sunday night ! Let's travel back to friday :] Mm, well friday I woke up around 8 and decided that I wanted to ride my bike to school that day. It wasn't really raining, just kind of drizzling, so I didn't think it would be bad. Boy was I wrong. I was completely drenched head to toe when I finally got to school, I mean, my shirt was dry because I was wearing my rain coat, but my jeans were soakeedddd. But oh well, there were a lot of other wet kids as well, so I didn't feel too out of the loop. I didn't have any classes that morning, just finnish lessons at the university, but I wanted to tell Annina and Anu about the whole prom thing, hence the reason I went to school ! So we talked for a bit and then back out into the rain I went to ride my bike over to the University. We were in the studio today, a listening comprehension lab. We get to talk a lot on these days, so they're fun :] After lessons I hopped on my bike and tried to go to an ATM to get some money out to pay for my phone bill, but a strange message popped up in finnish, I think it meant something like "this ATM is temporarily out of money" or something....so no luck. I then proceded to make the trek back home. My house is about 12 km from my school, so it's kind of a long ride, plus the way home has more up hills, so it takes a little longer. Luckily this time I wasn't riding into the rain, so my face didn't get as cold. Although, as soon as I walked in the door I took a nice hot shower and then ate some lunch. The rest of the day was spent watching TV, cleaning my room, and other various small tasks. At 5 55 I took the bus downtown and walked over to Paviljonki for our last rehearsal before the big show on saturday. We just did run throughs of how everything was going to go and then did sort of a dress rehearsal, but all in all it was fun. It ended at about 9 15 so I went home after that and crashed because we had to be at Paviljonki again at 8 the next morning. Moving on to saturday. Well the morning started off okay, I was up and ready on time, ate some breakfast, and then left to catch the 7 30 bus. I stood at the bus stop for about ten minutes before finally re checking the bus schedule to make sure I wasn't wrong. Aha, and then I realized that bus only comes once an hour on saturdays, instead of 6 times in the hour on weekdays. So the bus I was waiting for had already come at 7 20, and the next one wasn't until 8 20. So I called Anna, waking her up :/, and asked if she'd give me a ride downtown...she did and said it was totally fine and everything, but I still felt so stupid. Anyways, so she drives me downtown, and I thought that I had expressed that I wanted to get dropped off at Paviljonki, but I guess not, because she drove me right to my school, which is about a mile from it....I didn't have the heart to tell her I didn't want to be there, so I just said thanks, waited for her to drive away, and then half ran/half walked to Paviljonki. I was only 5 minutes late when I got there, so that was good. But when I walked in, I walked in to find probably, oh, 15 people. Yeah, apparently I didn't really need to be there until 11 30 that morning, the early practices were for the play people and the dancers, not me...so I got to sit and watch do overs and do overs again and again. But I entertained myself with a deck of playing cards and played solitaire repeatedly :] It wasn't too bad actually, I got to talk to different people on their breaks. The entire event was supposed to start at 2 so around 1 30 we took our seats. The people running the show overbooked, so some of us actors. including me, had to sit on the stairs next to the seats, at first it was alright, but mannn did it hurt after awhile. Anyways, so when the whole thing started there were more than 1600 people in the audience. This event was for the celebration of Lyseo's [my school] 150th birthday, so there were lots of important people there, as well as most of my student body. It started off with some speeches from some of these important people, including the prime minister, Matti something. The president was supposed to be there, but she canceled and sent her speech to someone to be read. The speeches were boring, because they were in finnish, but then the Jyväskylän Symphony got to play, and some women sang, and then there was a tango ! That was fun to watch. And then there were more speeches, and then the play ! It was a scene from a very popular play in Finland, and in it there is a bear, and then these hunters who kill the bear, and they sing ! Annina was "snow" in the play, but her and her castmates were really pretty in all there white flowy outfits. And Joonas was the head hunter guy, so that was really cool to watch. After the play there was some more singing and more speeches, and then finally it was my turn ! The point of what I was a part of was that there were 150 [actually it was only 100, but we wanted 150] students who went down to the stage and then we did this time travel sort of thing where we acted out Lyseo over the years. The school started out as an all boys school and then the girls came and yeah, I don't really know how to explain it, but maybe when I get the video it'll make more sense. But it was super fun, and I was in the front, so you might be able to see me ! :] Anyways, so after the thing ended we all hung around and kind of cleaned up and such and then we all said our goodbyes and went home. It was so much fun, I am so glad I took part in it. The people who were a part of it recieve the video [once its made] for free, and its of the whole entire production ! And then today, well I didn't really do much in the morning, although I finished letters to the Wilson family and to Janelle Lea, so they'll be in the mail tomorrow ! If you want me to write you, write meee :] And thennnn, I went ice skating ! With my friend Kirsi from school, her family is hosting the exchange student from Italy, so we three went to the skating rink :) I wore Anna's skates, which felt like they fit just fine when I tried them on last night, but oh boy, they were probably 4 sizes too small. But I didn't do half bad, and Barbara [the girl from italy] and I never fell ! So that was a big accomplishment. After about 2 hours of skating they took me home and I showered, ate, and watched part of Camp Rock ! And now I'm going to get ready for tomorrow and what not, have a niceeee day !

:D

Thursday evening - My presentation went swell !


and thennnnn....



I got asked to the prommmm :D :D :D :D :D :D

nelkytkaks - 42

I know, I know, I haven't posted in a while...it's been crazy :] So let's start with sunday. I woke up around 9 and showered so that I was fresh and clean. Piia and Annina were coming over around 2 to play soccer ! Piia can drive so she drove herself and Annina over to the soccer pitch and I went down to greet them. They came over to the house, and I showed them around and introduced them to the family. We went back down to the soccer pitch for about an hour, just kicking the ball around and what not, it was quite fun. Then we came back to the house and had some fruit pie and ice cream, deliiiicious :] Then we looked through my pictures from home, and I showed them my powerpoint and what not, so they got to see Silverdale and all my friends. Piia left around 3 30 and then Annina left around 4, but it was a lot of fun. At 4 15 Anna, Maria and I went to the ice hockey hall to see Lauris game, we were a bit late, but we got to see the last half. They lost, 7-3 :/ But it was fun to watch. And then at 6 Anna, Maria and I went to the swimming hall for her swimming lessons. I swam the whole time this week, 45 minutes straight of 50 m laps. Woo, that was nice :] Maria and I went over to the wave pool/kid pool for 20 minutes once her lessons were done so that was fun. And then we had 20 minutes of sauna before getting dressed. I went to bed almost as soon as I got home, I was so tired. Okay, so monday. I went to school at 10 and tried finding my classes, I had english first, it was actually kind of fun :] And then our school had this um, celebration type thing ? All 600 of us walked downtown, passing our school mates who were being human statues, down to the compass which is the center of our shopping malls. We all circled around the compass, basically blocking any one from going through, and listened to some speeches and poems given by students and teachers. They were about our school and such I think, and then we had another, smaller, fashion show. And then we had fire breathers ! They were two seniors from our school, and one of them wasn't very good, but the other one was amazing ! Except he burnt his hair...Annina and I were on TV ! I really want to see if I can find it online and show you all, we didn't say anything, they just filmed us being fans. But it was cool :] When we got back to school I went to find my psychology class, but the class I walked into was the finnish psychology class, and I want the english IB course, so I walked all throughout the building looking for them, but no such luck. So after awhile I gave up and came home. I did some reading, finished my finnish homework, and then watched the movie Taxi with Juuso. That is one funny movie, we were dyinggg. Okay, so now to tuesday! I had english class at the beginning of the day again, we worked on synonyms, which basically just turned into me giving answers :] Tuesday was deemed the day we act like we were in the 1800's. Everyone was supposed to dress in old fashioned or dark clothing and in class we weren't allowed to talk, and we had to stand up to answer and wait for permission to sit down again. We even had to stand outside during our break, it was absolutely freezing ! The food was kind of gross, lingenberry porridge, it was really thick and goopy, I wasn't the only one who didn't like it...Chet and I both had about two hours to spare before finnish lessons so we walked to the library and looked at some books. I didn't get any, but I'm probably going back, because I need things to read. After about an hour in the library we decided to hit some used book stores, there are tons of them here ! I didn't find anything worth buying, but some of the books were interesting. When it was close to 2 we headed over to the University for our Finnish lessons. I guess I didn't miss much last week, so I didn't have anything to catch up on, so that was nice. We didn't necesarily learn anything new, we just re-visited things we had already gone over because we were ending unit one this week. After finnish lessons I came home and around 5 Petra called and asked if I wanted to go for a bike ride ! So off we went, just riding around. We stopped at a little park with tire swings near my house, and swung ! After about 15 minutes this man came over and started talking to us. He was talking about how a swing works and what not, but he kept talking, for 30 minutes ! He had something wrong, like a mental illness or something, so we didn't want to just walk away and be rude, so we just sat there, Petra did all the talking. Near the end of our conversation his phone rang, he said it was his mom. So Petra and I then told him that we had to leave. He asked me something but I told him [in finnish!] that I spoke english and all of the sudden he started reciting John 3:16. So that was quite the adventure, after that we just rode around the lake and such, quite nice :] On to wednesday! I was supposed to have psychology at 10 that morning, but when I got there, I again couldn't find the class so I went to find my counselor and ask her about it. She had class however, so I had to wait outside for a long time. Around lunchtime I went and sat with Saana and a few of her friends and we played cards :] I don't know what the game was called, in finnish or in english, but it was fun, and I won a round ! After that we had this assembly thing in the gym hall, it was packkkked. Wednesday was the official 150th birthday of Lyseo, so it was a big deal. The assembly was hosted by Annina and Joonas, so that was cool to watch. There were poem readers, and different people talking about the school and other things, it wasn't half bad for being all in Finnish actually. I had to leave early though to get to Finnish lessons. They were in this computer classroom, so we spent the whole class, surfing the net on finnish sites ! I worked with the Irish guy Mark, he's really cool, and his accent, amazing :] Uh, after that I rushed to bus so I could get home. That night we had Gaala at the school, basically a school dance ! With live bands :] Any excuse to get dressed up is fine with me, I love wearing dresses. It started at 6 30, and was actually really fun. It started off with toasts of apple cider to the school, and then we played this conga line/hugging game, to the song of BINGO. You know, "there was a farmer who had a dog and bingo was his name-o. B-I-N-G-O." But in finnish it translates into some black cat sitting on a windowsill named bingo....but anyways, so get in a conga line and start moving as you sing the song, then when you start spelling bingo, you shake hands with the person opposite you, going down the line until you reach the letter O and then you hug ! It was really interesting, but fun :D Then we just walked around, occasionally dancing to some songs, and what not. In the middle of it I went out to check my phone and text Anna when I would be home, only to find out it wasn't there! I thought maybe someone stole it, but my bus card and money were still there, so it didn't really make sense. I checked all around outside in case I dropped it, but I couldn't find it. Annina told the girls running the buffet table we were looknig for it, but they hadn't seen it either. We tried calling it but no one answered...After about 45 minutes Annina got a call from my phone ! So we answered and this girl said that she found it, so we found her and I got my phone back :] Gaala ended around 10 30, so I caught the 10 45 bus home and went straight to bed. And now, today. Well, it's not over yet, but I'll let you in on what's happened so far. I left for school at 7, and had psychology first thing. I finally found the right classroom ! It was nice to be back in there, I like that class. After psychology, Chet and I had english class, fun fun! They had a little word test today, but it was translating finnish to english, so Chet and I were excused from it. Afterwards we did more finnish to english translating, but this time I actually could make out some of the sentences, yay :] I think I'll actually learn quite a bit from this class. Lunch was horrid today, I don't know of one person that liked it. The only good thing were the potatoes, but it went along with this creamy oatmeal textured sauce, and a hunk of COLD white fish. Not too appetizing...the milk was good :] After english was over, I was done for the day, so I came home and showered, and worked on my speech for my Rotary presentation, tonight ! It starts at 4 30, wish me luck ! So anyways, that's been my thursday so far, sorry for the long wait of posts, its been crazy ! I'll try to be more on top of it from now on, have a splendid thursday :D