yhdeksan toista

I freeze, you freeze, we all freeze for football ! Ah, today was so cold ! I couldn't feel any of my fingers or toes, or my nose...it was terrible. Spanish wasn't all that great, it was one of those super finnish days, where all of the work is finnish, not spanish, so I don't really have much to do...We did yoga in gym though ! And I actually like it, its quite relaxing, I want a yoga mat. I'm really quite unflexible though, so that kind of stinks. The teacher has yet to speak english to me though, she won't even try my name when we do roll, she just looks around for me, I feel kind of insulted. I'm trying finnish aren't I? Today I also decided to attend a Rotary meeting, it wasn't at Hotel Alexandria however, so Martti picked me up from school around 11:30 and we drove about seven minutes down the road to this building called Metso Paper. It's this paper making machine building company, it makes the machines that make paper. But what was really cool wasn't the fact that it makes machines, more so the fact that in 1938 Metso Paper was solely Metso and resided in these underground tunnels that lie behind what is now Metso Paper. And not only is that cool, but this Metso company made artilary and rifles for the Finnish Army just before WWII. The tunnels were just out of range from Russian bombers and go back almost 5 miles ! In the 50's Metso stopped the production of guns and turned to......dentist chairs ! Yes, it became one of the largest dentist chair producers in all of finland...I guess that's kind of cool. And somewhere shortly after that, Metso became Metso Paper and started to produce paper making machines. We got to go down to these tunnels which was a real treat because hardly anyone knows of them, and even less have been in them. They were so fascinating, there was a museum type thing in the middle of part of it where they had 8 submarine engines from WWII that were taken from German submarines. These things are huge ! They have 8 fuel tanks and each one took about a quarter of a million gallons of fuel to fill up. And we also got to see some of the production of these paper making machines at work! They use the tunnels still, mainly as their computer database headquarters, but in the back there's machinery and such. It smelled awfull down there, but it was so cool. The walls were made out of rock, it was just like going through a cave. So yeah, my rotary meeting just happened to be awesome, I'm really glad I went. That was such an amazing opportunity, none of my host family members have been down there, so I felt pretttty special :] And thennn I came home ! So I had a nice short day of school. Lauri made us macaroni and sausages, it was delicious. And today is thursday, so Maria and I had football [soccer] practice. In. the. pouring. down. freezing. cold. rain. It was so cold ! But it was fun still, Henna wasn't there and Heidi doesn't know much english, so it was kind of quiet. But I think the girls like me, they always want me to play along with them, so that's nice. Getting in the car Maria smashed her thumb in the door, so that wasn't very excting :/ But she's alright now. We got home, stripped, turned on the sauna and got it ! We made it up to 100 degrees celcius, which is hottttt. But it felt so good, its just kind of hard to breathe at first. After a nice shower and clean clothes, I feel quite refreshed and ready to sleep in tomorrow because I have a late start ! How nice :] I might not be able to post much this weekend, Maria's cousin Maija [My-ya] is coming up for the weekend, she's my age, so that should be fun. I'm sending letters tomorrow ! So be looking for them next week sometime, have a nice night !