Off To Finland

Niin paljon marjoja!

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 11:30:00 +0000

Another thing you should know about Finns is that most of them are very passionate about their berries! There is a law that in the forest anyone can collect as many berries as they would like, regardless of who the forest belongs too. During the summer Finnish people pick a lot of berries and freeze them to use throughout the year. I think its a great mentality, its just another way that Finland shows that it is very sustainable. Already I have picked strawberries and blueberries and this time I was picking blackcurrants which are mostly used to make juice or berry soup which is delicious! I asked my family if they had heard of Ribena but sadly Finland is deprived of its awesomeness :( We also tried a few other berries that were in their garden, like gooseberries and others that I don't know that names of.

After we picked all the berries, Liisa and I made apple and blackcurrant crumble and it was quite tasty but blackcurrants have a very intense taste that I didn't enjoy so much. I rode home that night under a full moon, by then it was dark and it felt almost like I was in a dream because there was a lot of fog and it was all light up by just the light of the moon.

The recipe actually said, now take a moment to take a picture of the sugar on the berries

Being Suomalainen

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 09:29:00 +0000

On the 4th of August, the running club had a bit of a special event and my first host parents were running there so I went along. We cooked makkara and made coffee on the fire and it was all very Finnish. I always love when we go to Koskelo, it is one of my favourite places in Finland.

I love this place, I love this country, I love my life.

Skiing?

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 08:22:00 +0000

At the start of August my host parents were on holidays and we spent quite a few days at the summer cottage. I tried to water ski but I just couldn't do it! I was a bit disappointed in myself but I got to go on the tube thing which was good fun as well.

The last part of July

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 08:02:00 +0000

It feels weird to be talking about day to day things so I am just going to do some highlights for a little while, maybe until I catch up.

On the 23rd I rode to Murennos and spent the day hanging out with all of them. The weather was really lovely and Ville, Eeva and I rode our bikes into the city to get soft drink and it was so peaceful out! We played GH and we had full cream milk ice-cream, flash back to I think March when I had it last! We watched a movie on TV and it was about a Finnish excahnge student in America. One thing I loved about the summer is that I can ride my bike home at 10pm and it is still light! The very next day I rode to Murennos again and this time I got absolutely saturated riding there, the weather can change so much in just one day!

On Friday the 29th I was up early to go to Doris' place to help her make some pulla. I leant some new pulla making techniques and we ate them afterwards and they were DELICIOUS! My pulla can't even compare. On Saturday there was a Soccer Tournament for lots of teams in my city. I went with Ritva and Salla and it was insanely warm, I think that it had to be one of the warmest days for the whole summer. Jarmo, Santeri and Henriikka were all playing so we watched a few games and I took some photos. There was a magician there who did a card trick for us all and I had never seen it before and I wanted to know how it worked! Don't you just hate that! Actually there was a famous singer there that day and I got to shake his hand which brings my famous Finns count to 4! I got so sunburned that day and I had a strange shaped top on and it was the stupidest looking sunburn ever.

I also made biscuits, who can guess the shapes?

Ennen

Jälkeen

6 Months and 1 year

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 18:13:00 +0000

16^thto 22nd of July

It was Jarmo's birthday on the 16th so we spent the morning making some things for afternoon tea. When everyone arrived, I got a few birthday presents. A lovely pair of earrings, some Marimekko cases, some cloud-berries and a cactus! We watched a slideshow on Henriikka's pictures from Australia. One thing about Finnish people is that when young people have a birthday, Christmas or confirmation, it is common for them to receive gifts like sets of plates, mugs and kitchen utensils that they can keep in storage until they move out and then they have a collection of things to use. I think it is a great idea and am going to be asking for those sorts of things for my next birthday. In the evening I watched the very last episode of Sea Patrol ever :( I love that show!

On the Sunday I woke up early and tried to find the motivation to finish my eurotour blogs. I got a way but gave up after before I finished. Ritva and I drove up into the forest and picked some blueberries because I wanted to make blueberry muffins. The mosquitoes were crazy! We came home after just two containers of blueberries and had lunch. We all went to Ritva’s mums place and had pulla and coffee and laid out in the sun on the trampoline. I had ice cream with cloudberries and they were really delicious!

I made my blueberry muffins on the Monday morning and they turned out really, really well. I used this recipe and I couldn’t recommend it any more. I went to volleyball in the evening and I hadn’t been in a while and it was good to be back! We played beach volleyball with some of Henriikka's friends afterwards and it was pretty fun. I thought it was funny how as the game progressed the swearing increased and how much I understood did too :P

The rest of the week was spent doing nothing at all, I was sick and I had gone into holiday hibernation. I went to the library and borrowed some kids books to read in Finnish and on the way home got absolutely saturated. Finnish summer is really lovely but it rains almost every second day! Coming from the direst state on the driest continent, I got sick of it quite quickly. The Friday was my 6 month mark in Finland which was just incomprehensible.

In more recent news, I moved host families just over a week ago. That means that the next time I pack up all my things, it will be to head back to Australia. Time is running out so fast but I have been trying to not think of it and just live with the time I have. It is also the 1 year mark from when Dad fell which is so crazy! At the time each day felt so long and hard and now a whole year has been and gone. Mum and Dad are in the air right now, heading to Europe, I think its fitting that their flight was today.

IskelmäViikko

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 16:55:00 +0000

Wednesday the 13th of July was the first day for the music festival happening in my city called IskelmäViikko. It is a pretty big event for the city and people come from all over Finland for it and the city is buzzing with people during it. During the day I was home by myself and I watched a movie and Sherlock Holmes and just lazed around after my exhausting week. In the evening I went with Henriikka to her friends apartment and we hung out there and then went to the festival. It was very busy and the atmosphere was great. The concert that night was Popeda which is a very famous Finnish band that have been around for quite a while. I had never heard of them but they are pretty good! I didn't get very many good pictures or videos because of all the light so I took some off the events fb page.

Thursday I was home again and I skyped Amy for her birthday and sung Happy Birthday to her in English and Finnish and then I got to skype Julie for the first time since she left Finland. When Ritva came home I went to the city center with her and we had lätty and walked around the marketplace for a bit. There was all these couple dancing the Jenkka and it just brought a smile to my face, my little city is pretty awesome. When we came home I watched a Finnish documentary that was really moving. It was called Miesten Vuoro but in English I think it is called Steam of Life if anyone is interested in looking it up.

The dance is called Jenkka and it is a Finnish dance

Friday was filled with blogging and watching more Sherlock Holmes and then the movie Sherlock Holmes with Ritva and Henriikka in the evening. I cleaned my room as well, exciting stuff!

Harry Potter and some new introductions

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 15:32:00 +0000

We all woke up kind of late, I doubt we would have woken for another hour, if Antti had not called asking when was breakfast. We spent most of the morning figuring out what we would do and by the time we had decided, we had run out of time so we just left. We stopped first at an Army shop that sold all this old gear from the army and some of it was pretty neat! Pauli bought his bike and rode home and Antti and I set off back to Kiuruvesi. I read my Finland Culture shock book which was really good and I recommend it to any newbies reading this. When I got home Ritva told me that I had missed Henriikka (who had just got back from Australia) because she was having a Harry Potter marathon with her cousin and that I would go and see the new movie with them tonight. I imagine my host mum was very confused about my insane smile as I said I AM GOING TO SEE HARRY POTTER TONIGHT?

Needless to say I was a little bit excited that I would get to see a midnight screening! Henriikka came home a few hours later and it was very awesome to finally get to meet her! I met her cousin, Reetta, too who is one of the biggest Harry Potter fans I have ever met and she went to the premiere in London for the second part of DH which made me insanely jealous of her. She also reads my blog so hei Rettaa! We drove to Iisalmi for the movie and it was pouring with rain. The movie itself was AMAZING. I really, really loved it! In my journal there is a very long paragraph of just all caps that I can barely read about specific things that I liked about the movie but I will not list them here because it will take to long and this blog is for my exchange and not Harry Potter. I was a bit sad when it finished because it really is over now, no more books, no more movies.

Blurry photo in the cinema before it had started

Paljon Onnea Vaan

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 14:20:00 +0000

Paljon onnea vaan

Paljon onnea Julia

Paljon onnea vaan

So the 11th of July was my 17th birthday! I had breakfast which was bread and chocolate cake with Liisa and Antti and then we cleaned up the apartment and did the dishes. We decided to go caching because it was such a nice day and I hadn't taken them out caching yet! We walked down to the coast and then had to bush bash it a bit to get to the cache. We took the super long way around the power plant to get to the next one and we were almost eaten alive by mosquitoes. The second one was much cooler and when I told them that it was actually the cache they didn't believe me, it was sort of camouflaged as something electrical. We walked back home then and Liisa and I decided that we should have a barbecue because I said that I had never had such a warm birthday. So we walked to the shops to buy things for our barbecue and then just hung out and made salad while listening to music until Pauli got home from work. The apartment block has this nice little area with barbecues and chairs and tables and we brought everything down there. Ville joined us not so long after and we all just ate and talked. We had cake and ice cream back at the apartment while watching Usavich which is this very strange show about two rabbits in jail. We all played Blokus then and I am fairly sure Pauli won every single round. It was a really lovely birthday, I missed my sisters a lot that day so it was good that I could spend it with some of my favourite people! Thanks to everyone who wished me a Happy Birthday.

Pauli spilled porridge everywhere!

Off to the cache

Tamä ei ole roska

This is not rubbish

The cache is the black thing

Birthday Barbie

Chef Ville

Pauli stares longingly at the grass.

Cutting the cake

om nom nom

Home

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 21:07:00 +0000

Home is where the heart is! But does that mean when we travel we make our destinations our home? I am fairly sure most people bring their hearts with them EVERYWHERE, I mean they are inside our bodies protected by our lungs and ribcage and skin..... Home can be a confusing word for exchange students, Rotary refers to your countries as your Home Country and your Host Country. To me this doesn't make sense because then they can talk for hours about all the different ways to make your host country; home. When someone asks me do you have this at home, it can be confusing because home is like a 5 minute bike ride from here, and only a couple of months ago it was a slightly longer bike ride away and then a few more months before that well someone please try riding a bike from Finland to Australia and get back to me on how long that takes and then in just a few weeks it will a different place again! So were do you mean?!? I sort of consider my home to be Kiuruvesi because I live with many people and that's a big thing they have in common. When I leave Finland will I be leaving home or going back home?

7th of July, Thursday
I was up early to go to Iisalmi with Jarmo to do a bit of shopping. It was a bit early and I had to walk around for a bit to wait for the shops to open and I ran into a rebound I know who lives in Iisalmi. I found it a little comical that I know 4 people in Iisalmi and I managed to run into one of them! Oh small cities! One of the important things to me at this point in my exchange is that when I am shopping I don't speak any English and normally this all goes fine because Finns aren't big on their small talk which works in my favour! This particular day I was at the very last store and it was all going good until the guy doing the transactions starts up this huge long speech about some sort of rewards card. I wasn't really paying attention and by the time my brain said, stop him and tell him you have no idea what he is saying, he had already been talking for almost a minute and I would have looked pretty stupid explaining that I had stared at him for a minute trying to understand when really I was like:

So I just let him finish and then said no in Finnish and grabbed my stuff and left, utterly embarrassed because I imagine he was very confused. Just one of my many, 'Julia manages to make a huge fool out of her self in Finland' stories. The sad thing is many of them don't involve being confused by the language.

When we got home I packed and we went to Peltohovi and I had Finland's idea of spag bog, I doubt that a tomato got anywhere near that bowl of pasta, I imagine the Italians would be horrified! The Finns even put normal tomato sauce on their pasta sometimes, which shocked me a bit! After that I was dropped of at my first host families house because I was staying there a few days while my family drove to Helsinki to pick up Henriikka, who was returning from her exchange in Australia. Tiina, Antti and I played GH until Tiina and I rode down to the beach and swum for a little while because once again it was freezing! Afterwards we joined in stacking firewood with bunch of people that had come down to Koskelo to restock the place before winter. Its so great seeing people from my little city come together on their own time to make sure the whole community can make use of the place all year round! It says a lot about the sort of people most Finns are. Tiina and I camped out in the tent that night but I woke after 1 hour of terrible sleep and sneaked inside and slept on the couch! In my defence, I swear my mattress was more like a tissue than an actual mattress.

The next day was spent doing the grocery shopping, cleaning the house and re stocking the shed with wood. My family uses so much fire wood! They fill an entire shed full of it and use almost all of it in just one winter! We played that Finnish bowling game that I mentioned way back in January and some more GH until Eeeva, Ville and Liisa arrived and we watched a very strange TV show.

On Saturday everyone was up pretty early and we all had breakfast together, it was nice doing all the 'normal' things with them again. We all got ready and drove the 25 or so kms that it took to get to the strawberry farm. We split up into to teams and then just picked the strawberries! It was a really hot day and exhausting work but it was fun because you can eat the strawberries while you pick them! In the end we had picked as a group almost 30 kilograms of strawberries! At home we mashed them up a bit and sprinkled them with sugar and put them in containers with MANSIKKA 2011 on them, which I was in charge of, ready to be used throughout the year in berry soups and cooking! Antti made strawberry smoothies for us all and we just talked and ate strawberries. I ate so many strawberries that I actually had a stomach ache by the end of the day. I helped Liisa make two cakes, one for Pauli and one for my birthday. When I help Liisa make anything I really just sit there and talk to her but Liisa insists I actually help! We drove to the Summer cottage then and it was quite a way out of the city. It was absolutely mind blowingly beautiful as expected. Pauli made Letty and as I recall Liisa and I talked about the difference in plastic bottles between Aus and Finland? haha The letty were delicious and afterwards Tiina, Liisa and I went for a swim in the lake and I just can't explain how much how I love the lakes here, they are just amazing, I swear they have magic properties. We all went in the sauna and got to jump in the lake afterwards which is such a nice feeling. We ate Pauli's cake and then it was time to leave. It was such a hot night, most Finnish homes don't have air-con so the houses get really warm in the summer and it was so hard to sleep!

Mansikat <3

Strawberry fingers!

All of the strawberries we picked

Being mashed

Ready to be frozen

Liisa and the cake she made for Pauli

It was to celebrate Pauli finishing his service at the army. It says 362 days has passed because that is how long Pauli was in the army for.

Suomen Järvissä <3

Us three and Äiti in the corner

Sisters

Sunday we were all up early again to get ready for a confirmation party. Confirmations are a really big cultural thing here and almost every teenager will be confirmed when they are about 14 or 15. The confirmation we were going to was for a good friend of the families. There was a lot of handshaking and having people question who I was. First time that I kinda felt annoyed that everyone was speaking on my behalf. The food was absolutely delicious and we all got huge glasses of ice cream with strawberries afterwards! There was this huge cake that Ellinoora (the girl who was being confirmed) had made herself! After the party Pauli, Liisa and I went to Essi and Jaana's just for a little while and had coffee and chatted. I finally got to meet Magalie who I had been friends on fb for a while, she had been an exchange student in Kiuruvesi a few years ago. We drove to Oulu after that, all squashed up in the back seat! When we got there we drank coke and watched YouTube videos, I was introduced the most annoying song to get stuck in your head ever. If you want to forever have it playing in your mind, you can watch here. The time difference between Australia and Finland meant that I was already getting birthday messages at 6 in the evening which I must admit was pretty cool!

Jaana decided to show us her Penkarrit costume

Relax, Take It Easy

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 20:27:00 +0000

Monday was spent doing nothing, I dont think I put pants on until about 2pm! Gotta love summer holidays. I watched a movie and some Misfits which is great show!

Tuesday I went swimming with Tiina but it was freezing! We swum for only a short time because the water was so cold! In the evening I went to a rotary meeting and talked a little about my Eurotour. Afterwards I had coffee at my counsellors house and I met some Kosonen's! They are related to my counsellor but I forget how. Anyway we looked at the family history book and talked about maybe going to a meeting and it was cool to meet some other Kosonens! My name isn't exactly that common in Australia. I watched a crappy girly movie in the evening and talked to Liisa.

Wednesday was one of the very rare days that I woke up before 10. I was up early to make some more pulla! I realised we had run out of flour halfway through making it so I had to go down to the shops, unfortunately I had already melted the yeast into the milk so when I came back didnt quite rise like it should have but they were still pretty good. I was at Doris' for lunch and we walked down to the cemetery and watered the graves and just talked. She showed me all the pictures from her trips to America, she has a penpal in Colorado that she has been friends with since she was a teenager! I love hearing all her stories, I am the same with my own Nanna, I make her tell me everything. We went to Sirkka's after that and we played Wii and it was good fun.

Must be love, love, love.

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 20:03:00 +0000

The first weekend on July was probably the warmest weather we had all summer. It was so beautiful outside! On the Saturday I went with my host parents to Iisalmi on their boat! It was so nice to boat through the lake and see all the little islands with summer houses on them. We had to stop at a loch and I got to see how it all works. When we got to Iisalmi we had a very delicious lunch and just relaxed for a while. It was really really hot! On the way back I was thinking a lot about how much I love Finland. It was such a beautiful day, everything was alive with colour and the sun was beating down on the water. So peaceful and scenic. The daydream was shattered though when it started to rain just before we got back to the city.

Leaving Kiuruevsi

I got very sunburnt!

Excuse the old man but this thing was pretty cool! The pressure from the river creates a sort of high pressure shower! They have the handles so you don't get washed off!

The lake

Kotini <3

The next day we had visitors from London! They had two kids who spoke English which had me excited because I hadn't really talked to many little kids! We played Frisbee and blew bubbles and I showed them both how to make scoobies. I had missed feeling comfortable around children!

If I could make a list...

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 18:03:00 +0000

Thursday was Tiina's birthday but it was also the day that Jarmo and I were going to the farm to help with the collecting and moving of the hay. Every year there is one day where all the hay bales from the fields have to be thrown into a trailer and then stacked at the top of the barn. Jarmo always comes over to help because its a pretty big job. I was keen to help out because I had enjoyed all the farm activities so far. Basically what we had to do was use our pitch forks to grab the bale and hoist it up and into the lip of the big trailer where someone would stack them up as the tractor moved gradually down the field. Then when the tractor is full we go back to the farm and unload it. After round one, my head was screaming WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING!

It is really hard work and as you hoist up the hay, it goes all over your face and it was a crazy hot day and there were flies everywhere. When we got back to the farm we had to throw the bales into the top of the barn and well in-case you didn't know, hay is an excellent insulator. This meant the inside of the barn was at about 60 degrees! Round two was much better though because well, I was prepared this time and also because I only threw the bales towards the tractor because I had trouble hoisting them far up enough over my head to reach the trailer. I had a turn stacking then and that was hard work too and very itchy! When we were about half way done we got to stop for coffee and Christmas tarts which is a special hay works day tradition. By that point we only needed to load the trailers, I was very glad we didn't need to go in that sauna of a barn again! After a total of 5 hours out on the fields we were finally done, I was very exhausted and now had a whole new level of respect for farmers that do this every single year. I slept like a rock that night.

Even though it is was such a draining experience, it still has a place in my list of top exchange experiences! I don't physically have a list but I know it would be on it. I didn't get any pictures which is a shame but I doubt I looked very acceptable after 5 hours throwing hay so they wouldn't have made it on the blog anyway!!

The next day I skyped mum and told her about my eventful afternoon and I planned on going caching but it was so hot! To all you who said I would freeze here can eat their words because I felt like I was much more likely to melt. It was about 28 but the humidity is crazy, never moving to Queensland! I went swimming in the evening with Tiina and Antti and it was nice to relax with them. I realised I was very used to swimming in salt water and had to tread water a bit more in order to stay afloat! I went to Santeri's soccer game for a while then found my first cache in Kiuruvesi! 6 months living here and I finally found one! It was a very good first week of my summer holidays in Finland. I felt like such a heat wimp though, I should be used to the heat but I was complaining about the weather much more than the Finns! I guess I take the amount of sunshine we have for granted.

I'M MELTING

Creepy bike riding smile

I LOVE Finland

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 17:48:00 +0000

I feel like it doesn't get said enough though! I really do love this place that I call home, I can't imagine having been placed any where else in the world. Finland and I were made for each other. I think I will start using more GIFs in my posts, they explain how I feel much better than I can put in to words.

Continuing right off from my last post, the next day was Tiina's 12th birthday party and I went round in the morning to help out. I learnt how to properly roll pulla balls, olen nyt hyvä leipuri! Kati had made cinnamon and sugar pulla and we all had one with coffee and it was love at first bite. They were the most amazing things I had ever tasted! We all made some punch for the girls to drink and Liisa seemed to think I knew what I was doing! All us older ones weren't really invited to the party at all so we played GH and ate cake and just caught up. Eventually they all had to go back to their own cities, when I came home I decided to go for a walk to explore around my new house and somehow managed to make a large circle right back to my house without having any idea where I was walking.

In the middle right you just can just see the little beach that Tiina and I were at.

The next day I was on my own because it was a Monday and everyone had work. I had decided I would go and do all the things that I needed to do in the city but discovered that I couldn't get out of the house. I am sure that all my fellow Nordic exchange students would back me up in saying the doors are really hard to open! After many fruitless attempts I had to message my host dad for help and he came home and showed me how to get out. So an hour or so later I came back to the house and even though I had a key, I couldn't get in. Wow, 0 for 2 today! Again there is a real trick to these doors. I have lived here over 2 months now and I still have issues with them. My poor host brother had to come and let me in, I was very embarrassed!

On the Wednesday I made Pulla for the first time on my own. They are a very stress free thing to make which I know sounds stupid but although I love baking it stresses me out more than it should! They tasted very good and I had Tiina to vouch for me. We rode our bikes down to the lake and swum for a while and I had only seen her once or twice in the last month and I missed her dearly. We went into the city and had ice cream before we both had to go home. I went to Doris' for lunch which became a bit of a tradition. She always made very delicious traditional Finnish food for us. After lunch we watched a bit of Flying Doctors which I am sure only the Aussie parents out there will remember! I got 3 more ticks of approval on my pulla when I got home which was good to hear!

My delicious pulla!

The benefits of having a waterproof camera.

Looking over to the city centre

The shirt thing was a complete coincidence!

Juhannus

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 20:08:00 +0000

The day I got back was Juhannas which means Midsummer! Juhannas is a big holiday at Finland and it all the cities become deserted as everyone goes to their summer cottages. In the morning I was at my first hosts for coffee and a bit of a slideshow of my photos. I was tricked into eating a chilli flavoured gummy bear! When I got back home I had to try and finish(you know its really hard for me to use the word finish these days without spelling it without an extra n) unpacking my suitcase! Eventually we set out for the kesämokki, it was about a 25 minute drive and it was the first time I had been at a Finnish summer cottage and the pictures really don't do them any justice! It was such a beautiful serene little place. Doris got here and made letty while Santeri and I played Guitar Hero. We went in the sauna and took a photo on the brand new deck to send to Henriikka. The sauna there was insanely hot! I didn't realise and put a scoop of water on the rocks and had to get out it was so warm, I checked the thermometer and it was almost on 95 degrees! We made a small little bonfire and I stayed outside for a while but the downside of midsummer is the MOSQUITOES! I have never seen so many mossies in one place. Jarmo asked me if we had a lot of mosquitoes in Australia and I answered with; I thought we did! I will never complain about the mossies in Australia ever again. We stayed overnight and the next day Ritva's sister and her family came for a very delicious lunch and a swim in the lake. I was so exhausted when I got home!

This is my new family!
Across is Santeri, Jarmo, Ritva, me and Doris.
Doris is Jarmo's mum, there is also Henriikka but she was still in Australia at the time but she will be in a post soon!

Doris and I

The bonfire

Taken at 11pm

The cottage!

On a non-juhannus related note, OMG EVERYONE A POST! I know I have been such a slack blogger, my Eurotour posts took a long time and then I decided I needed an extended blogging break afterwards which was stupid of me but I am back and hopefully there will be at least a new post every week. I am back at school now so I have more of routine.
A few things new on my blog is that you can now get an email when I make a new post! Just stick your email address in the box over on the right and every time I make a new post you will get an email! I have also cleaned up the tags on my posts so you can read then according to what they are talking about.
So to end this post I leave you with the news that Finland won this years wife carrying competition for the third time in row, a noble title! Check out the article here

This Summer

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 17:18:00 +0000

In no particular order and now with links!

This summer I:

Travelled around Europe
Celebrated Midsummer
Fell in love with Finnish lakes
Read only 1 book
Watched a lot of movies and tv shows
Studied a lot
Spoke to Liisa almost everyday
Picked and ate a lot of berries
Was very lazy at times
Had a birthday
Soaked in the sun
Learned how to make pulla
Helped with the hay works
Went to a music festival
Drank a lot of coffee
Explored the city on foot and by bike
Didn't eat breakfast until after midday on numerous occasions
Said a lot of hard goodbyes
Made the most delicious muffins
Got locked in the house
Played too little Guitar Hero
Daydreamed
Blogged
Found my first cache in Kiuruvesi
Met some Kosonen's
Laughed a lot
Fell more and more in love with Finland everyday

Stay tuned for some posts about my summer

Eurotour - Day 19 and it comes to an end

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:58:00 +0000

The next day we had to be up super early for breakfast and be ready to get back on the bus for the very last time. We stopped at the Train station and there were tears and hugs all over again. Its not fun having to say goodbye to some of the best friends you've ever had. Then we all had to work out our tickets, there was only business class left on the train I meant to take so it meant I took the next one which was another 5 hours later so I spent the day with Christine which was nice. We had coffee and shopped a little bit before we met back with Joao and Meli at the train station. The ride was boring we were all too exhausted to socialise. We changed in Kouvola and the carriage we were in was like a sauna, it was crazy so we just found other seats and fell asleep again. Meli and Joao got off at Kuopio and that meant I was all out of oldies, I'd said goodbye to all of them for the very last time :( The train was running about an hour late but eventually I arrived in Iisalmi and Jarmo took me home where I managed to stay up long enough to tell my family I had a nice time and then fell asleep with no intention of waking up in the next 24 hours!

Back on Finnish soil

This was at the train station.

So the Eurotour blogging is over, I thought it would never happen! A lot of people asked what was my favourite country and its hard to pick because we spent different amount of times in each one but the stand-outs were Denmark and Germany. The French Riviera was also a big highlight for me. I liked Germany because of the amazing yet terrible history. Its one of those countries where you could spend days in museums which I like and Denmark was great mostly because of the bikes and well I love theme parks!
I was most looking forward to Italy and while it was great, being horribly sick didn't help my opinion on Italy! I hope everyone enjoyed reading about what I did, there is a noticeable fall in quality in the end and I am sorry for that. I just wanted to get them all done! Be sure to leave a comment if you have been reading along and you can see more photos on my Facebook. Also credit and thanks to any one who I have taken a picture from.

Eurotour - Day 18

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:20:00 +0000

Today was spent on the boat, we had a late breakfast and just hung out and played cards, swapped pins and books till we had a bit of a party in the evening. There was some speeches and some tradition things that I shouldn't explain because we want them to be a surprise for the newbies. By the end there was a lot of tears and hugs all round. This is the last time that we would get to see our oldies and this was the last time our oldies saw pretty much everyone that they had known and become friends with over their year. It was surprisingly nice hearing Finnish again after being surrounded by English and a lot of Spanish for three weeks straight. There was a Sauna on the boat (off course) and a group of us spent a couple of hours there just telling stories about our exchanges. I had definitely missed Sauna a lot! 3 weeks without it is way to long. We didn't have a curfew so we stayed up pretty late playing card games.

Eurotour - Day 17

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 14:27:00 +0000

We spent the morning sightseeing in Berlin, we stopped at Brandenburg Gate and there we also saw the memorial to all the Jews that were killed. While we were there a lot of us were interviewed by some German school children for their English class. Their English was amazing, they all looked about 11 or 12! We saw a giant euro and there was lots of people dressed up that you could take pictures with. Next we stopped at the Berlin Wall, not at all like I would have imagined it in my head and some of the paintings were really cool. We didn't get to stay very long which was a shame, I would have liked to look at some more of the artwork. We had lunch in a pub and then we all had free time for a few hours. Our group wanted some find some shops so we headed in a direction we thought was good, we stopped at a really strange sculpture park on the way and ran into a guy from Melbourne! We stopped at Starbucks and apparently it is kind of a big deal that I was loosing my "Starbucks virginity" as its called. I can't even remember what I had, how promiscuous! We had to dash back to our bus then and we had a good 5 hours of driving. Finally we arrived at the dock but we had to wait a while before we got on the boat. We checked in after midnight and then fell asleep! Today was also the 21st which means 5 months since I left Australia. Crazy.

The memorial

Lucho and Sophie :)

Ampelmann

The Wall

At the sculpture park. I read this out loud and the people I was with just looked at me funny till I showed them that I was reading something.

Eurotour - Day 16

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:15:00 +0000

Today was mostly driving with a stop at the Nuremberg war museum in the morning. It was a really interesting museum but also really depressing. We had lunch at a nice little pub and then we drove some more. We watched Little miss Sunshine and Click. We arrived in Berlin late in the afternoon and a big group of us went for a walk in search of some spaghettieis. Sophie speaks German so she always asked for directions in German but that night she asked for directions 3 times and none of the people we asked spoke German We tried to pick non-touristy people but obviously we weren't very good at it. We did eventually find some spaghettieis and it looked really cool but wasn't as tasty as I had expected.

In the museum

Sophie with her ice cream

The spagetti eis!

Eurotour - Day 15

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 15:19:00 +0000

The morning was spent driving through the mountains and watching cheaper by the dozen. At lunch time we got to Innsbruck which was our only stop in Austria. We only had a couple of hours and I just looked around and bought some things and then had the most expensive lunch with Nadja, Victoria and Meritt. We had a few more hours of driving and then we arrived in this cute little German city and had a delicious dinner of snitchel and chips. We had a show from a guy playing the accordion and then two young boys came and danced for us and they were really good! Such a good first impression from Germany! More driving but we were all a bit sick of movies so we had a talent show instead and much hilarity was had! We arrived in Nuremberg rather late and there was some more suitcase lugging and then I went for a short walk with some others and we found this very strange statue that we think was about a poem.

OH RLY?

Innsbruck

Germany with the darling Maddi

I missed you snitchel!

Apparently we really sung that bad!

Cake anyone?

Eurotour - Day 14

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 15:14:00 +0000

Somehow I had acquired way to much stuff and getting it all into my bag was such a stress, especially since I had a glass plate that I really didn't want to break. Eventually it all squashed in and we headed off in the bus. It was long trip to our next hotel and we watched a few movies and stopped at this tiny little town with this beautiful waterfall. We got to our hotel and I had about 15 minutes to decide if I was going on the hike. I decided on yes because it was I was looking forward to so much and I was so pissed that I was sick. It was cold which is great when you are sick right? I made it to the top though and there was snow! For some reason it felt like I hadn't seen snow in a long time but it was only about 2 months. We got to try the water from the creek on the way back and we met some cows that all had bells on so you could hear them walking around in the trees besides us even if we couldn't see them. It started to pour with rain about half way down and we got a bit soaked! When we got back to our hotel, we spent an hour being messed around by the owners. We didnt have a key and they gave us key after key and none of them worked. We had a really nice dinner with funny bread-sticks that were such a novelty. I skipped dessert and was a really lame sick person and went to bed.

Heading up in to the mountains

Have I mentioned I love Nadja!

My favourite Germans <3

FIN

Trying the water

Making some Italian friends.

Eurotour - Day 13

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 14:03:00 +0000

This was our free day in Jeslo but I was still really ill so I didn't do much. I went for an early morning swim to try and cool down and I was the only one in the water. I suspect that was probably because the water was freezing but I had a fever and everything felt warm to me. I didn't realise how much i'd missed the beach, just swimming out a couple hundred metres and floating is so peaceful. I lazed around on the beach for a while and drunk ice tea. The supermarket near us had 2 litre ice tea bottles and I think I drank at least two bottles that day! I went to the beach at lunch time and just lazed around with some people and talked. There had been a lot of drama the night before that I had missed out on. I had gelato for lunch and went back to my room and washed my clothes. They had told us we would be able to use washing machines in Jeslo but they were 10km away so we ended up washing everything by hand. I went to the beach again and buy then it was dinner time. I had my last Gelato in Italy after dinner and then tried to sleep. It was lucky that I the worst of my sickness coincided with a free day. I took very few pictures in Jeslo so here are some that I found on the Internet.

It was a really nice beach!

Eurotour - Day 12

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 13:48:00 +0000

The morning was rather eventful due to the fact that the hotel we were in was very old and the drainage in the bathroom was terrible and I managed to flood our room. Good times. We caught the bus down the harbour and took a boat to Venice. Venice was really incredible, the way it is cut up by canals and clock towers and the red of the bricks mixed with the sun reflecting on the water just made for a real site. It was so hot though and so we stuck to the lanes where the buildings acted as shade. I bought many lovely things in Venice and we spent most of the morning shopping and eating gelati and pizza for lunch. we had a group booking for gondola rides and it was really nice to see the city again from a different point! And the guy steering our gondola sung which was awesome! Nadja and I had bought masks and we put them on while we were in the gondola. Little did I know that I had glitter all over my face for the rest of the day until a lady at a shop we were in told me! Once we got off the gondolas I hung out with Maddi and we just talked and shopped. We had a free night that night but when you put 40 people on a bus, if one gets sick then others are going to get sick too and I had caught something horrible from someone. I spent my free night trying to survive in our hotel room which seemed to double as a sauna until I worked out how to use the air-con.

Eurotour - Day 11

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 13:01:00 +0000

Today was spent driving to Verona. We watched Summer Heights High on the way, good example of Australian school life for everyone? The weather was lovely, nice and warm but not too sunny. I was with my German friends Nadja and Victoria and we went to Juliet's balcony first and did some touristy shopping. We had fruit salad cups and then I got my first Italian Gelato! Strawberry, chocolate and choc chip, it was delicious! The Verona's flag is very similar to Sweden's flag so seeing the big flag on the side of the buildings was a little weird! We had to head back to the bus then and we drove another few hours to Lido de Jeslo. We went swimming in the lovely beach and Ana, Jackie and I went on an ATM hunt. It was dark and late and finally we found one, it was all in Italian though and wouldn't give us any money. A local offered to try her card for us and turned out the ATM had no money left in it. Seriously from my experience, people in Europe must carry a lot of cash! In Finland you can use your bankcard anywhere for any amount.

The Balcony

Nadja and I. I may have gotten sunburnt in Sisteron!

Everythingeria?

Eurotour - Day 10

noreply@blogger.com (Minun Nimeni on Julia) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 09:30:00 +0000

A group of us walked down to the beach in Nice after breakfast and were surprised to find that the beach is made of rocks and not sand! It wasn't very comfortable to lay on so I didn't stay long, instead I went for a walk with 3 other girls and we got so lost! Luckily we had Christine with us and she spoke French so we managed to find our way back eventually. Then we all got on the bus to go to the Principality of Monaco! The tour guide gave us some history and whatnot while we drove there and she never once referred to it as just Monaco, only ever the Principality of Monaco. It took a while because there had been a car crash at one of the tunnels and the traffic was terrible. Monaco was so amazing, everything was so clean and all the gardens were in perfect condition and it was like the entire principality was a royal place, which I guess in a way it sort of is. We took a giant elevator up to the top of the Rock of Monaco and we had free time to shop and buy food. While we were in this little courtyard, we realised that the huge group of tourists that was also there, were speaking Finnish! What are the chances? I wanted to "accidentally" bump into one of them and say anteeksi but I never did. After that we drove to see the Monte Carlo Casino. It was really cool to see it but it was the cars parked around it that were much more of a highlight for me. We got to see the place where the Monaco Grand Prix starts and also the famous Farimont Hotel hair pin. We left Monaco then and headed towards Italy, I listened to the only Italian song I had on my ipod as we entered Italy and I was just so excited! I have always dreamed of going to Italy ever since I saw the film, Under the Tuscan Sun and it just felt so great to finally say that I had been there. We arrived at our hotel a little late and we had pasta that was good but a little al-dente for my liking.

The beach in Nice

Sophie and I on the beach

Leaving Nice

The peninsula, which had a name but I have forgotten it.

Police Box!!!

This seagull/bird was some sort of mutant. It was HUGE!

Yes the cars were very nice in Monaco!

There are a lot of rules in Monaco!

The casino

The famous bend

Crossing the border into Italy!