FINLAND!

I am pleased to announce that as of February 9th I am going to FINLAND 2013-2014 for my junior year of high school as a Rotary Exchange Student!

I painted my nais the flag after I found out!

 

I have started researching about Finland and have started learning a bit of Finnish. So far; I know basics and colors and even animals. However; I guess a lot of people do not know much about Finland...so I have decided to make a list of some Fun-Facts of Finland.

 

1.) Finland is known of the "Land Of A Thousand Lakes" (Finland has over 188000 lakes!)

2.) There are 1.8 million saunas in Finland.

3.) Santa Claus has his office in the North of Finland.

4.) Finland is the seventh largest country in Europe, in terms of area.

5.) 68% of the country is covered by forest.

6.) The Finnish currency is Euro.

7.) The language of the elves in the famous movie based on a book, Lord Of The Rings, is based on Finnish.

8.) There are two official languages of Finland: Finnish and Swedish

9.) A quarter of the country’s total area lies north of the Arctic Circle.

10.) Finland is situated in northern Europe and shares its borders with Sweden, Norway and Russia.

 

I got this out of a cookie a few days after I found out...I thought it was perfect!

 

 

Finland was my first choice country and I am very excited to be able to go as an Exchange Student to Finland! Suprisingly, people still come up to me and ask if I am excited to go back to France. People seem to be shocked when I tell them I am officially going to Finland. And their next question is always, "Why Finland?!". I chose Finland for many different reasons. Its different: the weather, foods, LANGUAGE and of course schools and culture.

 

In the USA we dont hear about Finland very often; and I wanted to go somewhere where I wouldnt get the chance to go to again. Without this experience; I probably would never get to step foot in Finland. This makes me so excited to be able to go to such a beautiful country and learn such a different and crazy langauge. To be honest; for now I dont know much about Finland. But thats what makes this so exciting for me.

 

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Ski Trip (Part 3)

We were in the main room of the community building and the Country Officers had the Outbounds lined up on one side of the room; and the Inbounds and Country Officers lined up on the opposite side together.

They called out one country at a time and once a country was called the Country Officer would formally call out the country and the inbounds from that country would come out and go out and grab the Outbounds that were going to their country!

Every Country Officer did their countries differently; and some of the Inbounds would sing to their outbounds, or add a lot of dramatic feeling when they would go pick the outbound that was assigned to their country.

I stood next to Sean and Makyla; and one by one the line of Outbounds grew smaller and smaller as people were being called. It was amazing watching other people being chosen. Some people would cry, others would scream, and some were too shocked to do anything!

Eventually...there were only two countries left. By then I KNEW I had gotten Finland. And strangly I started to cry. I was SO happy. Finland/Russia were called, and I heard all three of our names called. I was greeted by a huge hug, and given CD's for learning Finnish. Ive never been so happy that I cried before. But at that moment I did. It felt so un-real. And I was waiting for the moment to be woken up; and I never did! It was REAL life!

After we all found out where we were going people were still crying and screaming and calling their families and everyone they knew to tell them the news. Everyone was hugging each other and by this point it was well after midnight.

They ended up blasting music and turning on the disco ball and turning down the lights. We all danced around and it all felt like the happiest dream.

Dancing after 1:30am!

 

 

More dancing

 

 

They eventually made us go to bed; and we woke up and the Boy Scouts made us pancakes for breakfast. We took a professional group picture; and then helped take stuff out to the busses. We all got on the bus by country and sat with the inbounds for our assigned country. It was so cool to look around and see everyone having their first language lessons and asking questions.

 

 

 

 

 

First official Finnish lessons!

 

 

It still felt like a dream. And it was a long and crazy bus ride! Sean, Makyla and I sat near our Country Officer and asked questions and got information about our countries. The bus ride was about 8 hours long; and by then I finally started feeling tired after everything that had happend the night before.

 

We exchanged numbers, and eventually each of us parted at our stops and said our goodbyes until next time. Its amazing how quickly you make new friends and meet new amazing people through Rotary.

 

I eventually got to my bus stop; where everyone else on the bus got off and got our stuff and met our parents in the parking lot who were all excited to see us and talk about our countries. I was so excited to get home and talk about Finland!

Ski Trip (part 2)

The next day the inbounds went to the elementary school, and they had all of us inbounds play a game that had us assigned into different groups where we were split off and forced to adopt a new "culture".

In my group; we had to learn a made up langauge and learn how to trade cards only in our langauge. So; for example; I would go up to someone in my group and if I wanted a yellow 3 card I would have to say, "Yo- JaRa JaRa JaRa" or for a red 4 card, "Ra- JaRa JaRa JaRa JaRa" (Just to give you a hint)

Eventually after practicing with our own culture groups; they had a pair from the other culture come in. They randomly started hugging us while we were trying to yell at them in our made up langauge; trying to trade with them while they were asking us random questions and hugging us. At first it was REALLY awkward! But after awhile we all got really into it and just went with the flow of things. It was hard not to laugh.

It was soon my turn to go into the other culture with two other boys from my group. As soon as we got into the other room; all of the other people in the culture were closed off together. I tried to join them (just because I wasnt sure what else to do) and they just looked at me and then closed off even more. However; when the boys tried to join they were hugging them and laughing and I was awkwardly standing in the back. I didnt know what to do. It was weird though!

After we talked about the different cultures and related them to our exchanges.

The next day; we went on a two hour bus ride up to the mountain where we went skiing! I decided to randomly switch to snow-boarding (Ive never been skiing OR snow-boarding; but I thought I might as well just do it!) It was a BLAST; even though I fell SO many times and couldnt even go down the bunny hill!

 

Meghan and I snowboarding

 

Adam, Ben, Meghan, Emily and I at the basketball game

 

Snowboarding on the Bunny-Slope

 

View up the snowy mountain

 

The Outbounds had to come into the lodge to make our last country choices. I grabed my paper; wrote my name...and didnt know what to do. I ended up putting: Finland as my number one; Czech Republic, Austria, Germany and Thailand.

That night; we got back; packed our bags and left to this little community building where all of us were to stay for the night while the Country Officers decided where all of the Outbounds for District 5100 were going for their 2013-2014 Exchange Year.

That was the FUNNEST NIGHT EVER! They split us into groups after dinner (we were fed a German dinner and they played wierd polka music and we all danced around. My whole table even did the wave while eating dinner!)

Being crazy after dinner with exchange students :)

 

Dancing around to polka music.

In my group; there were 5 Outbounds (including me). Sean, Ben, MaKyla, Allegra and I. In that little community building they had a Haunted House, Mini Golf (wild west style) and even lazer tag! It was crazy!

Before we went into the Haunted House, the Inbound from Finland told MaKyla and I (we both wanted to go to Finland) that if we went in the front of our group; we would get a special "surprise" later. We decided to go first, and the Haunted House was Titanic Themed.

We walked into the first room and there was a huge boat. Sean automatically said, "Lets split up gang!" and everyone started laughing because of Scooby-Doo. We were all holding hands and huddled together in a tight group as we walked through the rooms. It was CRAZY! All of the girls (especially me) were screaming our heads off! People kept on jumping out at us; and yelling and screaming. I kept shouting, "WHERES LEONARDO DICAPRIO?!". But...he never came.

We played mini-golf afterwards; and then moved on to lazer tag. We were playing for a good 10 minutes before we were called to meet down in the main room. We automatically stopped and didnt know what to do.

It was finally time. We were going to find out our countries. And where we were living for the next school year of our lives.

Ski Trip! (Part 1)

I know im really horrible at updating this blog...its something I need to work on before I leave on my exchange!

 Anyways; a week ago I found out where I am going on my exchange. Which I will be posting about in the next post on my blog! (I need more than one post in order to capture all of the awesomeness that went on in the past week!) But; for now im starting with the beginning, which I thought was a good place to start.

 On Thursday all of the out-bound and inbound exchange students were to report to our assigned bus stops for the Eastern Oregon Discovery Excursion...in other words a ski trip. I got to my bus stop at 6:45 that Thursday morning; not at all expecting what was going to come out of this weekend. I knew all of us outbounds were going to find out where we were going...I just didnt know at all where I wanted to go. Which I thought was a problem.
     
As the day progressed the country officers had the inbounds sitting in the window seat; and the outbounds sitting in the outside seat of the bus so that we could talk one-on-one with the inbounds to figure out where we really wanted to go on our exchanges. I started talking with a Danish exchange student; and then moved my way to Mexico; and then Germany. I was seriously considering Germany ever since the first Outbound Oreintation...but after sitting there I didnt know where I wanted to really go.
   
We stopped and ate lunch with the little Rotary Club of Hermiston; and they had us stand up with a microphone and state our names, Sponsoring Rotary Club and which country we wanted to go to. When the microphone came to me I didnt know what to say...but I finished with, "And my number once choice is Czech Republic." Looking back; I didnt realize who was sitting at that table until now. There was another boy who I was sitting next to who wanted to go to the Czech Republic (Sean) and a boy who wanted Japan (Ben) and the girl from my Rotary Club as well who wanted India (Meghan)
 
We started the bus up again and after awhile we stopped and went Roller Skating. It was SO crazy fun! I had NO idea how to skate; and at one point I literally had to crawl on the floor in order to stop myself from going backwards. One of the country officers couldnt help but laugh every time she passed me because I kept going backwards instead of forwards! I honestly loved going roller skating; its just so different being with exchange students. I noticed that every time someone fell; someone would go back and help them up; or if someone couldnt skate they would grab their hand and take them along with them. Its hard for me to explain how awesome it is to be around people like that. And I can say for myself that every Rotary Exchange Student is like that. Theres just something about them.
 

Playing on the horse at the arcade.

 

Breaking out into a snowball fight! :D

 

 After roller skating they had us switch buses. (There were two buses. One for Asia and one for Europe.) I was on the European bus; so I switched to the Asia bus. I sat with the boy who I ate lunch with at the Rotary club; along with another girl (MaKyla) and all three of us talked with the country officer for Russia and Finland for the rest of the trip up to the camp we were staying at.

We eventually got to our destination; and to end the night they split us off into groups. And in our groups we got to once again talk with the inbounds (who were in groups based on country officers and countries.) I realized after that where I TRUELY wanted to go. And its funny because all three of us who rode on the bus to talk with the country officer for Finland and Russia was thinking the same exact thing.

Together we went off to the back room where the inbounds from Finland and Russia along with their country officer were. We sat there and talked until we were forced to go around and talk with other inbounds and country officers.

When I went to bed that night; I knew exactly where I wanted to go.

Finland.