First day at Karkku

Today was my first official day in Finland!

Yay! :D

We started out with breakfast this morning at 8am. Which was a little weird for me, because they had rye bread, and this salty white bread and then various cheeses, meat, cucumbers, and peppers to put on it. It was like a sandwich; which was interesting. I didnt really eat a whole lot of it, because I wasn't really feeling that well because of my "early" arrival and little sleep.

After that, we went into the main hall, and before we could enter, we all had to take our shoes off to keep the floors clean. There we were introduced to our many tutors; who are all Finnish kids who are our age. (Most of which are Rebound Rotary Exchange Students.) They made us stand up and sing this weird song about bananas...it had some pretty interesting dance moves to it too...but it was entertaining. :)

This is the school where we had the main hall and our Finnish classes at the camp.

After the tutors and Finnish teachers (the teachers were adults) introduced themselves, the teachers had a small group of tutors who called our names- and we had to stand up and get into groups that determined who was our Finnish teacher, and tutor. (Our tutors are kinda like "camp leaders". They explain things to us, and sit at the tables in the classroom with us.)


In my classroom, we had 3 long tables that we separated into and had our Finnish tutors sit with us. We started with Finnish basics, listened to some Finnish music, and learned about simple rules with Finnish.

We had a total of 5 hours of Finnish class today. (We of course took breaks though. ;) )

For our breaks, we have a Kahvi (Coffee) break, where we all go downstairs and you can get coffee, tea, water or juice along with pieces of bread and such. Its a short 15 minute break; but its nice. :)

I am actually super excited that we have Finnish classes for us, but I hope that it comes to be super helpful; because its actually sinking in that I really don't know much Finnish...

I feel as though even after my first day in Finland, that I am picking up Finnish. Our tutors and teacher talks to us in English, but they always talk to each other in Finnish. I can pick out a word or two sometimes, and its really cool being surrounded by the Finnish accent all the time!

Speaking of the Finnish accent, its actually really really cool! It makes me wonder what my Finnish accent sounds like. :P

I just hope that I can learn enough this week to be a little bit confident when school starts next Monday. :)