Happy New Year!

It's now 2:07AM here in Lahti, Finland, but I can still wish everyone back in Canada a Happy New Year without being late!

I haven't posted since Christmas: and with good reason. Finnish Christmas was so exhausting, I'm still recovering. On Christmas Eve, we opened presents, visited family, ate ham and other traditional Finnish Christmas foods... and then toured graveyards until 3AM! It was nice, but I was so tired. Anyway, Christmas Day involved a lot more family visiting... until 3AM again. Same with boxing day. And each day we ate the same food and lots of it. So 3 days with terrible sleep patterns, lots of the same food and constantly hosting/visiting family = exhausted!

Tonight was New Years and the Finns really celebrate! Everyone buys fireworks to set off around midnight. Since we live in the middle of a forest with houses scattered along the road, we could see fireworks all over in the true darkness provided by the trees. And when I say everyone buys fireworks, I mean everyone! They are sold almost everywhere, quite cheap, and the launching the fireworks is always a great family event... except the Dad is busy trying not to blow his face off :)

Another unique Finnish tradition involves placing a horseshoe-shaped piece of tin in a frying pan and letting the horseshoe heat up in the fireplace. After a while, you dump the heated tin in a bucket of cold water. The result looks like this:

It's sort of hard to see here, but it's a basically a frail tin sculpture. By examining this chemistry experiment, you can learn something about what the new year holds for you. At least, that's the tradition.

Now we are in 2009 and my resolution is to stop speaking English all the time and speak/write only in Finnish with my family and friends here. I'm determined to learn Finnish and my progress is too slow. I'm almost halfway through my year, and while I can read pretty well, my spoken language is still fractured and lacking in proper grammar. It's time to change that. I've made it clear to everyone that they must be patient and help me out, although I have already been using Finnish on and off with my family and Rotarians.

That's it for now! Well... here's one picture of our dog: Jokeri. He's huge but quite friendly.

Happy New Year! 2009 is the year I'll be returning to Canada... but I still have so much to do before then!

Linnan-Juhlat, Pikkujoulu and Footbag

Over the past few weeks, I've acquired pictures from the 3 events I mentioned in the topic: the Linnan-Juhlat on Dec. 4th (dance at my school where I played keyboards in the band), the Rotary Pikkujoulu I attended in Helsinki last Saturday (Christmas party, pikkujoulu = little Christmas), and the Finnish Footbag Championships I participated in this past weekend!

From the Linnan-Juhlat... (photo credit to Heikki Leino for all 3 photos)

Guitar: Tatu Tamminen, Bass: Simo Loikkanen, Drums: Pauli.

Now the pikkujoulu! It was mainly just chilling at Johanna's house (Rotex member). Here's a group shot of (almost) everyone who came: (credit to Blandine Degeorges from France)

I played some Christmas music while everyone sang along: (credit to Blandine Degeorges from France)

Unfortunately, I only have one good photo from the Finnish footbag champs this weekend. I was too busy playing footbag to take pictures! Soon I hope to acquire more, including a video of my routine... which was quite bad since it was my first time but I'm still proud that I did it. And this was the coolest thing I've done in Finland yet.

This shot I took during the net semi-finals (doubles). I play freestyle footbag, but net-footbag is also quite popular and has rules similar to beach volleyball.

I also have a photo from the Lapland tour! On our way back to Southern Finland, all the buses stopped at Rovaniemi to meet Santa. The real Santa actually lives in Rovaniemi, a relatively small city in northern Finland that lies directly on the Arctic Circle. We went in small groups, so this isn't all the exchange students! (this is a photo of a photo so it's not good quality - photo credit to Elli Fiedler from Germany)

Now I have one more picture slightly modified recently posted on Facebook by my friend Chris Poitras from Oshawa, Ontario! It was takne at Karkku Camp, the orientation week we had during the first week in Finland. Specifically, it was during the Canadian presentation at the talent show held on the last night of the camp.

I'm holding the flag behind everyone! Me olemme kanadalainen = We are Canadian (in Finnish).

Now I am on the Christmas break from school, which lasts 2 and half weeks here in Finland! We don't have much snow in Lahti right now, although it's snowing right now. It's been very cold, but the snow has been more like sleet lately and looking out the window shows more brown than white. Hopefully by Wednesday that will change. In Finland, gifts are opened on Christmas Eve, so Wednesday is the big day for us! On Christmas day we'll visit some nearby family.

Over the break I have some projects to work on, the most exciting one being the Queen's Entrepreneurship Competition that our Shad 2007 business plan has a chance of winning! Along with my 47 Shad friends, we submitted our business plan we created last year to this Canada-wide business competition through Queen's University.

We just found out that we placed very highly in the Top 16 and are invited to the finals in January in Kingston! 4 of us will travel there to make various presentations to judges over 4 days. Meanwhile, we need to revise our business plan based on the feedback of 6 judges. I wrote the original finance plan so I'm busy re-working that part with the help of the other financial experts in my Shad group.

If we win first, we receive $15,000, which we'll use to organize a cross-Canada reunion! It's very exciting, but lots of work: we need to communicate constantly to ensure the prototype is ready, the presentation is ready, and the business plan is improved before Jan. 15th. I'll update on this later, but it's really quite exciting! For those of you who don't know, this same business plan won best in Canada last year out of 12 Shad University Campuses from 2007, among other awards.

That's all for now! Merry Christmas to everyone, and I'll post again before the new year.

Linnan-Juhlat and Lapland Photos

Over the past week, my friend's on Facebook have uploaded more photos from the Linnan-Juhlat dance at my school last Thursday (where I played keyboards with the band) as well as the Lapland Trip.

Here's a fantastic shot of our band! Center: Simo Loikkanen (bass), Right: Tatu Tamminen (guitar), Drums: Pauli. Photo credit to Tiiariina Laine, a second-year student at our school.



Another picture of the dance. The band is on the far right! Photo credit to Tiiariina again.



A shot on the ski hill in Lapland. From left, Minttu Partanen (Rotex), Chris Lange (American), Karlos Velazquez (Mexican), me. The snowboarder is Gabriel Quin (Asutralian). Photo credit to Minttu.



This final picture is from the hotel in Lapland. Center: Tanguy Lepoutre (French), Right: Gabriel Quin (Australian). Photo credit to Minttu again. I know it looks like I'm wearing boxers but those are my footbag shorts!



In current news: I'll be competing in the Finnish footbag championships next Friday, so I'm busy practicing for that. I also performed Finlandia on Tuesday at my music school's family recital night, and we're finally getting some snow here in Lahti! That's all for now :)

The Mega Post: Lapland, Piano and Sleep Deprivation

Greetings readers!

I realize I haven't delivered much news on my exchange lately. So here I am to deliver to you the events in my life over the past few (busy) weeks.

First I'll cover my recent trip to Lapland (Finnish arctic) with Rotary! It was such a great experience, and I'm still recovering from the whole thing. It started Friday night at 11:00pm when the bus picked us up in Lahti. There were 4 buses all over Finland carrying the 120 Rotary students in the country this year up north to Muonio.

I posted this map earlier, but here you can Muonio. For reference, the Arctic Circle runs through Rovaniemi! And we were quite close to Sweden... (photo credit to my Argentinian friend Majlen Mariana) *Ruotsi = Sweden in Finnish*

It felt a little like the Polar Express: getting picked up by a bus late at night, and onboard are all my friends I haven't seen in the past 4 months. We drive all night to the 'north pole', where we are the last bus to arrive. At the hotel in Muonio, I find all the rest of the my friends! It was fantastic! It took about 13 hours to get there, we arrived at noon on Saturday.

I got about 1 hour of sleep on the bus and we went downhill skiing Saturday afternoon. Because I was so tired, I accidentally hit my head on the ski lift as I was attempting to grab it. I ignored the hit and enjoyed the rest of the day. However, in the evening, I felt dizzy and had to miss out on some activities to get some rest. Don't worry, I felt better on Sunday and now I feel great. Below is a shot of some friends and me at the small hotel we stayed in. It was mostly made of wood!

From left, Mio Nakamura (Japan), Myself, Alex Prinzen (Ingersoll, Canada!), Ana Maria Viola Rensi (Brazil), Chet Kuchyt (Niagara Falls, Canada!), sitting is Yurie Umezu (Japan), who also gets credit for this photo!

Sunday involved more downhill skiing. The skiing in Finland is ok, but the hills aren't very big. The hill we were at only had one run open :/ but it was decent enough to enjoy skiing down again and again with friends. On Sunday night we held a talent show at a local high school gym. I performed my "Finlandia" piano solo I've been preparing for the past 4 months! Here I am playing for everyone: (the piano wasn't great... photo credit to my French friend Sibylle Morel)

Monday was the culture day when we were split up into 4 groups (by bus) and circulated between 4 activities: Reindeer rides, visiting a reindeer farm, snowshoeing and huskie rides. Here's my own picture from the reindeer farm.

And of course, what's winter without fighting in the snow?! There was certainly lots of it! Here I am with my German friend Elli Fiedler, who also lives in Lahti. (photo credit to my American friend Brittany Ehrhardt) You can tell I didn't take many pictures, I'm mooching all these off Facebook. I was having too much fun to take pictures!

And the scenery in Lapland is also beautiful: kilometre after kilometre of undisturbed wilderness. (photo credit to Sibylle again) As for the temperature, it hovered between -20 and -10 Celsius while we were there, although -30 is not uncommon.

The best part of the trip wasn't the reindeer, or the skiing, or the tress: it was being with over 100 of my best friends! I enjoy spending time with them so much, it makes me sad to think that the next time we'll all be together is next April when we go to St. Petersburg, Russia. However, all the Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans (about 20 total) will be leaving in January since those countries exchange on a different timetable. That does mean that new students will be here in the new year, although I will miss our 'oldies'...

This trip to Lapland was great. On the way home, all the buses stopped in "Rovaniemi", the city where Santa Claus actually lives! So we all got to visit him, and said our goodbyes to friends on other buses...

I got very little sleep between leaving Friday night and arriving in Lahti at 3:00am Wednesday morning. And guess what I had to do as soon as I got back... :)

Over the past month, I've been practicing my Finlandia piano solo to play at my school's independence day assemblies (one for junior high, one for senior high school students). I also practiced 2 drum numbers with some friends on bass, guitar and vocals and a teacher on keyboards to play in both assemblies as well. In addition to those shows, I was practicing keyboards with the other friends on bass, guitar and drums to play at "Linun Juhlat", a traditional celebration/dance occurring at my school the night before the independence assemblies.

As you can imagine, my plate has been full. The Linun-Juhlat was last night (Thursday night) and it went great: we played many waltzes for dancing as well as some funk jams. It was a late night, however, and I had to be up early today (Friday) for another rehearsal of the assembly. I performed all my numbers today, and everything went great. But I am exhausted. Ever since I got home from Lapland, it's been practicing, performing, practicing... I've been through a lot! But now I have the weekend to look forward to: tomorrow night (the night of Finland's Independence Day) my host family is taking me to a concert at Sibelius Hall!

There's my update for you! Now I'm looking forward to December: On the 9th, I'm performing Finlandia again for my music school (where I'm taking piano lessons) at the school's 'recital night' (or 'family night', as it's called back home :) On the 19th, I'll likely be competing in the Finnish National Championships of footbag taking place in Helsinki! Watch for more info on that! I'm also scheduled to perform some Christmas Carols at one of my Rotary meetings this month.

Stay tuned for more pictures from the music nights this week as well as more information on footbag!

A Few More Photos

A Few More Photos

Nothing too exciting to post for this week so here's a few interesting photos I've got lying around.

First is a shot of me playing footbag in Helsinki! This was taken by Timo on the first Wednesday I went to play there. The guy in the background is Mikko Lepisto, the European champion in 2007 for the Open Circle Contest.



Second is the sports hall in Helsinki where we play every week. The rooms lining each side of the hall are used for a wide variety of things, including dancing, yoga, weight training... even juggling :) The area on the opposite side of the gym is where the ping pong tables are!



And finally, this is the Gamestop store located in the basement of the railway station in Helsinki! Gamestop is under the same company as EB Games, my former employer in Canada. It's closed here, but I've been inside!



My next post will probably be next weekend, after I've arrived in Muonio (Lapland). Check back then!

Stockholm Cruise

During syysloma (syys = autumn, loma = break) I went for a weekend cruise with my host family to Stockholm from Oct. 24th - 26th. We took a beautiful cruise boat, run by "Silja Line" and named "Silja Serenade". There's two popular cruise lines running in Helsinki, Silja Line and Viking Line.

This is the best picture I have of our boat. It's docked in Stockholm here. It's really large and was carrying thousands of passengers!



Inside, the boat was really cool, with lots of shops, restaurants and slot machines :D



I felt a little seasick on the way to Stockholm... probably because the trip was overnight, and lasted about 16 hours! In Stockholm we visited a few tourist attractions, mostly really old buildings. Below is a picture of me in front of Stockholm's main square.



The cruise was a lot of fun, and I got to spend plenty of time with my (then) new host family (I had switched families the previous weekend). Now things are going very well with my family and I don't switch again until late January.

As a general update: I've been busy lately with music! I've been practicing my piano solo, "Finlandia" for the upcoming Independence Day assembly at school (Dec. 5). In that assembly I'm also playing a few songs with some friends and our music teacher. I'll be on the drums, but we'll have guitar, bass, keyboards and a vocalist. Right now we're practicing twice a week at school.

In addition to that show, I'm playing keyboards with the same friends in a more formal event on the evening of Dec. 4th at our school. I'm not too sure what the event is but we're definitely playing more formal music: waltzes and a few pop and traditional pieces.

This past week I also participated in a basketball tournament held every year for the high schools in Lahti. I played on my school team, although we only practiced once and the entire tournament was a little informal. We ended up 3rd of 5 teams at our level and we received bronze medals :) I enjoyed taking part in this since there's no real school sports or teams here. This was more of a traditional tournament and I believe there's another one in the spring for volleyball which I hope to also take part in!

Coming up next for me is the Lapland Tour with the other Rotary inbounds! We head out on Nov. 28th for 5 day ski trip in Muonio. I posted a map of Finland showing how far north Muonio is. It's not a great map. For reference, the Arctic Circle "line" runs through Rovaniemi. Expect some great picture from that trip!



That's all for now :)

Footbag In Helsinki

Here's the story:

About a month ago, I was in Helsinki with some Exchange friends. I was walking with my German friend, David, and he paused to talk on his cell phone. Given the moment I had to wait, I thought I'd give my footbag a kick. I pulled out my yellow and blue Mr. Sandbag and hit clipper to same side osis then caught the bag and returned it to my pocket.

A felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to face a man, probably about 30 years old, who spoke to me in English and asked me where I was from. I told him I was from Canada and then he asked to see my footbag. At first I was cautious but he said he noticed my style as well as my footbag shoes (Adidas Rod Lavers). We started talking footbag and it turns out he's the chairman of the Footbag Association of Finland! He invited me to a training session in the kisahalli (sports hall) in Helsinki the following Wednesday. Of course I agreed! I gave him my contact information and everything worked out!

Now I am going to Helsinki every Wednesday to meet other footbag players for a good shred session. I'm playing with the best players in Finland, including previous European Champions and world-class competitors. It's awesome! Now I am practicing as often as I can, although exchange keeps me pretty busy.

Here's a video of the guys I play with. This video was taken in the kisahalli, so you can see where we practice every week. Unfortunately, I missed this session because I was switching host families. We don't take a video every week, but this shred was special since Anssi "Anz" Sundberg was visiting Helsinki from his home-city of Turku. He uploaded this video on the world footbag forums at www.modified.in.

Video credit goes to "Lauri" *The background music contains a few profane lyrics



And here's an old video of me at the kisahalli attempting to hit "ripwalk". I can do this a lot better now :)

Meeting Johanna

Last Wednesday I took a train to Helsinki to meet my Swiss friend, Johanna Guendel! She went on Exchange to Canada last year and was hosted by the Rotary Club of Mitchell, Ontario. I spent time with her in Canada since outbounds and inbounds mix at conferences. I also knew almost all of her friends in Mitchell, so we have a lot to talk about! She's working near Helsinki at a radio station for a few weeks while she lives with her aunt. Her family is Finnish on her mother's side, so she comes up north here about once a year.

We had a great time, went for pizza and talked for hours. This picture was taken at Kammpi, a mall in the Helsinki city centre.



I will be updating my blog again soon with pictures from my cruise to Stockholm with my host family this past weekend!

Pictures from Lahti and The Penttilä's

Hello again!

I am settling in nicely here in my new host family: The Erkamo's. I have 2 sisters here, Vilja who is 12 and Meri, who is 14. We live in Mäkelä, a community of about 800 people situated 10 minutes north of the Lahti city center. The area is very natural, with plenty of trees, lakes and wildlife.

Here I am posting some older pictures. I took the first two on Sept. 27th when I went to a military showcase event in Lahti with my German exchange friend, Elli.

The sign above my head is the Lahti city emblem.



Here is my own picture of the renowned ski jumps visible from almost anywhere in Lahti. They are important symbols in Lahti and many international ski events are held here every year.



Now I have some pictures from my first host family's home to show you! Below is my bedroom. It wasn't very big, and I took this picture standing in the doorway. The beds in Finland seem to be much smaller than at home... the one in my new family is the same size as this one. Luckily they are long enough for me!



Here is a shot of the main room in the house, functioning as kitchen, dining room and living room. It's very open concept, with a high ceiling and loft. You can also see their dog, Iris, who is quite small! The kids in the pictures are the 5 Penttilä children. From left: Marjo, Sari, Outi, Anni and Simo.



A shot of my host mom, Riitta in the kitchen from the opposite side of the room.



I took this one standing on the stairs leading up to the loft. Here you can see the keyboard in the corner I have practiced on during my stay here.



This one is taken from the loft, looking down to kitchen where Riitta, Anni (16) and Iris are!



Simo is always playing something on the computer located below Hannu and Riitta's loft bedroom, which is above my head in this picture. This room is a newer addition to the house, and is located at the opposite end from my bedroom.



Well that's all for now! I will take some pictures here in my new host family and post them soon. I'm doing fine, still unpacking and getting organized here. Luckily I have no school all week! On Friday we head out for a weekend in Stockholm. It's about a 14 hour boat ride overnight both ways, Friday night and Sunday morning. :P Expect some pictures from that trip as well!

New Family

Hello everyone! Sorry for the absence of a new post lately but I've been busy moving in with my new family: The Erkamo's. I will take some pictures soon as well as post some pictures from the Penttilä's I took before I left.

Overall the move went smoothly and now I'm adapting to a whole new experience with new people, new places and new routines. This week is syysloma (fall vacation) in Finland so I don't have any school. On Friday, my family is taking me to Stockholm, Sweden for the weekend! :D

Check in a couple days for a new post,

Dante

Finland vs. Azerbaijan

Yesterday, I attended a football (soccer!) game in Helsinki with some friends. The game was between Finland and Azerbaijan, a tiny country bordering Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Iran. The game is part of the qualifying round for the World Championships and was held in the Olympic Stadium used in the 1952 Summer Olympics games in Helsinki.

Below is the logo of the 1952 Olympic games.



Now here is my picture of the stadium and the tower.



It was tough to get a good picture in the crowd so this is the best I have! The two guys on my right are my friends who brought me, along with the girl who took this picture! The guy standing up is Matti Siiteri who went on Exchange to America a couple years ago and is now the president of Rotex in Finland. Oh, and they handed out free "Suomi" scarves at the entrance.



The game is underway! Finland was wearing white.



A better shot of the game.



Finland wins!

The Finns are very passionate when it comes to football. It was great participating in the cheers when Finland had the advantage... and the curses when things weren't looking as good :) Same goes for ice hockey: I attended a game in Lahti last week and Finns are always on the edge of their seats, contesting every bad call and supporting the home team as much as I've ever seen!

And as a general update: this is my last week here in my first host family! I switch to my next family, the Erkamo's, on Saturday morning. They live 12 kms outside of Lahti so I will need to take a bus. It doesn't change much though, since I already take a bus home everyday while I live with my family now.

I am going to post pictures of my host family's house soon! Stay tuned this week for that. Thanks for reading, and please leave a comment about the blog's new look! Do you like it? Anything I should change to make it easier to read? Does the page take too long to load on your computer? And do you like the centered images and text in this post? Your input is appreciated!

Rotary Meetings

Here I have posted pictures from the 2 Rotary meetings I have attended at my host club: The Lahti-Vesijärvi Club. There are 10 Rotary clubs in Lahti and my host club is the newest one. Club meetings are at 7:00 AM on Friday mornings. Nice and early :)

As you can see, Rotary meetings are a somewhat intimate affair. Some members were missing from this meeting, however, since it was held in August when many Finns are still living at their summer cottages.



On my left is my current host mother: Riitta and on her left is my YEO Virpi Mäkelä.

Below I am making my first presentation to the club. This wasn't my slideshow, just a few words to say about myself and my Exchange. The man in the foreground is Markku Moisala, the principal or "rehtori" of my school and also an active Rotarian.



Rotary Exchange students are usually given a banner representing their sponsor club to bring to the host club in exchange for one of their banners. Here I have exchanged banners with the president of my host club. The slideshow in the background was the presentation given that day by Tiina Lehti about her recent exchange to Brazil. The Lahti-Vesijärvi club sponsored her for her exchange last year.



The second meeting I attended in September was held on a boat! How cool is that?! Very Finnish too. The former navy ship is owned by a member of my host club. (The man in the blue jacket).



Inside the boat we had breakfast and a presentation about the boat's history as part of the Finnish navy. The boat has a comfortable living area and serves as a small tourist attraction in the harbour area, right beside Sibeliustalo.



I plan to attend another Rotary meeting either this Friday or next Friday. Credit for all the above photos goes to Niko Niemi of the Lahti-Vesijärvi Rotary club. Thanks Niko!

Finnish Hedgehog Sighting

I saw a hedgehog today while walking home from my bus stop. It was walking across my path so I got a great look at it. It froze when I came closer but I was able to crouch down an arms length from it's prickly back. It was pretty cool and I decided to check out the hedgehog wikipedia article when I got home...

...because there aren't wild hedgehogs in North America... right? I don't know, it's not something I ever really thought about, although I've never seen one in the wild before :/ It looks like they are only native to Europe, Asia and have been introduced to New Zealand. There are no native species in North America although they make good pets! But make sure it's not against the law: it's illegal to own certain hedgehog species in some areas in Canada and the US!

Out of interest... you can't own a hedgehog as a pet in California, Georgia, Hawaii or New York! In the province of Quebec in Canada you cannot own a European hedgehog but African Pygmy hedgehogs are legal.

I can see it now: an epic adventure movie where a boy meets a European hedgehog and brings him back to Quebec but finds himself desperately fleeing to the Ontario border with his illicit friend.



The hedgehog in this picture looks almost exactly like the little guy I saw. I also found this picture on a flickr album by a Finnish person so I'm assuming it's the same species :) There's only 16 different species of hedgehogs so there's a good chance this is same kind that I spotted!

Anyway, I was quite thrilled with this sighting. This kind of thing just excites me - now I can classify hedgehogs!

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Erinaceomorpha
Family: Erinaceidae
Subfamily: Erinaceinae

Hooray for taxonomy! I'll keep you up to date with every new sighting of exotic Finnish organisms. Now I just need some camo and binoculars...

Lappeenranta and Sibeliustalo

I had a very busy day yesterday! In the morning I travelled with my host parents to Lappeenranta, a city of 60,000 people 2 hours east of Lahti. It's only about 50 km away from the Russian border! My host brother Simo had a few hockey games there so I tagged along. I met my friend, Suvi, in the morning. She was at the Karkku language camp and went on Rotary exchange 2 years ago to Cambridge, Ontario! We met with 3 other exchange students for lunch as well.



From left: Gabriel Leca (inbound from France), Augusto Rocha (inbound from Brazil), Suvi, Me and Jessica Cha (inbound from America). We had lunch at "Rosso" a popular Italian restaurant chain in Finland.




Playing some footbag with Gabriel and Augusto at the train station! Oh yeah, I grabbed a train back to Lahti. I had to go back earlier than my family because I went to a concert in the evening at Sibeliustalo! My Rotary student counsellor/date for the 'old dance' in February/good friend Tiina Lehti asked me if I wanted to go with her family. It was my first time inside the auditorium at Sibeliustalo and it was great!



This is the main 'reception hall' area of Sibeliustalo. It's location is great: right on the harbour with the lake Vesijärvi serving as a fantastic backdrop. It was really dark in the auditorium and I snapped a quick picture before I found out you aren't allowed to do so... but it didn't turn out well so I won't post it. But here is a shot of Tiina and her family who brought me to the show:



Front left: Petteri (Tiina's brother), Tiina's mother, Minna(?) (Tiina's step sister), Ville(?) (Tiina's step brother), Tiina.

Middle row: Me, Tiina's aunt (who is also my biology teacher at school)

Back row: Tiina's step father, Tiina's uncle.

The picture was taken on the stairs leading to the second level of the auditorium. Oh, and the show we saw was "Semmarit". Here is a link to their website in english.

http://eng.semmarit.fi/

Click on the 'choir' tab to see their names and photos. It's a very entertaining show, focusing mainly on vocals but also including some guitar, percussion, great lighting and backdrops and humor.

Overall, it was a very busy day! I'm just relaxing today, the past week in general has been pretty full.

Keep checking in to see some pictures from my host family's house as well as my outlook on my Exchange after 2 months in Finland!