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!