Landscapes of Lahti and Lappeenranta

I've had 4 host families during my year in Finland. The first 3 lived a fair distance the city (Lahti) so I took a bus everyday to school. Fortunately, my 4th family (where I am now) lives within walking distance of the city. Everyday I walk for half an hour to school or to meet friends. The path to the center brings me along the shore of lake Vesijärvi (translating to "Water lake"). Vesijärvi is the location of Lahti's harbour and the famous concert hall, Sibeliustalo (below). I took that picture in April, when the lake was still frozen.

On my daily walks to and from home, I have taken advantage of many photo opportunities along the coast. Here are some of my best photos from a beautiful sunset yesterday:












Now for the landscapes of Lappeenranta, which is a medium-sized city in eastern Finland. My Finnish friend, Otto Köylijärvi, invited me to go flying with him and his father who flies small airplanes as a hobby. Today I travelled with Otto to Lappeenranta and went flying! Unfortunately, the larger plane was being serviced so Otto's father brought me up in a very small 2-seater plane. However, it was still a great flgiht over the largest lake in Finland, lake Saimaa, which covers over 4000 square kilometres). The picture below is a great representation of Finnish landscapes: lots of water and islands.



Lappeenranta is situated right beside the border between Finland and Russia. In the picture below, the small lake in the middle is actually half in Finland, half in Russia. On the left, note the smokestack and the cross-shaped patch of land behind it. That patch of land was the site of an airport during World War II and is famous for the being a meeting place for Hitler and the soon-to-be Finnish president Carl Mannerheim in 1942.



The meeting of Hitler and Mannerheim in 1942. (this is the only photo I didn't take!) Thanks to Otto and his father for taking me to Lappeenranta today!

This is the last week I have in Finland before leaving on my Eurotour with Rotary next Sunday. I have a full schedule this week, including playing piano in a small concert on Tuesday, a trip to Helsinki on Wednesday, a "sports" day held on Thursday for all the schools in Lahti as well as a concert in Sibeliustalo on the same day, and finally I will perform music with friends at the graduation ceremony at our school on Saturday (followed by various graduating parties throughout the day). I'll be posting again on some day other than Sunday, since that's the day I head off to Europe!

The Fazer Factory

Last Monday (May 11th), the Helsinki Rotary District organized a visit to a large Fazer factory in Helsinki. Fazer is a Finnish candy and confections company and is the largest business in Finland.

Along with a big group of Rotary exchange students, we toured the factory and learned about the history of Fazer. The hairnets and shoe-bags are for hygiene security.



However, the highlight of the trip is the free chocolate area! That's right, we got to eat unlimited, free chocolate bars - almost every Fazer variety. It was awesome!



I felt sick after this... I ate so much!



So the Fazer trip was great. But the next exchange student event wasn't too long afterwards - yesterday (Saturday, May 16th) I met a smaller group of exchange friends in the city of Tampere (2 hours from me). We spent the day at the second largest mall in Finland, called 'Idea Park'. Here we are outside the mall (a few more people were with us but they left before the picture).



And to finish off this post, here are a few more picture from the Rotary trip to St. Petersburg, Russia (May 2-5).



My New Zealand friend, Cathal, and I show off our Russian hats outside the Hermitage Museum.



We find some footbag players near the main street of St. Petersburg! Chet (in purple, from Canada!) and I played footbag with these 3 Russian players for about half an hour. Although we could barely communicate, they were really nice and I have one of them as a friend on Youtube.

That's it for now. I'm really entering the last days of my year in Finland: Monday and Tuesday are my last 2 days of school here, and after that comes the 3 week Rotary Eurotour! July 4th is the date I fly home to Canada, in time for the Grand Rapids conference in Michigan. These final weeks in Finland feel like the best in the whole year and I'll be making some great posts over the next couple months, so stay tuned!

Happy Mother's Day!

Mother's Day is mostly the same as in Canada: families meet and eat lunch together. But for me, it involved more piano than eating. Today I played piano at Valimo (restaurant/business center) from 11:30-1:30 and again from 2:30-4. On Friday I also had a 2-hour practice runthrough, so that's almost 6 hours of piano this weekend! My current host father is a part-owner of Valimo so this was a great opportunity.

Click here to see my name in an advertisement on the Valimo website (my name is horribly misspelled although I believe it's the Finnish phonetic form of my name).

My host family came to eat at 2, and I joined them briefly for some food. From the left: Pentti (Host dad's brother), Pentti's/Host Dad's mother, Aino-Kaisa (my host sister), Juho (her husband), Me, Pirkko Seesvaara (host mom), Eero Seesvaara (host dad).

My host parents, Pirkko and Eero.



The man himself, at home.

Aino-Kaisa is a musician and this family is very musically orientated so it was great playing for them especially. It was also a new play-time record for me: 3.5 hours in one day is a lot, so right now I'm exhausted.

There are a few new Vappu shots and Russia pictures but nothing post-worthy in my opinion. Both events were amazing nonetheless! And GO CANADA today against Russia in the ice hockey finals!

Tomorrow I am going to the Fazer (Finnish candy company) factory in Helsinki and on Saturday I'm heading to another city to meet more exchange friends for a get together. This is last full week of normal classes in school in Finland and there's only 20 more days until the Rotary Euro-tour! Epic.

Rotary Trip to Russia

Wow. St. Petersburg was amazing.

On Saturday May 2nd, I went on the Rotary trip to St. Petersburg, Russia with about 70 other exchange students. We spent 2 full days (Sunday, Monday) in downtown St. Petersburg and it was one of the best times of my exchange year. There are still MANY pictures I'm waiting to find on Facebook from my friends, so I will definitely be posting more later but here is a fun photo. It's a bunch of us (exchange students) with a Russian performer from a Cossack (traditional Russian) show we saw.

We got a fantastic taste of Russian culture. On Sunday we toured the Hermitage museum, home to over 3 million pieces of art, including creations from Picasso, Da Vinci and Van Gogh. Below, I pull a footbag stall next to a Da Vinci painting.



After the Hermitage museum we visited "Kunstkamera - Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography". I don't have any pictures yet, but this was actually REALLY interesting. In the evening on Sunday was the incredible "Nutcracker" ballet! (photo credit to Sibylle Morel from France)

Actually, at intermission, my friends and I went into the city and found some footbag players on the street! We ended playing for awhile and exchanging contact information and it felt really cool to play with Russians. Of course we got in lots of hacky on this trip, here we are playing outside the ballet theatre. (not with the Russians - photo credit to Sibylle)

On Monday morning, we had a guided bus tour through the city and had over 4 hours of free time for shopping in the afternoon. There were lots of interesting markets selling all sorts of Russian items (mostly for the tourists). Below is one of the stands selling matryoshka dolls. (credit to Sibylle)



There are many beautiful churches in St. Petersburg, like the one below. (credit to Sibylle)

I found this trip to be considerably more enjoyable than the Lapland trip but it really comes down to spending time with the other exchange students. The other exchange students in Finland are like family, and when we're together, we have some seriously good times. For example, the photo below (Sibylle again!) is from the Canada-Finland hockey game. A group of us watched the game in the hotel lobby on the projector screen there. I'm the one standing! I think this was during the shootout, so everyone was on edge! Canada lost, for those who don't already know :/

Like I said, more pictures are on the way from this trip, and from Vappu. I'm going to be very busy again this week: I am playing piano at my host dad's fancy restaurant on Friday and Sunday, and I will be visiting the Fazer chocolate factory in Helsinki next Monday. My schedule is almost full until Eurotour, starting May 31st.

Vappu

I just had one of the greatest experiences in Finland yet.

Vappu.

This is sort of the Finnish equivalent of "May Day", a national 'workers' holiday held on the 1st of May every year. However, Vappu is something truly and wonderfully Finnish. And thanks to my friend, Otto Köylijärvi, I got the chance to go to Helsinki (capital city of Finland) and experience the REAL Vappu.

Vappu is... hard to describe. It's a massive party, with no real reason to celebrate. There is a connection with students however, as all of the University students in Helsinki, as well as graduates, wear special white hats. The students also wear different coloured overalls, depending on their faculty. Some hats have special tassels signifying that the wearer attended the Technical University of Helsinki.

Now, Vappu is something that EVERYONE celebrates. There are lots of students of course, but you find families, grandparents and foreigners everywhere. Although Friday, May 1st is the real Vappu day, Thursday is important as well. A famous statue in Helsinki, known as "Havis Amanda" is crowned with her very own white cap by a group of university students. It's a huge deal, since over 50, 000 people were present to see this event.

The White Hats near "Havis Amanda":

The statue has been adorned with a hat by the students, who hang above the statue from a crane.



After the hat has been placed, everyone makes their way to "Tuomio Kirkko", the large white church in the Helsinki center. And I mean EVERYONE. In the bottom right, you can see a group of students wearing red overalls! The overalls are always customized with badges by the owner.



And that's about it for Thursday. I had travelled to Helsinki with Otto and his family, and we stayed overnight with some of their family friends near Helsinki. The partying continued at their house however, with a fantastic meal and more celebrating. Midnight is the 'official' time to put on your white cap, so they sang a song at midnight and gave a toast.

Early on Friday morning, we went back to Helsinki. The big celebration on Friday is in a park called "Ullanlinnanmäki", a beautiful hillside park beside the Baltic Sea. And of course, EVERYONE is here too. Barbeques, drinks and more hats and overalls.



There is an observatory at the top of the park's hill. You must have noticed the great weather too, we were lucky.



A great picture of my friend, Otto, and me!

Vappu is great because of the atmosphere - everyone is happy. Grown-up graduates meet up with old classmates, students party hard, and families have picnics in the somewhat calmer areas. There is A LOT of drinking. Everyone has a minimum of 2 champagne bottles and carries around a glass all day. Most people just attach a glass to their clothes/overalls or have one hung around their necks. There is a police presence, but people behave themselves. They are just there to have fun, and there's absolutely no feeling of fear or apprehension. It's a truly huge, somewhat pointless but nonetheless fantastic, celebration, and there are so many traditional things associated with it, I can't even begin to list them.

That's what Vappu is, and it's my new favourite holiday. And it's the favourite holiday of the Finns too.

I will post more pictures when I receive them from Otto's camera. Here are a couple more pictures from the Rotary conference in Jyväskylä last weekend:

Kathleen Easlick (America), Me and Marja Liisa Bolten (Germany) play some piano in the hotel where the conference was held.

The exchange students wait outside the hotel. I'm in the red blazer in front of the guy wearing white (Jordan Hunt, Australia).

That's all for now! Right now it's 10PM here on Friday night. At 7:45AM tomorrow morning I am leaving for Helsinki, where I will get the bus to St. Petersburg, Russia! The bus will be full of my exchange friends, so it's going to be a fun ride! We will spend Saturday-Tuesday in St. Petersburg sightseeing. We will visit the "Hermitage" museum and watch "The Nutcracker" ballet at the Mikhailovsky Opera and Ballet Theatre. Cool! I will post again in Russia if I have time, if not then it will be next Wednesday.

Oh man, I heart Vappu.

Rotary District 1390 Conference in Jyväskylä

I have just returned from my weekend in the city of Jyväskylä, 2.5 hours north of my city, Lahti. I attended the Rotary District 1390annual conference there, along with around 24 other exchange students from the district and at least 100 other Rotarians. Although it lasted only a little over 24 hours, it was a great conference and I didn't get ANY sleep overnight. Perhaps a little during some of the Rotary presentations though.

I didn't take any picture with my camera at the conference, and will therefore be relying on Facebook to find photos to post here. Those will be posted later. I currently have 2 that are quite amusing! Credit to Sun Wu Yang (Taiwan) for these photos!

These are from the "Governor's Ball", a fancy dinner with a live jazz band put on by the mayor of Jyväskylä for Rotary. Below you can see some of the Rotarians during one of the speeches that night.

Later, a cake was brought out for desert. Things got a little crazy! You would think Rotarians would form a orderly, straight line, and wait their turn. This was the most hilarious moment of the weekend: the Rotarians were almost fighting over the cake! It was made all the funnier by the band, who was playing fast-paced music with a prominent saxophone melody. It was chaos! I will post some more pictures from this event later.

In other news...

Wednesday April 29th: The official Steak Club!: Finland meeting. Steak Club! is from Stratford, Ontario and all members meet to eat steak every Thursday. I am bringing this tradition to Finland, and will feast on some meat with my Finnish friends here. Some of the Stratford members have donated money to support our meeting, due to the high price of steak in Finland. Thanks again!

Friday May 1st: The 1st of May is known as "Vappu" in Finland, meaning "free". It is a national holiday and Finns celebrate it in a variety of ways, mostly dependent on age. Anyway, it's a very important day for students: as far as I understand it, university students who are graduating, or possibly new students, wear some sort of white hats and parade around the town. More information on this ritual to come.

Saturday May 2nd: I depart for St. Petersburg, Russia with Rotary and about 70 other exchange students. We will stay there until May 5th and do mostly sight-seeing, including a ballet.

The weather in Finland is finally starting to warm up! Last Monday the temperature was only slightly above freezing, but this weekend has brought 20+ Celsius weather. Breaking out the shorts at last.

Things are all great with me here, I'm truly enjoying every moment I have left in this country! More photos to come this week.

The Home Stretch: New Family, Drum Festival and Finlandia

The Home Stretch: 75 Days left in Finland.

I moved to my 4th and final host family this morning. They have one daughter but she is a lot older than me so I'm living as an only child until the end of the year - this is the first time I've been without a sibling in my life so far. I guess it's only fair, I left my sister sibling-less for the whole year (although maybe that's not a problem for her!).

I've had another very busy week. One highlight was the Drum Festival I went to yesterday (Saturday, April 18th) with my friend, Pauli. It was a small festival, spanning a few days but on Saturday there were 2 drum clinics. A drum clinic is where experienced, sometimes famous drummers perform, answer questions and give advice to the audience. The first clinic was done by 2 Finnish metal drummers. I enjoyed the second clinic much more: 3 Finnish drummers playing some with fantastic co-ordination! (below)

Although, the metal drummers had more impressive drum kits.



I got the chance to play a "Kumu" drum kit. Kumu drums are Handmade in Finland, and they were celebrating their 25th Anniversary at this festival. The drums were great to play! Thanks to Pauli for this picture, and for bringing me to the festival!

Immediately after the festival, I had to run home and get dressed up to perform Finlandia at a biology teacher's conference at my school. The biology teacher from my school, Mrs. Heino, was organizing the conference and asked me to perform. There was about 30 teachers from all across Finland. I spoke excellent Finnish as I introduced myself and played a very good performance of Finlandia. I then answered questions in front of everyone about piano and my exchange, all in Finnish, all without any problems! I felt really good about that.

After Finlandia, I played background music for about half an hour while the teachers socialized (I assume this was before the real 'conferencing' began!). They then held a toast for me, my piano playing and my Finnish skills. I've been told that I speak better than most foreigners who have been in Finland for 3 or 4 years, but the teacher giving the toast said I spoke better than people who have been learning Finnish for 6 or 7 years!

As a thank you gift, Mrs. Heino gave me a beautiful book of Finnish landscape pictures, with the photographer's signature on the inside - thank you again!

Now, on to the family, The Seesvaara's. I now live within walking distance from my school and the downtown of Lahti, which comes as a great relief, since I've been riding buses everyday since I came to Finland. I don't mind the bus ride so much, but now I will be able to meet friends, stay in the city and drop by home with ease.

And, as always, here are some pictures from my last host family's house (no host family picture, I hope it's coming soon though!) Below is my room (messy yeah, but it was right before I started packing) *note the electric drums on the right!

The kitchen.



The dining room/living room.



The cat, Lilli. (we also have a cat in my new host family as well)

That's all for now! Next weekend I'll be in Jyväskylä (city 3 hours from Lahti) for a big Rotary district conference, so expect some pictures from that next Sunday!

An Awesome Birthday Week In Finland

or Hyvää Pääsiästä in Finnish.

Since my last post, I've had a simply fantastic week here in Finland! Unfortunately I don't have many pictures to show from it... I was too busy to take them!

Monday, April 6th: My 18th birthday - I received lots of birthday greetings at school, and some really special gifts! 2 of my friends, Jenna Ojala and Simo Loikanen, had a hoodie made for me with the logo of an extremely popular game, "Mousehunt". The cheese is also linked to Mousehunt and was from another friend, Kasperi Jaakkola.

After school, I had the chance to play basketball with some friends in the school gym (something I haven't done since leaving Canada) so that was like a gift in itself. Afterwards, I went for kebab with two other friends, Otto Köylijärvi and Patrick Tamminen and played some Super Smash Brothers (game) with them, something else that reminds me of home.

Wednesday, April 8th: The last Finnish lesson of the year! It was special but also a little sad. Since September, I would meet Marja Liisa and Elli Fiedler (two German exchange students) at the Finnish lesson and we would hang out afterwards. Now that's come to an end as I reache the home stretch of my year...

Friday, April 10th: From 5:00PM to 2:00AM I was at a Halo (Xbox game) party with 7 other Finnish friends. That was something else I had not done since leaving Canada, so it was really special for me... and a HECK of a lot of fun!

Saturday, April 11th: My family had gone to a nearby cabin on Friday, so I met them at the cabin after a one-hour bus ride. We grilled sausages, took the sauna and played with the dogs outside. The dogs were pretty tired after running across the lake all day! Below is Buddy (big guy) and Elvis (little guy).

We came back from the cabin today (Sunday) in the afternoon. The picture below shows the view of the lake from inside.

... and now it's Sunday night. The past 168 hours have been some of the greatest I've had in Finland so far, and I'd like to thank all the people who were part of them for giving me a great birthday week!

Coming up next Sunday: I switch to my fourth and final host family. That means I'll be posting some more pictures of my current host family of course, so stay tuned!

The Spring Post

April has arrived and with it the warmer weather, sweet sounds and annoying allergies of springtime. *sneeze*

As I enter the final 3 months of my year in Finland, I can really look back at how much I have accomplished. Yesterday (Saturday, April 4th) I completed my official Finnish test. It was 5 hours long and included writing, listening and speaking components. It's an official test throughout Finland that all of the Rotary Exchange Students take at this time of year. If I pass, I receive a certificate confirming my basic Finnish language skills!

When April comes, so does my birthday! I turn 18 tomorrow, April 6th. Today I went for a birthday lunch with my host mom, Sonja and host sister, Sussu. Here we are at the restaurant in Lahti earlier today:

It's only one more month until I leave on the Rotary trip to St. Petersburg, Russia! It will be from May 2-5 and there's about 60 Rotary Exchange Students from Finland going.

Here you can see St. Petersburg is quite close to the Finnish-Russian border, directly to the right of Helsinki. (ps my city is Lahti, right above Helsinki)

After the Russia trip is Rotary Eurotour starting on May 31st and ending June 17th! Below is the map of our route:

Also coming up in April:

April 10-12th: For Easter, my family is taking me to a cottage 1 hour north of our house. In Finland, it's typical to spend all your holiday time at a cottage!

April 18th: I am performing 'Finlandia' and playing background piano music at a teacher's conference at my school (more details on this later...)

April 19th: I switch to my 4th and final host family. They live close enough to the city that I can walk to/from school, which is very nice. I've been taking the bus everyday since I came to Finland.

April 25-26th: A huge Rotary conference in Jyväskylä (city 3 hours north of Lahti, my city) for my Rotary District. There will be a lot of Exchange Students there and I'll be travelling to the conference with the president of my Finnish Rotary host club.

And to finish off this post, here's a picture I took of our 11-month old cat, 'Lily' and the bigger of our two dogs, 'Buddy'.

That's it for now! Next Sunday I'll post some picture from the Easter cottage trip.

"Finland Fun Fact": On Palm Sunday, Finnish children dress up like witches... well here is a description from a website: (obviously translated from Finnish)

"On the days leading up to Palm Sunday, children all over Finland, begin to prepare for the day by collecting willow twigs full of willow catkins, which are then decorated with colorful strips of crepe paper and feathers. On Palm Sunday the children then dress up as witches and wizards, and if you should hear your doorbell ringing, behind the door you will find little witches and wizards with there baskets, pots and willow twigs, ready to tell you their magic verse; "Virvoin, varvoin, tuoreeks, terveeks, tulevaks vuodeks, vitsa sulle, palkka mulle". With this magic verse they wish you and your household good health and a good year. They will then hand you a willow twig, and as a little reward, they expect you to put a few sweets, little Easter Eggs or a few coins in their basket or pot.

In olden times the reason for using the magic verse was to chase away demons and the rhyme varied from area to area. In the countryside children could say; " ...and if you don't promise me eggs, hawks shall take your chickens". In those days children got real eggs for Easter and they did not receive them until Easter Sunday."

And to think they don't celebrate Halloween! :/