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!