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.