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.