Today I woke up early and made french toast for breakfast for everyone! here are some pics...of me..looking like a total disaster, cooking. in finland! :) [View Full Entry]

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Last weekend I changed host families! Now I live with the Fagerlund family! Tom, Hanna (yes, tom and hanna are my host parents names AGAIN!) Nea, my 14 year old sister, and Anette my 18 year old sister! Today we went to the Caribia spa in Turku to watch a Salibandi game! It was great, even though Naantali lost! :( a couple of my friends from school played on the team too!!! [View Full Entry]

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Tomorrow I switch families so tonight we went out for dinner, then had a jolly good time playing with my "moving away" gifts..which inclueded a classic...black rubber rat...some awesome lady bug hair ties...which i use almost every day, a couple beautiful scrap book pages and a finnish cook book! We went out to dinner at the Kylpyla Pizza restaurant in the spa hotel! It was a TON OF FUN!!! Definitely a fabulous night!!! I miss them like crazy! (ok so this blog is basically an ODE TO THE PALENIUS FAMILY!!!!...and the pics include ones from my last night, AND from all [View Full Entry]

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This past weekend was our rotary district conference in Turku! We have 23 exchange students in our district, but Ellen was in Germany so we had 22 of us! Rick came over from Aland Friday night and stayed over with me at the Ahti's house. The next morning Lapa, our treasure, and Ossi picked us up and drove us over to the ICT building in Turku for breakfast and a meeting at 9am! All the exchange kids met there, and after eating we got a couple hours free time in the autitorium where we were supervised by two awesome swedish speaking [View Full Entry]

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Ama and I walked around A LOT this past week and visited Muumiworld! We also went all around the harbor and Hanna Aiti found a guided tour for us around the harbor and old town!!! It was a lot of fun, and I LEARNED A LOT!!! :) [View Full Entry]

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Today Ama, Hanna aiti and I went on a Viking Line picnic cruise to Aland island (aka, half way to stockholm!). We boarded the nine story ship (same one from my trip to Stockhold for the vanhojen ristely) in the Turku harbor at 8 am. We put our jackets up then found a nice place to sit on the sixth floor. We talked and bought steph a kiddie cup with a light stick inside, my very own plastic cup AND some sukulaku! (the only salmiaki like thing i actually LOVE!). We walked around and went shopping at Tax Free and some [View Full Entry]

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Today Ama and I spent from 10:30 am- 3pm cooking at the summer pizza kitchen at Kala-Trappi (my rotary restaurant). Ama had brought an ENTIRE suitcase full of tortillas, cans of whole green chilies, red chilie powder, green chili powder, guac, and lots of herbs. As she cooked I was her sue chef, running outside in the crazy blizzard to the main restaurant and getting whatever she needed! They provided us with all the meat, vegetables and cheese we needed! We had fabulous tunes blasting from my ipod all day and had a LOT of fun dancing and coooking, and testing [View Full Entry]

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Today we went to Laitila where Hanna Aiti's parents live! We first went to Hanna Aiti's mothers house where we greeted the sunlight outside, looked at her flowers starting to grow through the snow, looked at old photographs, ate chocolate eggs, and had a wonderfully FINNISH meal! Potatoes, Lamb, Silli (herring), eggs and salad! Then we drove over to Hanna Aiti's fathers house where Kari and Marja-terttu served us a beautiful display of all sorts of desserts, including pasha...(ama's favourite!). I bird watched from the living room window with some sweet sweet binocs. and completed one out o [View Full Entry]

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easter was crazy. so many easter eggs and so much family fun and love! ama was with me! (she was visiting me in finland from March 20 throught April 2) she experienced it all! So on Easter Sunday we went to Iska (Tom) 's mothers house (my mummi, who speaks swedish and finnish and inserts some funny random english words, she is such a character) and had a true easter meal. It was HUGE, and mummi and Ulppa (tom's sister, my aunt) prepared it all!!! I think we went over around 1pm. We all recieved wool socks from the easter witch [View Full Entry]

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Its a tradition for the vanhojen tanssi students in the southern finnish schools to go on a cruise to stockholm, sweden after their dance! Ours was this weekend! We all met up at the Turku harbor in the Viking line building at 7:30 pm ish. Tom iska drove me and we picked up Aikka and his dad Jari (our chaparone) on the way. We boarded the boat at 8 and left soon after. It was a HUGE boat! (well everyone says it was a small one, but it was HUGE to me!!! 9 or 11 stories, two discos, many restaurants, 6 [View Full Entry]

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