First Month in Finland (Part 1)

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Hi everyone! I can't believe I've already been in Finland for almost a month! So much has happened already and so I decided to take the day off today to start this blog. I'll try to update this blog as often as I can with new happenings when I get the time. However you can also feel free to e-mail me and I will try to respond to them asap. My e-mail address that I'm using abroad is [e-mail]. I've looked around this blog page a little bit so I'm going to be trying to upload some photos, and it even looks like I can do some video bloging on here, so that may be something I'll try in the future. Anyways, enough of that, lets get to what's been going on in Finland.

I arrived here on August 5th, 2007 and after a combined 11 1/2 hours of flying I finally arrived in the Helsinki airport. Right off the bat, we already got our first taste of cultural differences. I, along with the other exchange students from the US and Canada, got off the plane and walked into the airport talking about where to go to meet our Rotary officials and where to get our luggage. All of a sudden we noticed that we were being very loud, and looked around. There were many other people in the airport but no one talked to each other, and if they did it was in a low whisper voice right next to the person. Everyone was staring at us. We all of a sudden felt like we had to talk very quietly. After finding our luggage and meeting the Rotarians we found out that we had another long trip ahead of us. We were to take a 2 1/2 hour bus ride to our language camp in Karku. While boarding the bus we were able to get our first glimpse of Finnish city life, and not only did we discover that people talked quietly, all the cars on the highway hardly made a sound either!

After a sleepy bus ride to the language camp we were introduced to our language teachers and tutors and the campus. Lucky, right after, they lets us call home, eat snacks they prepared, and sleep. After waking up the next day we started our finnish lessons. Finnish, as our teacher would say, is not a hard language like many say it is, it's just different. We soon learned about the ups and downs od the language, such as that the Finnish language has no articles, no gender, and no silent letters . However on the down side the language has lots of endings, many of their words are closely pronounced, such as tapaan (to go) and tapan (to kill), and finally they have spoken and written finnish, so if you were to write "I" in finnish you would write "minä" but if you were to speak it, it would be "mä".

Despite the intense week long course in Finnish it was also a week to get over the jet-lag and to relax and meet new friends, both finnish and fellow exchange students. Here many people had their first sauna experience, along with jumping in a lake afterwards, and repeating the process numerous amounts of times. The finnish lakes are REALLY cold by the way. However the week rapidly approached its end, and I think many of us were ready to leave and head to our host families. Our host families arrived on Saturday around noon to pick us up. At first my host family wasn't there, but they soon arrived, and I met my host mom, Rajia, and my oldest host brother, Osku (real name is Niko). After a moment of picture taking and a closing ceremony at the camp I left my friends at the camp to go to one of my homes for the next year in Paimio. The car ride was about 1 1/2 hours and lucky it wasn't dead silent like it was for many of my other friends. My host brother had been an exchange student in the US the year before so he was able to "break the ice." Soon I arrived at my home and I met my host sister, Maiju, and I didn't meet my host dad, Rauno, for another 2 days because he was working and spending time at the family's summer cottage. My other host brother, Eetu, is currently in Michigan on an exchange. After being shown around the house the family went about it's normal business (Osku playing World of Warcraft, Maiju going out with friends, and Rajia working on her laptop) I went to my room unpacked all of my things, and sat on my bed and came to a realization that I was away from my family and friends for a whole year. However at that moment my host brother asked if I wanted to go out to eat a a popular restaurant where students at the school go to eat when they don't have a good school lunch (the school lunch is free by the way). At the restaurant I had my first Kebab. A kebab is, as best I describe it, kind of like a soft shell taco that has many different types of fillings, but the kebab I ate was filled with kebab meat, salad, mayo, and i think tomatoes and cheese. The one major difference between a taco though is that a kebab is probably 1 1/2 feet long, 5 inchs thick, and is jam packed with the fillings (I'll try to get a picture of one to show you), and to my surprise I got the small, you can get the kabab almost twice as big. I wasn't able to finish the whole thing but I was stuffed for the rest of the day, and once I got home I fell asleep.

After the first night with my new host family I had three days until school started. I spent next three days getting use to the house and I was able to meet some of Osku's friends from the military (Osku is in the military for a year because it is required in Finland that all males 19-20 years old serve in the military for at most a year before they can go off to university or start their career). On monday though I was able to visit the city of Turku (30 min. from Paimio) with my host sister and meet some of her friends. Turku is, I believe, the 3rd largest city, and it is full of shops and the whole city is very old fashioned (I'll try to get some pictures). Not only did I learn the layout of the city but I was able to learn a little about finnish youth and observations were reinforced when I went to school.

The finnish youth, aside from being very quiet normally, are even more shy and reserved when around an english speaker. Even though they can speak english, though not perfectly, they are very nervous that they will make a mistake and embarrass themselves in front of their friends and the person they are speaking to. Also the finnish don't small talk, they are very straight and to the point when they talk. So since they don't know how to small talk, it makes it even harder to talk to them, and their tone of voice is also very low and monotone-ish , so it can be very difficult to tell when a finn is mad or sad. Another thing too, is that Finnish boys tend to be shyer then the girls. So when in school the boys would try to avoid the english speaker, while the girls would be more open to attempting to speak english. I'll create a separate blog later on the finnish youth, because there are many interesting differences that may seem interesting.

My first couple of days at school where very quiet, however there was another girl from the US there, on a private exchange, that I made friends with right away. However after a couple of days I began speaking to some finns, and soon after the first week I had 3 finnish friends (Emmi, Sanni, and Joel) and many other finns that I spoke to once in a while. Now however, I have many different friends that I hang out with and I've been invited to movie-nights and outings, so i've been able to meet more people, and I believe that with each new get-together I meet a least one or two new people that I will talk to in school. My host mom is still very surprised that I've been able to make friends so fast, due to fact that finns are shy.

Well I think that's all for now, there is still more to tell, but I'll probably be on later tonight to write the second half since today is, according to the finns, lazy day, where everyone usually stays home and does nothing but watch TV or go in the computer. However I think I'm going out with some friends so I have to go get ready for the day. I hope you enjoyed what I wrote so far. I still have to tell about my trip to the famous finnish hospital in Paimio, and more about school, and family life in general, along with my trip to the family summer cottage.

Until next time,

Max

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