School ended on a Saturday. Yep. That's right. I went to school on a Saturday. In the United States, Saturday school is the highest form of punishment, but in Finland, it is just a special Christmas program. The entire school (those willing to get out of bed on a Saturday) met at the church. We sang Christmas songs and read the part of the bible where Jesus is born. They split up the verses and had all the foreign kids read it in their native language, It was read in Finnish (duhh), Swedish, Russian, Spanish, German and English (Guess who read this part!). The whole program only lasted about an hour and it was quite a nice way to say goodbye for the next two weeks!
Since I am living a school free life currently, I decided to take a quick day trip to Helsinki. I met up with some Canadian Exchange Students and we had a great day. We hung out, ate a lot of food and took typical touristy photos.
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| 3 Canadians and an American |
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| The Helsinki Cathedral |
Christmas came and went, and it couldn't have been better. I loved getting to do something completely different this year for Christmas. On Christmas Eve we had a typical Finnish Christmas meal at my host grandparents. It involved 10 different kinds of fish. I did try many of them, but some of them were rather scary looking so I tried to stick to the salmon. Here's a few of the scary fish.
This year was the first year I have ever had a real Christmas tree. The one in our house is pretty small, but I still love it. I never realized how sharp the needles are on real Christmas trees. Decorating it was actually quite painful!
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| Our Baby Christmas Tree |
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| The Whole Family at My Host Grandparents |
After our Christmas Eve meal, we opened presents. That is the biggest difference between American and Finnish Christmas. In Finland you open them Christmas Eve night not Christmas morning. I think I like the Finnish way better. I got my presents 12 hours earlier than I would have in America. For Christmas I got A TON of candy. I am trying to have some self control and not eat it all at once, but that is easier said than done.
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| The Best Chocolate know to Man |
The lake is now totally frozen, so we decided to go skating on it. I had never been skating outside let alone on a lake. It is WAY more fun to skate on a lake than in a rink. In a rink, everyone just skates around in a circle and it seems people are always in the way. On a lake, there isn't very many people. We were able to skate wherever and however we wanted. It was awesome.
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| There was a few centimeter of snow on top of the ice. |
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| It was harder to skate because the ice wasn't as even or smooth as in a rink. |
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| It was so cool to skate around little islands. |
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| ME |
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| My host sister is a much better skater than me. |
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| Most people have their own skates. I felt really cool wearing nice skates compared to gross rented ones. |
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| We tried to draw a heart in the snow. |
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| Two Sisters <3 |
Exchange can be really hard this time of year. Holidays are usually spent with family, and its quite strange to be left out of my normal family traditions. But one thing is for sure...
...this country has my heart and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.
