Long time no post!

Australia, America, Australia, New Zealand

At Karkku camp

Beautiful photo in Kotka

Some other exchange students

Exchange students and Finns, and beautiful leaves!

And again

America, Germany, Finland, Spain!

America, Australia, Germany

Friends in Tampere!

Nice moon.

You know, I have to say that it is quite wonderful to wake up to this in the morning. Right from my bedroom window! So nice. :)

My backyard again

And again

And again!

My friend Amelie and I 1 am strolling in the snow! :D

Kaitlyn!

Making Red Velvet cake for Amelie's(German) 17th birthday!

So first we just covered it with white frosting..

..then Kaitlyn wrote hi on it, and then she decided to change the whole perspective by switching the direction of the writing..

..and well, that was just too confusing so we just covered the whole thing..

..and then finally we used strawberries to do a 17!

Sooo much frosting, so sweet, and so tasty!

Snow!

Snow.

Snow!

Snow!

Not an awesome picture of me, but oh well!

My Finnish friend Laura who was an exchange student in Oregon last year :)

My front yard-ish

First snow! 19.10.12

Ah, delicious lakritsi!

These are all of the bikes at my school and it's like this everyday! And all around the edges are the scooters and vespas.

First snow!

So first of all sorry about not posting in what seems like forever! I've just been pretty busy and when I do get time I'm too lazy to do it..so sorry for that!  Well the rest of September pretty much consisted of just going to school and hanging out with people and friends, so nothing very big but still good of course.  On the 6th of this month(October for those of you who may not know) I went to Tampere with about 15 people, mostly exchange students but some Finns as well, and that was pretty fun.  We pretty much just walked around the town all day and went places to eat and talked and had fun! Oh and the very bright colored yellow leaves that you see in those pictures happen all over Finland and it's called ruska, in fall the leaves on the leaves all turn very beautiful colors and it's amazing!  So on the 12th-14th I went to my inbound camp and it was about an hour away from my city and there were about 20 exchange students there so that was good. Then on the 15th-19th I had syysloma which is Autumn Break. I went to a place called Tropiclandia with my host family in Vaasa which is about an hour from my city as well, and it was swimming place and I love swimming so it was fun of course. Then the rest of that week I just hung out with friends, watched movies, and went swimming. And I've been back in school since then, and the weekend of course. Also coming up at the end of November, from 30.11-5.12 I'm going on a trip to Lapland(the part of Finland which is in the Arctic Circle) with all of the Rotary exchange students in Finland which is somewhere around 130-140 so I am very excited to be with everybody and it should be really awesome because we will also get to see the Northern Lights and that shall be amazing! So that's all for now, and I'll make another post in November and then another post after the Lapland trip, hopefully that plan will happen!

Heippa!

Suomi!

Karkku camp

Karkku camp

Sauna at Karkku

The lake/river at Karkku

Cute little boat house!

My friend Katie and I :)

R-kioski, they are around every corner.

Kind of like McDonald's, but not

Church in Tampere

Most of the others at Karkku

The river in my town with a fountain

Butterflies in my front yard

And the wings look like a tiger's face!

Fountain in Tampere

Cool floating faucet at Särkänniemi Amusement Park!

American, Australian, German

The only Angry Birds land at Särkänniemi, because Finland made Angry Birds

Angry Birds land!

Angry Birds Land!

I think the bathroom signs here are so cute!

View of Tampere

The view of the amusement park

Cool ride

Another cool ride

More rides..

Pygmy lighthouse..

Half-pipe roller coaster

Clowns! I had to.

Well so far I've been here for one month which has most definitely gone by way too insanely quickly! But that only means that I'm having lots of fun here in Finland. This is really a great place and I am just loving every single part of it. I'm making lots of new amazing friends here and having a lot of fun doing different and new things and just enjoying everything and making awesome memories that I'll never forget! The classes that I'm taking at school are Russian, Ethics, English, Music, Art, Geography, and a Finnish class every Wednesday. They are all in Finnish except for English of course, and Geography. My favorite class is probably music because it's just really fun and I like learning instruments. Almost all Finns are super shy and reserved at first, so they can be kind of hard to approach sometimes but when you start talking to them then they become really outgoing and fun and nice people. My school has about 800 students so it's pretty small but the school itself is quite big and very nice! And in my school there are 5 exchange students so far but there are going to be about 8-10 soon so it's pretty cool. Oh and many things here are so far technologically advanced, it's amazing. Also the way of transportation is extremely different than back home. Back home it's like just about everybody goes by school bus and then most 16 year olds drive a car, and pretty much nobody rides their bike and if you live close then you can walk. Here, you have to be 15 to ride a moped/vespa/scooter/small motorcycle and you can also drive a moped car when you're 15 as well which we don't have in the US yet, they basically look like electric cars but they're gas and you can drive them alone when you're 15. Then you can drive real cars when you're 18, and the majority of students ride their bike, I do everyday. The amount of bikes in the school parking lot is more than I've ever seen at one time..sad. But I'll take a picture sometime and post it on here. And then the last thing is that the food is extremely healthy and excellent here! The school lunch is completely free and probably better than most food that I've had in my own house in America. It's pretty much gourmet to me. Oh and the amusement park pictures on here is called Särkänniemi and it has the world's only Angry Bird Lang, and I went there. :D I'll try to post here at least once a month so keep checking up on it for new posts and pictures!