Around The World: 10 days in Finland

Well it's been a long 10 days since I arrived in Finland but I am slowly starting to feel at home. For my first week in Finland I had to attend a language camp where we were taught basic Finnish and had the opportunity to meet the other Exchange Students. I became really good friends with a girl named Jodi who is from Melbourne. She is living about 4 hours from me so unfortunately I can't catch up with her very often.

While at camp we were able to try out some ice fishing, cooking on a fire, walking with tennis raquets on our feet and cross country skiiing. We had to stay outside for about 3 hours and I have never been so cold in my whole life. By the time we were allowed to go back to our bedrooms my whole body felt like it had frost bite on it. We also had the chance to go to a town called Tampere where we had an hour and a half of sight seeing and an hour of shopping . It was about an hours drive from camp. Of course my friend Jodie and me just had to find this bag of chips and take a photo of it.

When I left my room on Thursday to walk up to the main buliding where we have our classes I realised we were going to have our first bit of sunlight all week. This picture shows the sun just beginning to rise. Thought it was pretty cool so I thought everyone back in Oz might enjoy seeing it to.

Thursday night I also had the chance to have my first Finnish sauna. Was an interesting experience to say the least. I know I said I would never do it but I ended up going in nude because weird as it sounds, it is really uncomfertable sitting in a sauna in your bathers when you have 10 naked girls in there with you. I was also silly enough to run down a pretty big flight of stairs, across some snow barefoot just so I could jump in a small hole in an ice lake. After doing this I then had to run back up the stairs(while still being naked and cold with only a towel covering me) where we then rolled in the snow a few times. We then went back to the sauna to warm up before completing this weird but interesting process again. All in all I did it four times in about 45 mintues. Weird I know!

These next three pictures are just for you dad. I took these pictures today after I got home from school. It is -12 degrees today and according to Annu the snow is really heavy. Just what I love to hear. The first picture is from out my window and the second one is a picture of my house. The last picture is a picture of my host sister. We only just got home from school so she was complaining about not looking good but I think she looked fine.

The house is three stories although you can't see the bottom one as it is half underground. The bottom level is where the sauna(my host dad is currently building a new one, should be ready in a week) and the washing machine. The second level has the parents room, the living room and the kitchen and the top floor is where Annu's and my room is. My bedroom is just beside where the little verandah is.