Avantouinti (or in English Emily being crazy)

Well over the weekend I had District Conference at a place called Mikkeli which is about 100 km's from my house. Although it was good to meet all the other exchange students in my district, most of the weekend was spend sitting round and waiting for things to happen which gets a bit boring sometimes. Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera so when I get some photos send to me I will put them on my blog.

This afternoon after much convincing, I went to avantouinti with my host family (which in english is going to sauna and then running and getting in the frozen lake). It was so cold that when I got out of the water I actually couldn't feel my legs. They were so pink from the coldness of the water. After we had stayed in the water for a little bit (and when I say a little bit I serisouly mean getting in, going f**k its freezing and gettin out as fast as humanly possible) and then going and sitting in sauna. As warm as the sauna is when you first get there, the finns seem to love adding water to the stones and your skin feels like someone is chucking hot water on you cause it gets so hot.

Me in the water (you can tell by the weird look
on my face just how cold the water was)

Annu swimming!

Lassi going for a casual swim!! This is a perfect example why
foreigners call finns, crazy finns!!

Me and Annu!

The worst thing about taking this picture was that I had to wait in the water for Annu to get in (although only a few seconds, it seriously felt like minutes). Once in we had to quickly pose so I could get out quickly and get back to sauna and try warm myself up again.

This Thursday I am finally off to St. Petersburg. I am so excited about getting to see all the other exchange students, especially Jodi. It has been so long since I've seen her and I am missing her sooooo much. I will get back to Taavetti on Sunday afternoon and Sunday night I am going out to celebrate Labour Day. It is a big celebration in Finland so of course I am expected to go out for a while. Then on Monday morning I have to get home nice and early so I can go to Stockholm, Sweden with my host family for 2 nights. Never thought I'd be able to say that I will have been in 3 countries in 2 days. It's going to be a big week and I can only imagine how tired I will be when I finally get home and get a decent night sleep. But I will make sure I put lots of pictures on next week once I get home. Well time for me to go and pack my bags for St. Petersburg. I have another exchange student staying at my house tomorrow night so we can go to our pick up place together so I have to get everything ready before she arrives. Haven't had any emails from some certain people lately (eg. Joybells) so it would be nice to hear how everything is going. Missing you guys like you wouldn't believe. Love you always.