I was nervous to separate from my exchange student, Elisa, to go on my plane from New York to Sweden. The flight seemed endless but, I was there in no time. Arriving there I was forty minutes late, so when my plane landed Elisa’s plane was boarding from Sweden to Helsinki. I was so scared when I found out that I had missed my flight and that Elisa was on it! Turned out that I had to sit in Sweden for nine hours till I could board the next flight. When I finally got to Finland I was exhausted, Elisa was waiting for me at the gate. It was such a relief to see her! We sat down, talked, and waited for our bus. I fell asleep on the bus.

07/08

First day there was a little rocky due to jet lag and the eight hour bus ride but her family was very nice. We went to town, it was so different; just the way people would talk to each other. I loved it very much! Everyone was a little scared to talk to me in English but I didn’t blame them at all

07/09

My third day here, we went to the outside sauna. At first every time they would throw steam on the rocks it would get so hot that it burnt my eyes. After only a few minutes my whole body was wet.

07/11

One of Elisa’s friends invited me to watch her horseback riding. It was pretty interesting and her friend let me ride the horse. I also watched them go through the woods with the horse, it was really pretty!

07/14

We drove all the way out to the middle of the woods and went to this huge field type thing where there were a few different soccer fields filled with mud. We met some of Elisa’s friends there. There were so many people watching all these different people play swamp soccer from all these different countries. I thought it was weird that they had a sauna there packed filled with naked people. I thought the players movements in the mud were funny…

07/16

The food stores are really weird, not as much selection as they do here.

07/19

Oulu, I love the city! We went shopping all day then out to eat. It was quite different the waiters didn’t wait on your that much. We met up with another exchange student from Virginia and talked with them over coffee. It was really fun talking to the other exchange student about all the weird and different stuff.

07/20

We drove all the way up to their summer cottage, which is next to the lake. There were about sixty people there celebrating the birthday of Elisa’s aunt. There were no bathrooms in the summer cottage which really freaked me out! We had to bathe in the sauna! We hiked to the river a couple of times. It was really beautiful!

07/22

On our way home from the summer cottage we got to see reindeer in Lapland! Also, we got to stop at a factory that made candy.

07/23

We went to a six hundred year old church, it was all made from wood. They also found bodies under the floor. The paintings were so crude! It had a smoky smell from what they made the roof out of.

07/24

Went to one of Elisa’s mom’s rotary club meetings…it was fun listening even though I couldn’t understand a word they were saying. We were supposed to talk to them about what went on during her trip to America and what I have been doing in Finland but we ran out of time because one of the presidents was there.

07/25

My last day was so sad but I really missed my family so I was kind of just ready to go. I was sad saying goodbye to everybody and I was really worried about my flight back after what happened the last time in Sweden. But I got to explore a little in Helsinki. It was really cool there! I loved it! It was so big! Once I got out of the train station there were so many people walking around. We got to walk through the city and it was just so different. The buildings were so weird looking. Some of them were Russian looking and some Swedish and I thought some Dutch. It was weird seeing them all together but it was such a beautiful city! The next morning we left really early to go catch my flight. I barely got my last goodbyes in because we were a little bit late. I was really sad returning home.