2 MONTHS!!

The start of this week marked my 2 month week since I left Australia! Where is all my time going!  Another relatively normal week, on Monday I had  volleyball and I got to meet my host brother, Santeri, from my second family. There were only 4 of us at volleyball that night so we had a different sort of training. I had to use the ATM in Finnish for the first time which was a little daunting, normally I’m cool with making a mistake but when it comes to money I’m a little bit more wary! Somehow I managed to press all the right buttons and it was all good. I went to the library in one of my frees and discovered in the English section of the library there is a dictionary of all the English slang swear words and internet abbreviations, lovely! For a library with a small collection of English books it does seem a little stupid that they have this one. I found a learn Finnish CD in the library though which I did when I got home. It was all way to basic for me but it was a good refresher for some of my vocab.

On Wednesday we were doing grammar in English and its quite hilarious when you realise you have no idea about all this stuff they are learning even though its in your own language! I don’t know if it’s because I just don’t remember grammar stuff I learnt in year 4 or if it’s just because I do them instinctively and therefore can’t explain how they work? The class’s homework was to read the text “How to be Australian.” My poor host mum and dad and sister were all sick so I was confined to my room that afternoon but I actually got a lot of blogging done and wrote emails to all the people I had been neglecting! I backed up my photos and there was over 2000 of them, this is after 2 months!

In my English class the next day we listened to Down Under and talked about Australia, good lesson! I got to read one of my friend’s English papers for another course and they were studying Romeo and Juliet, I thought this was pretty funny because we study Romeo and Juliet in English! Obviously they don’t have to look at it so deeply like we do but it is still interesting that we study the same topics even thought they are doing it as a foreign language. To top of what was a pretty good day, our maths exercises were in English so I actually got to do something! I ran into a lady coming out of school to who had to be at least 80 and she spoke fluent English to me which made my day! Liisa, Antti and Pauli came home that evening and there was a meeting for some of the local residents at our house and it meant lots of hand shakes and being introduced as “she’s from Australia” all night. Not that I mind, i'm the interesting foreigner! 

On Saturday we all went to one of Antti’s friend’s house because Tiina and Antti’s band were recording a song for my host dad’s birthday. They had already done the music so it was just Tiina singing various bits of the song till it was all good to go. The song was Kaksi Puuta by Juha Tapio. It’s a really nice song and it means 2 trees, it’s my host dad’s favourite song. After that the guys played some rock and roll songs and for those that don’t know rock and roll to Finland is definitely a different sort to rock and roll to what’s in Australia. I will elaborate on Finnish music in my music post though! It was a good afternoon and when we got home we played Guitar Hero, watched Spiderman, went in the Sauna and had ice cream with Haighs chocolate frogs that my mum had sent me for Easter.

Sunday was really fun day; we went into the city to go sledding and spent most of the morning doing just that! We kept trying to go down as a train but there was too many of us and we kept ending up in a big pile! We came home and had delicious fresh pancakes that Liisa and Äiti had made and then they all had to leave, always the worst part of the week. I got to talk to the Lee-Anne in the afternoon which was nice, these days when I talk to people back home it’s a good thing rather than a sad I haven’t seen you thing. I love being able to tell people all the fun i’m having and my friends are glad to see me so happy. 

They broke the sled