Meeting my Host Family!

I had my bag packed and ready before breakfast, amazing how much harder it is to pack after only a week! I can’t imagine how it will be after 3 months! We had a talk with all the rotary people after breakfast just stuff about Russian tour and how to log on to do our quarterly reports. Doesn't that sound fancy; quarterly report! When we came out our host families had started arriving! We had to go and get our stuff though so we all hurriedly finished packing and then we went back into the main building and all our family's had little signs with our names on them! I saw Jarmo holding a sign with Julia written on it so I rushed over and gave him and Ritva a hug. Jarmo and Ritva are my second host families parents but they offered to pick me up because my first ones couldn't. We had to listen to the rotary people for a bit but then we went to lunch and afterwards, I said goodbye to everyone and then we got in the car and left Karkku. It was sad to leave but I was so excited to be with my family that I didn't really care! The trip home took about 5 hours, it snowed quite a bit! I talked about all kinds with Jarmo and Ritva and it was really nice to learn about Finland and the school system and all kinds of things! We had a quick stop and a petrol station and their petrol stations are full on restaurants! With a supermarket too! Crazy! When we pulled into Kiuruvesi I was super excited and we drove through the middle of the city then we turned into the drive way I saw 6 heads pass by the window! When I went inside they all introduced themselves and then we went on a tour of the house. The house is beautiful and my room is really great! We all talked for a while and they all spoke really great English and they were all so nice to me, I think after about an hour my face was starting to hurt because i couldn't stop smiling :) Not long after I arrived my host mum and dad turned up, they’d been in the cow house, and their were more introductions and then we had tea which was the Pekkala family tradition of sausages and chips on a Saturday! We had sauna afterwards and went through the host family rules whilst eating tim tams which had unfortunately melted a little at camp but were still very yummy! Afterwards we had cake which Liisa had made and it said tervetuloa soumeena which means welcome to Finland!  It was delicious! After that we all went to sleep!

Awesome cake

Everyone minus Väinö who was in the cow shed :)

An introduction to my family!

This picture is from 6 months ago but it is the only one I have of all of them together.

From left to right is Väinö (host dad), Katariina (host mum), Antti, Ville, Eeva (Ville's wife) Tiina, Liisa and Pauli (Liisa’s fiancé)

Liisa and Antti go to university in Oulu which is a little while north of Kiuruvesi, Pauli lives with Liisa too but he is in the army right now. Ville and Eeva live further south in Jyväskylä and they both study there. Then there is Tiina who is in 5^th grade at school and we have lots of fun together but I’ll talk more about all the fun we have in later blogs!

I love having such a big family! Liisa, Antti and Pauli come home most weekends but Ville and Eeva not so much.

More blogs soon!