Home

Home is where the heart is! But does that mean when we travel we make our destinations our home? I am fairly sure most people bring their hearts with them EVERYWHERE, I mean they are inside our bodies protected by our lungs and ribcage and skin..... Home can be a confusing word for exchange students, Rotary refers to your countries as your Home Country and your Host Country. To me this doesn't make sense because then they can talk for hours about all the different ways to make your host country; home. When someone asks me do you have this at home, it can be confusing because home is like a 5 minute bike ride from here, and only a couple of months ago it was a slightly longer bike ride away and then a few more months before that well someone please try riding a bike from Finland to Australia and get back to me on how long that takes and then in just a few weeks it will a different place again! So were do you mean?!? I sort of consider my home to be Kiuruvesi because I live with many people and that's a big thing they have in common. When I leave Finland will I be leaving home or going back home? 


7th of July, Thursday
I was up early to go to Iisalmi with Jarmo to do a bit of shopping. It was a bit early and I had to walk around for a bit to wait for the shops to open and I ran into a rebound I know who lives in Iisalmi. I found it a little comical that I know 4 people in Iisalmi and I managed to run into one of them! Oh small cities! One of the important things to me at this point in my exchange is that when I am shopping I don't speak any English and normally this all goes fine because Finns aren't big on their small talk which works in my favour! This particular day I was at the very last store and it was all going good until the guy doing the transactions starts up this huge long speech about some sort of rewards card. I wasn't really paying attention and by the time my brain said, stop him and tell him you have no idea what he is saying, he had already been talking for almost a minute and I would have looked pretty stupid explaining that I had stared at him for a minute trying to understand when really I was like: 

So I just let him finish and then said no in Finnish and grabbed my stuff and left, utterly embarrassed because I imagine he was very confused. Just one of my many, 'Julia manages to make a huge fool out of her self in Finland' stories. The sad thing is many of them don't involve being confused by the language.

When we got home I packed and we went to Peltohovi and I had Finland's idea of spag bog, I doubt that a tomato got anywhere near that bowl of pasta, I imagine the Italians would be horrified! The Finns even put normal tomato sauce on their pasta sometimes, which shocked me a bit! After that I was dropped of at my first host families house because I was staying there a few days while my family drove to Helsinki to pick up Henriikka, who was returning from her exchange in Australia. Tiina, Antti and I played GH until Tiina and I rode down to the beach and swum for a little while because once again it was freezing! Afterwards we joined in stacking firewood with bunch of people that had come down to Koskelo to restock the place before winter. Its so great seeing people from my little city come together on their own time to make sure the whole community can make use of the place all year round! It says a lot about the sort of people most Finns are. Tiina and I camped out in the tent that night but I woke after 1 hour of terrible sleep and sneaked inside and slept on the couch! In my defence, I swear my mattress was more like a tissue than an actual mattress.

The next day was spent doing the grocery shopping, cleaning the house and re stocking the shed with wood. My family uses so much fire wood! They fill an entire shed full of it and use almost all of it in just one winter! We played that Finnish bowling game that I mentioned way back in January and some more GH until Eeeva, Ville and Liisa arrived and we watched a very strange TV show. 

On Saturday everyone was up pretty early and we all had breakfast together, it was nice doing all the 'normal' things with them again. We all got ready and drove the 25 or so kms that it took to get to the strawberry farm. We split up into to teams and then just picked the strawberries! It was a really hot day and exhausting work but it was fun because you can eat the strawberries while you pick them! In the end we had picked as a group almost 30 kilograms of strawberries! At home we mashed them up a bit and sprinkled them with sugar and put them in containers with MANSIKKA 2011 on them, which I was in charge of, ready to be used throughout the year in berry soups and cooking! Antti made strawberry smoothies for us all and we just talked and ate strawberries. I ate so many strawberries that I actually had a stomach ache by the end of the day. I helped Liisa make two cakes, one for Pauli and one for my birthday. When I help Liisa make anything I really just sit there and talk to her but Liisa insists I actually help! We drove to the Summer cottage then and it was quite a way out of the city. It was absolutely mind blowingly beautiful as expected. Pauli made Letty and as I recall Liisa and I talked about the difference in plastic bottles between Aus and Finland? haha The letty were delicious and afterwards Tiina, Liisa and I went for a swim in the lake and I just can't explain how much how I love the lakes here, they are just amazing, I swear they have magic properties. We all went in the sauna and got to jump in the lake afterwards which is such a nice feeling. We ate Pauli's cake and then it was time to leave. It was such a hot night, most Finnish homes don't have air-con so the houses get really warm in the summer and it was so hard to sleep! 

Mansikat <3

Strawberry fingers!

All of the strawberries we picked

Being mashed

Ready to be frozen

Liisa and the cake she made for Pauli

It was to celebrate Pauli finishing his service at the army. It says 362 days has passed because that is how long Pauli was in the army for. 

Suomen Järvissä <3

Us three and Äiti in the corner

Sisters

Sunday we were all up early again to get ready for a confirmation party. Confirmations are a really big cultural thing here and almost every teenager will be confirmed when they are about 14 or 15. The confirmation we were going to was for a good friend of the families. There was a lot of handshaking and having people question who I was. First time that I kinda felt annoyed that everyone was speaking on my behalf. The food was absolutely delicious and we all got huge glasses of ice cream with strawberries afterwards! There was this huge cake that Ellinoora (the girl who was being confirmed) had made herself! After the party Pauli, Liisa and I went to Essi and Jaana's just for a little while and had coffee and chatted. I  finally got to meet Magalie who I had been friends on fb for a while, she had been an exchange student in Kiuruvesi a few years ago. We drove to Oulu after that, all squashed up in the back seat! When we got there we drank coke and watched YouTube videos, I was introduced the most annoying song to get stuck in your head ever. If you want to forever have it playing in your mind, you can watch here. The time difference between Australia and Finland meant that I was already getting birthday messages at 6 in the evening which I must admit was pretty cool! 

Jaana decided to show us her Penkarrit costume

Relax, Take It Easy

Monday was spent doing nothing, I dont think I put pants on until about 2pm! Gotta love summer holidays. I watched a movie and some Misfits which is great show! 

Tuesday I went swimming with Tiina but it was freezing! We swum for only a short time because the water was so cold! In the evening I went to a rotary meeting and talked a little about my Eurotour. Afterwards I had coffee at my counsellors house and I met some Kosonen's! They are related to my counsellor but I forget how. Anyway we looked at the family history book and talked about maybe going to a meeting and it was cool to meet some other Kosonens! My name isn't exactly that common in Australia. I watched a crappy girly movie in the evening and talked to Liisa. 

Wednesday was one of the very rare days that I woke up before 10. I was up early to make some more pulla! I realised we had run out of flour halfway through making it so I had to go down to the shops, unfortunately I had already melted the yeast into the milk so when I came back didnt quite rise like it should have but they were still pretty good. I was at Doris' for lunch and we walked down to the cemetery and watered the graves and just talked. She showed me all the pictures from her trips to America, she has a penpal in Colorado that she has been friends with since she was a teenager! I love hearing all her stories, I am the same with my own Nanna, I make her tell me everything. We went to Sirkka's after that and we played Wii and it was good fun. 

Must be love, love, love.

The first weekend on July was probably the warmest weather we had all summer. It was so beautiful outside! On the Saturday I went with my host parents to Iisalmi on their boat! It was so nice to boat through the lake and see all the little islands with summer houses on them. We had to stop at a loch and I got to see how it all works. When we got to Iisalmi we had a very delicious lunch and just relaxed for a while. It was really really hot! On the way back I was thinking a lot about how much I love Finland. It was such a beautiful day, everything was alive with colour and the sun was beating down on the water. So peaceful and scenic. The daydream was shattered though when it started to rain just before we got back to the city.

Leaving Kiuruevsi

I got very sunburnt!

Excuse the old man but this thing was pretty cool! The pressure from the river creates a sort of high pressure shower! They have the handles so you don't get washed off!

The lake

Kotini <3

The next day we had visitors from London! They had two kids who spoke English which had me excited because I hadn't really talked to many little kids! We played Frisbee and blew bubbles and I showed them both how to make scoobies. I had missed feeling comfortable around children! 

If I could make a list...

Thursday was Tiina's birthday but it was also the day that Jarmo and I were going to the farm to help with the collecting and moving of the hay. Every year there is one day where all the hay bales from the fields have to be thrown into a trailer and then stacked at the top of the barn. Jarmo always comes over to help because its a pretty big job. I was keen to help out because I had enjoyed all the farm activities so far. Basically what we had to do was use our pitch forks to grab the bale and hoist it up and into the lip of the big trailer where someone would stack them up as the tractor moved gradually down the field. Then when the tractor is full we go back to the farm and unload it. After round one, my head was screaming WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING!


It is really hard work and as you hoist up the hay, it goes all over your face and it was a crazy hot day and there were flies everywhere. When we got back to the farm we had to throw the bales into the top of the barn and well in-case you didn't know, hay is an excellent insulator. This meant the inside of the barn was at about 60 degrees! Round two was much better though because well, I was prepared this time and also because I only threw the bales towards the tractor because I had trouble hoisting them far up enough over my head to reach the trailer. I had a turn stacking then and that was hard work too and very itchy! When we were about half way done we got to stop for coffee and Christmas tarts which is a special hay works day tradition. By that point we only needed to load the trailers, I was very glad we didn't need to go in that sauna of a barn again! After a total of 5 hours out on the fields we were finally done, I was very exhausted and now had a whole new level of respect for farmers that do this every single year. I slept like a rock that night.


Even though it is was such a draining experience, it still has a place in my list of top exchange experiences! I don't physically have a list but I know it would be on it. I didn't get any pictures which is a shame but I doubt I looked very acceptable after 5 hours throwing hay so they wouldn't have made it on the blog anyway!!


The next day I skyped mum and told her about my eventful afternoon and I planned on going caching but it was so hot! To all you who said I would freeze here can eat their words because I felt like I was much more likely to melt. It was about 28 but the humidity is crazy, never moving to Queensland! I went swimming in the evening with Tiina and Antti and it was nice to relax with them. I realised I was very used to swimming in salt water and had to tread water a bit more in order to stay afloat! I went to Santeri's soccer game for a while then found my first cache in Kiuruvesi! 6 months living here and I finally found one! It was a very good first week of my summer holidays in Finland. I felt like such a heat wimp though, I should be used to the heat but I was complaining about the weather much more than the Finns! I guess I take the amount of sunshine we have for granted.

I'M MELTING

Creepy bike riding smile 

I LOVE Finland

I feel like it doesn't get said enough though! I really do love this place that I call home, I can't imagine having been placed any where else in the world. Finland and I were made for each other. I think I will start using more GIFs in my posts, they explain how I feel much better than I can put in to words.

Continuing right off from my last post, the next day was Tiina's 12th birthday party and I went round in the morning to help out. I learnt how to properly roll pulla balls, olen nyt hyvä leipuri! Kati had made cinnamon and sugar pulla and we all had one with coffee and it was love at first bite. They were the most amazing things I had ever tasted! We all made some punch for the girls to drink and Liisa seemed to think I knew what I was doing! All us older ones weren't really invited to the party at all so we played GH and ate cake and just caught up. Eventually they all had to go back to their own cities, when I came home I decided to go for a walk to explore around my new house and somehow managed to make a large circle right back to my house without having any idea where I was walking.

In the middle right you just can just see the little beach that Tiina and I were at.  

The next day I was on my own because it was a Monday and everyone had work. I had decided I would go and do all the things that I needed to do in the city but discovered that I couldn't get out of the house. I am sure that all my fellow Nordic exchange students would back me up in saying the doors are really hard to open! After many fruitless attempts I had to message my host dad for help and he came home and showed me how to get out. So an hour or so later I came back to the house and even though I had a key, I couldn't get in. Wow, 0 for 2 today! Again there is a real trick to these doors. I have lived here over 2 months now and I still have issues with them. My poor host brother had to come and let me in, I was very embarrassed!

On the Wednesday I made Pulla for the first time on my own. They are a very stress free thing to make which I know sounds stupid but although I love baking it stresses me out more than it should! They tasted very good and I had Tiina to vouch for me. We rode our bikes down to the lake and swum for a while and I had only seen her once or twice in the last month and I missed her dearly. We went into the city and had ice cream before we both had to go home. I went to Doris' for lunch which became a bit of a tradition. She always made very delicious traditional Finnish food for us. After lunch we watched a bit of Flying Doctors which I am sure only the Aussie parents out there will remember! I got 3 more ticks of approval on my pulla when I got home which was good to hear! 

My delicious pulla!

The benefits of having a waterproof camera.

Looking over to the city centre

The shirt thing was a complete coincidence! 

Juhannus

The day I got back was Juhannas which means Midsummer! Juhannas is a big holiday at Finland and it all the cities become deserted as everyone goes to their summer cottages. In the morning I was at my first hosts for coffee and a bit of a slideshow of my photos. I was tricked into eating a chilli flavoured gummy bear! When I got back home I had to try and finish(you know its really hard for me to use the word finish these days without spelling it without an extra n) unpacking my suitcase! Eventually we set out for the kesämokki, it was about a 25 minute drive and it was the first time I had been at a Finnish summer cottage and the pictures really don't do them any justice! It was such a beautiful serene little place. Doris got here and made letty while Santeri and I played Guitar Hero. We went in the sauna and took a photo on the brand new deck to send to Henriikka. The sauna there was insanely hot! I didn't realise and put a scoop of water on the rocks and had to get out it was so warm, I checked the thermometer and it was almost on 95 degrees! We made a small little bonfire and I stayed outside for a while but the downside of midsummer is the MOSQUITOES! I have never seen so many mossies in one place. Jarmo asked me if we had a lot of mosquitoes in Australia and I answered with; I thought we did! I will never complain about the mossies in Australia ever again. We stayed overnight and the next day Ritva's sister and her family came for a very delicious lunch and a swim in the lake. I was so exhausted when I got home! 

This is my new family!
Across is Santeri, Jarmo, Ritva, me and Doris.
Doris is Jarmo's mum, there is also Henriikka but she was still in Australia at the time but she will be in a post soon! 

Doris and I

The bonfire

Taken at 11pm

The cottage! 

On a non-juhannus related note, OMG EVERYONE A POST! I know I have been such a slack blogger, my Eurotour posts took a long time and then I decided I needed an extended blogging break afterwards which was stupid of me but I am back and hopefully there will be at least a new post every week. I am back at school now so I have more of routine.
A few things new on my blog is that you can now get an email when I make a new post! Just stick your email address in the box over on the right and every time I make a new post you will get an email! I have also cleaned up the tags on my posts so you can read then according to what they are talking about. 
So to end this post I leave you with the news that Finland won this years wife carrying competition for the third time in row, a noble title!  Check out the article here