Soccer and Exploring

On Friday, June 27, I woke up a bit early because we were going to see Aleksi's soccer match. I quickly ate a slice of bread before going to the car so that we could go to the game. After we dropped Aleksi off at the match so that he could warm up, Johanna and I went to the flea market to reorganize. Once everything was in its place we went back to the soccer field to watch Aleksi's match. Unfortunately, the other team was very good and Aleksi's team lost 10-1. However, even though they lost, it was probably good practice for the team and it was great for them to play outside in such wonderful sunny weather. 

Aleksi's soccer match

After the game, we met up with Mika and Niklas at the buffet we ate at during my second trip to Porvoo for a Tex-Mex buffet. After the buffet, we dropped off Aleksi at the soccer field again so that he could warm up and hang out with his friends before his second soccer game began. Johanna and I then drove to an office near The Turku Theater where she had to help runners register for the Paavo Nurmi marathon as volunteer work. Her shift was 2.5 hours and so instead of waiting for her there, Johanna suggested that I take some time to explore the city on my own. And I am so glad I did. I first walked along the river on my way to the medieval festival and ran into the acrobats we met the day before! Only this time they were actually performing and they had a pretty good crowd. 

The acrobats!

The medieval market 

I really enjoyed their show, which mainly consisted of jumping off of some sort of seesaw, and after the show the Starbucks booth next to me finally opened and gave out free pomegranate flavored soda/energy drinks. I continued to walk around and I got to spend a lot more time looking at everything in detail whereas the day before I had only gotten a short glimpse. After I looked at most of the booths, I crossed the street to see the jousting show. Only, I didn't want to pay 13€ for a show I was tall enough to see from over a fence, so I found a nice and shady spot and watched from there. I even got to take pictures of the horses before they entered the "theater"! 

The medieval festival also hired the wrong security guy because he was far too nice. The first time he passed me he merely "highly recommended" getting a ticket and said the show was much better when watching from the inside. I said, I didn't have enough money with me (which was true) and would watch it from inside another day and he kindly flashed me a smile and continued to walk. The second time he came around I took a picture and he said I could only take pictures from inside. And by the time half the show was already over, he came by, smile at me, and told me to move along. So, I finished looking at the rest of the booths and decided to take a look at the Turku library. The Turku library may be one of the most amazing libraries I have ever been in. It has two parts: a new one and an old one. The new one was recently built a few years ago and is very modern. There are bean bag chairs and ball chairs in the teen section, large computers for public use, and simply simplistic but beautiful architecture wherever you look. 

The new part of the library

The old part of the library

The ball chairs!

There are two floors and an entire wall is one large glass window with a view of one of the main streets. To get to the old library one goes through a short glass tunnel. The old library is quite different and looks like, well, an old library.  It has a large white dome with golden paint outlining it and oil paintings of famous authors on the wall. In addition, the entire upper floor is full of music stuff. Half of the second floor contains books about famous musicians while the other half has CD's from every genre you can think of. They even have Korean pop music! Unfortunately, it was time to go back to where Johanna was volunteering so I had to leave the library, but I will definitely come back another day. We then drove home but before we arrived at the house we decided to drive by Hesburger to get some dinner because we were all tired from our long day and didn't want to make our own dinner. We had dinner (I ordered the Finnish version of a BigMac), watched a movie, and went to bed.

Turku with Friends!

On Thursday, June 26, I woke up feeling very excited that I would be able to meet some of my best friends again after not seeing them for 2 weeks. Some people couldn't make it because they lived too far away, but we still had a great group consisting of Anna, Fabian, Carrie, Carrie's host sister, and Elizabeth. Fabian lives only one hour away from Turku so he came by car while the others came by train. I ate a big breakfast to make sure that I wouldn't be hungry during the day and soon we got into the car and headed for the train station. Johanna gave me a brief explanation on how to get to the cathedral, where we would meet in half an hour because she had to run a few errands, but I was so excited to meet my friends I only remembered the basic instructions. I headed inside the train station and immediately saw Fabian. We were so happy to see each other again, but I had to quickly run out and let Johanna know I found someone already. We talked about our towns, compared our families, and took selfies (of course) but it wasn't long until a group of 4 familiar girls approached us with equally delighted expressions. 

Meeting Fabian again was great but I'm too tall for his selfies

It was a mini reunion! We started to walk to the cathedral, hoping that I was following the directions correctly, and talked non-stop about what we had done in he past two weeks, what our host families and cities were like, and even memories from Helsinki. Although we thought we were lost, we made it to the cathedral although we were 10 minutes late because we stopped for pictures and probably took some wrong turns. We took some more pictures in front of the cathedral and we met Johanna about three minutes later. She introduced herself and then took a picture of us in front of the cathedral with her own camera. After our photo shoot, we went into the beautiful 700 year old cathedral where Johanna used her tour guide skills to give us an explanation of the paintings, chambers, and the cathedral itself. At one point she told us that there are over 4,000 people buried under the cathedral floor because if you were from the upper class or a respected person, that is where you would be buried. She then took us around some of the side chambers and told us the stories behind them, all of which were very interesting. 

Mini reunion!

Once we finished our tour, we agreed to meet Johanna at 4:00 at the castle, giving our group 3.5 hours to walk around the city center and medieval market as well as just hang out and catch up on what everyone's been doing. We first walked around the medieval market where we looked at a lot of booths and what they had to offer. We also almost lost Anna a couple of times. Next, we went to a restaurant/café to have lunch as my breakfast wasn't that big after all and my friends were hungry from their two hour train ride. I had a falafel with salad and Fanta and we all sat on couches or chairs around a big coffee table. In Helsinki, a I sometimes worried that our group was too loud in public but I am so thankful now to have such a talkative group of friends. We talked, laughed, and took selfies just as every teenager should every once in a while and it was about an hour before we left the restaurant.

Trying to act cool in the restaurant

 I wanted to show my friends the large open air market in the town square because I knew some of them really liked fresh fruit. Almost all of us ended up buying at least one or two bags of fruit because it was so fresh and cheap (1€ for a liter of plums!). Next, I wanted to them the tourist office so that we could all get Kiss My Turku shirts but I guess we took a wrong turn and we ended up at the river again. We sat on the edge of the sidewalk (which in hindsight was probably a horrible idea) and ate our fruit. 

We were lucky to have organized this trip on such a wonderful day as it was 16° C and we only had a few drops of rain. At one point, Fabian tried to take a selfie of all of us at the river and ended up dropping his fake RayBan sunglasses into the river. We then continued to walk along the river, where we met some street acrobats. We asked them if they would perform for us but they unfortunately said no because they were packing up. We kept walking along the river when we stumbled upon some very creepy statues. So, of course, we took pictures with them.

Looking off into the distance...

 We were getting a bit worried that we went the wrong way because we could begin see the harbor but we didn't see anywhere that looked like a place that a castle could be built. 

Once we saw the castle we took a celebratory picture in front of this giant daisy statue!

Thankfully, I saw one of the spires poking out from under the large oak trees, reassuring us that we hadn't just spent 45 minutes walking in the wrong direction. We met Johanna at the castle and we quickly begun our tour because my friends already had to catch the 6:00 p.m. train. We saw the prisons, accounting offices, ball room, and more. The castle used to be a fortress so, although it was beautiful, it wasn't like a palace that was built for beauty and luxury rather than defense. After our tour, we took the bus to the city center and stopped for at a café for a quick meal before heading to the train station. It was sad to say goodbye to 4/11 of my FUSYE friends but I would see them in Talinn in two weeks. I waited until Fabian got picked up by his host mother and then waited until Johanna picked me up because she had to go get Aleksi from a soccer match. On the way home, we stopped by the supermarket to get some snacks for the big Germany vs. U.S.A. FIFA match. Johanna treated us to some candy again and I took some recommendations from Aleksi who seems to be an expert in the candy world. We then watched the game before going to bed after my wonderful day in Turku with some of the best people I have ever met.

Right on Track (and Field): The Paavo Nurmi Games

On Wednesday, June 25, I woke up at 9:00 a.m. and got to the breakfast table at around 9:30. I slowly walked to get my plate when my mom kindly told me we would need to leave in about five minutes for the birthday brunch with her parents. I forgot! Luckily, I only needed to put on my shoes and we still made it on time, but I decided I would need be more aware of the schedule in the future. The place we ate at was once again very nice in food and architecture. It was almost like a large wooden tent that was built around a large pole. 

The restaurant where we had brunch

When found our table, we were greeted by an elderly woman with a warm smile (Johanna's mother) who told me she knew barely any English. I told her that was perfectly fine and she introduced me to her husband who remained quite quiet throughout the meal. We first went to the salad bar, as usual, and got our healthy greens before our main dish came in. In Finland, many restaurants will have about 4 or 5 options for lunch that change daily and a salad bar is included in the meal. While some may not like this system as it does not give much variety, I prefer it because I don't have to spend 10 minutes studying an overwhelming menu of countless options. My main meal was a chicken risotto, which I do not have very often, but I enjoyed. After my risotto we had our usual coffee with biscuits (I had tea). During the meal, everyone spoke mostly Finnish, but from what was translated to me and from the laughter I observed, I figured that Johanna's mother was a very funny lady. After thanking Johanna's parents for the meal, we got back into the car and headed to the movie theater to see Transcendence starring Johnny Depp. We had to turn around, because we forgot the tickets at home, but we still made it to the theater with plenty of time to spare. The theater lobby was quite empty, but most people were probably at their summer cottages or at work. Movie theaters are different in Finland in that you actually get to choose where in the theater you want to sit, as you usually would for an opera or concert. We got seats in the middle, but the lady at the cashier register told us that we could sit wherever we wanted since not many people were probably going to show up. Niklas and Aleksi got a huge popcorn box and Pepsi to share but I just took a regular sized popcorn box. They actually keep the popcorn in refrigerator-like cabinets that really just keep the popcorn luke warm, instead of just getting it fresh from the popcorn maker.

Popcorn in refrigerators?

 We threw all of the seasoning on our popcorn that we could find and Niklas and Aleksi ended up with barbecue, butter, sour cream and onion, jalapeño and cheese flavored seasoning on their bucket of popcorn. I stuck with butter. The movie (Transcendence) was really creepy. However, it did send a good message: there are certain lines that technology should never pass. After the movie, Mika picked us up and we went back to the house. Aleksi was picked up by a friend to go to soccer practice but Niklas, Mika, and I were headed for the Paavo Nurmi Games (Johanna was already volunteering at a nearby hotel where the athletes were staying). I had never been to such a large sports event other than my old school's football games in which a few  hundred people would show up. However, there were a few more people at the Paavo Nuurmi Games. My jaw slowly dropped to the ground as I entered a crowd of over 10,000 people, some of which even came from outside of Finland. 

There were many athletes from other European countries but also countries outside of Europe such as Egypt, Cuba, Mexico, Japan, and the U.S.A. I had so much fun actually seeing professional track and field athletes and watching long jump, high jump, javelin, hammer throw, hurdles, and all sorts of x meter dashes. I think my favorite sports were javelins and hurdles (partly because the woman from the U.S.A. won in hurdles). It was great to see so many people come together from abroad and share their passion for track and field. The closest thing I had seen to this were the Summer Olympic Games, but only on television. I even saw the best Finnish long jumper since the past decade make one of his last jumps as he would be finishing his career in a few weeks. Niklas was brave enough to wait in line for about 30 minutes for a sausage and a drink. We stayed until about 10:00 p.m. when the last races were being held and then headed home for a nice dinner before going to bed. I could barely contain my excitement because I knew I would be seeing some of my FUSYE friends the next day.

My Finnish Hair Cut and The Sibelius Museum

On Monday, June 24, I woke up excited to go to the city again. I woke up at about 10:30 again (still not on a good sleep schedule) and had a short breakfast before me, Niklas, and Johanna drove to the city center for lunch with Mika (Aleksi had floorball practice). The place we went to was amazing. The salmon I had was wonderful (like all the salmon I have had in Finland) but what I enjoyed the most was the design of the restaurant. It was an old brick building and they kept the brick wall and added really nice photos of Rome on the wall and had gave the place a very cozy coffee shop like feel (it's the Finnish version of Urban Standard for my friends back home). I hope I can go back there sometime with my friends who come to visit me. 

The trendy restaurant

More of the city center

Next, Johanna and I left for the tourist information office right across the street as Mika went back to work and Niklas headed to the track and field stadium for his, um, interesting last day of work for his summer job (I'll explain further on in this post). Johanna showed me around the tourist office (she knew a lot of the people there because of her summer job as a tour guide) and luckily it was their open house after their recent renovation. They had a some free books on Turku, which I was quite excited about, and great Rhubarb juice, biscuits, and strawberries which I enjoyed. At about 2:10 p.m. we left for my hair cut appointment. My hair dresser has actually actually my host family's hair dresser for the past 15 years and recently decided she would rather want to have her own hair salon rather. So, she moved into a beautiful apartment overlooking the river in the heart of the city and made one of the rooms her barber shop and the others her living quarters (which is pretty awesome because you can wake up 5 minutes before your first customer's appointment and still make it to work ahead of time). So, Johanna and I were on our way when it slowly started to drizzle. No big deal, we thought, it's rained almost every day and we're quite used to it by now. Wrong. In about 20 seconds the rain kept coming down harder and harder until it was pouring outside.

Rain, rain, go away...

 We quickly ran under the protruding edge of a roof of a house which was barely long enough for us to stand under but kept us dry enough. After about one minute of hurricane weather, the rain completely stopped, the sun came out, the birds started singing again, and everything was just like it had been before. Only a little wetter. After another 3 minutes of walking we arrived at the apartment building and were welcomed in by a very kind and fashionable lady who would be my hair dresser. She was very kind and asked me about life in the U.S. and how I liked Finland so far. 

Finally getting my hair cut!

Her dog was also running around and he was very cute. An hour later I left with a lot less hair and I could finally see the world which made me very happy. Next, Johanna dropped me off at The Sibelius Museum while she ran some errands. I was quite excited to learn more about the famous Finnish composer Jean Sibelius and look at all of the old instruments that the museum has archived as I go to a school for the fine arts with a specialty in music. When I walked in, the museum was completely empty ( it was 30 minutes before closing time) and the lady at the front desk asked if I would like to sit in the concert hall at the heart of the museum and listen to Finlandia, the most famous musical piece of work written by Sibelius. After listening to Finlandia, I walked around half of the museum and looked at all of the old instruments. There weren't many things that had to do Sibelius (it is simply an archive of musical instruments from a nearby Swedish speaking university) but hey had an entire room dedicated to him and had his hat and cane on display as well as some other things. I didn't have much time to look at everything in detail but I got a quick glance of everything but the basement. I knew I would be coming back more than once because there is no admission fee for children under 17 (yes!) and the museum is quite easy to find. It's a very relaxing place and there is always classical or jazz music softly playing in the background.

The concert hall where I listened to Finlandia

I stayed inside until the museum closed, but Johanna picked me up soon after and we headed to the track and field stadium to see Niklas at work. On Wednesday, the Paavo Nurmi Games would be held. The Paavo Nurmi Games are is an international track and field competition but on Tuesday they had a small party for kids to get everyone excited for the games. 

The party/festival

Niklas worked at a grocery store for his summer job so, because the store he worked for was sponsoring the games, he was asked to dress up as the store mascot and entertain the kids. It was certainly very funny (I will try to upload pictures of him once I get the photos from my host mother) to see him dressed up in a monkey costume but the kids loved him. In fact, as I was taking a picture with him, a little girl ran up to him and gave him a big hug and just stayed there for about a minute. It was the cutest photobomb ever. Johanna and I then went around to all of the tents to get all of the free food and stuff that we could get our hands on. 

Spinning the wheel to get some prizes!

However, once it started to rain (again), we left and headed back home. I played some FIFA games with Aleksi when I got home but other than that I had a pretty relaxed evening. I had a great day and looked forward to go to the Paavo Nurmi Games tomorrow as Johanna was volunteering there and got free tickets for me and Niklas!

Messi's happy that we came back home

Let the games begin!

My Second Trip to Porvoo

On Monday, June 23, I woke up with a bit of a headache because I had to wake up at 9:00 a.m. and I went to bed at about 1:20 a.m. Even though I had intentions of going to bed early the night before, I ended up checking what the other FUSYE students were up to. I had a great breakfast of warm croissants with jam and Nutella and a little after 10:00 a.m. I went to the thrift shop with my host mother. She has a small booth there where she goes quite often to reorder and organize her stuff because many people just throw the clothing on the the floor of the booth rather than hang them up once they have tried them on. So, while she was deciding how to reorganize best, I looked around the store. They have mostly clothing but also a large collection of CD's, records, and books. Because Finnish is not a very popular language, it often takes months for American books and movies to be translated into the language only spoken by about 5 million people. As a result, people build up their English skills by reading the English versions of new books and I was lucky enough to find quite a bit of cheap books in English. I ended up buying "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell for only €1! After I bought my book, we went back home to get ready for our 3 hour car ride to Porvoo. I was so excited to go to Porvoo again because I really enjoyed it when I went with the other FUSYE students only a little over a week ago. However, our main reason for the trip was to visit my host mother's goddaughter who was having a small "coffee and cake" party for her 18th birthday. Me, Niklas, Aleksi, and Johanna packed into the car and headed to a restaurant near Mika's workplace. It was an all-you-can-eat buffet and I was quite hungry so I was very glad to see so much good food. After our lunch, we said goodbye to Mika (he had to work) and got back into the car and started our long drive to Porvoo. The ride was pretty fun though because I enjoyed listening to the radio and hearing the occasional Finnish pop song or rap. After about 1.5 hours we stopped in the large suburb of Espoo (where my last host family lived) and picked up a very good friend of Johanna who was the other godmother of the girl we were visiting. We then drove for about 20 minutes before stopping at the Brunberg Chocolate Factory! We were only able to see the factory through the window of the gift shop but I could taste almost every single type of candy one could buy. 

The Brunberg Factory

As you can probably imagine, this experience was like The Fazer Factory Part II but I managed to make it back to the car after buying a small packet of fruit sweets. We then drove a bit longer and finally arrived at the apartment for the birthday party (the apartment was on the same street as the café where I had lunch with my FUSYE friends during our visit!). The apartment was small but very nicely decorated. The girl's room even had a balcony and part of the wall was a chalkboard with inspirational quotes, which I found pretty creative. The mother said that she had been in the mood for baking the day before so she ended up making three cakes: one strawberry, one blueberry, and one chocolate! The strawberry cake was my favorite but I only has two slices because I was still so full from the all-you-can-eat buffet lunch. We then all talked to one another (but they mostly spoke in Finnish) while a German soap opera was running on the TV in the background. Two cups of tea later, we said our "moika's" and did a bit of sightseeing before we got back into the car. We actually went to see the same exact church that I saw with my FUSYE friends (it's the most popular site in Porvoo) and we walked down the same beautiful streets. 

However, this time it wasn't raining and I could see the sun peeking out from behind the clouds.

Porvoo is a pretty small town and quite empty, but it's very beautiful and one of my favorite places in Finland.

 After our nice walk, we got back into the car and started on our way back home. We dropped off my host mom's friend on the way but other than that and a stop at a McDonalds for dinner (yes, it tastes the same) we didn't waste any time coming home and arrived at about 11:00 p.m. 

McDonalds in Finland

I had a great day and also ended up learning quite a bit of song lyrics from the radio on our long drive. I went to bed excited to visit the Sibelius Museum and finally get a much needed hair cut the next day.