Introduction

Hei!

My name is Vinzent, I am a recipient of the Finland U.S.-Senate Youth Exchange (FUSYE) scholarship, and I would like to welcome you to my blog! I am incredibly excited to embark on what I believe will be an eye-opening journey and I invite you to join me on my adventures through this blog. However, before my adventure begins, here is some information on what exactly I will be doing for 6 amazing weeks of my summer.

The FUYSE scholarship is a nearly full scholarship from Youth For Understanding (YFU), sponsored by the U.S. Senate and the Finnish government, for American high school students to experience Finland as exchange students and aims to strengthen relations between these two countries. During my 6 week stay in Finland I will tour some of the major cities and companies in Finland and meet the Ambassador for the U.S. with the rest of the scholarship recipients for 1 week, after which I will take a train to a yet to be announced city or town to stay in a host family for 5 weeks. But the adventure begins before I even set foot in Finland! Before my departure for Finland, I will spend 3 days in Washington D.C. with the other scholarship recipients from all over the U.S. and we will meet and have dinner with the Ambassador for Finland as well as meet the Senator of my home state. We will also have the opportunity to meet the Finnish exchange students (so excited!) from the FYAP program (the Finnish counterpart for FUSYE) and will visit D.C. tourist attractions and the Smithsonian with them before they embark on their journey in the U.S. 

I'm not really sure how often I will post on this blog, so don't expect a regular schedule, but I will try to post every now and then. This is also the first blog I have ever had so this is something completely new to me! I'll be learning how to manage the blog as I go along but I think there is a comments section so feel free to ask questions or leave comments and I may reply to them! However, my main focus will be experiencing Finland, so I may only make short replies and posts.

Although I am very interested to learn about Finland, I wouldn't exactly call myself a scholar on Finland. However, I'm extremely excited to learn more about this unique country and experience all that I can. At the moment, I do not know where I will be placed through YFU or who my host family will be. I don't even know more than three words of Finnish. All I know is that this will be one of the most memorable experiences of my life and I can't wait to share it with the world.