Day 14

6:30 comes way too early in the morning for my liking. I woke up early this morning, ready to go to school for 8. It is about a 10-15 minute walk, and because I'm 'Finnish' I had to be early. I had French first this morning (2nd best class next to english) and I knew what was going on 80% of the time. We didn't really do anything exciting, and when class was over, I went home. I didnt want to sit at the school for 2 hours so I went home and relaxed. :) I think I got home at about 9:40 and didnt have to leave until 11:20 so I had lots of time to do nothing at home. Then I went back to school for English 7, which wasnt exciting either. The whole class is based on nature, kind of boring but it works. Im finding english really easy and actually helpful because a lot of it is translating Finnish into English, so I am learning new Finnish words. I have to be able to see them to learn them, which makes the class even more helpful. After class I came home and now I'm not sure what I'm going to do. At 7 or 8 I am going to this concert thing in the centre (the downtown) with Roosa and her friends. And then I am going to sleep for like 15 hours because I am exhausted.

School gets better and better each day. Yesterday, I couldn't find my art class and I was walking down the hall and then I started to go downstairs to find someone I knew and this girl ran after me and was like 'HEY CANADA!! come with me!!' and she helped me find my class. All these people know who I am but I have no clue who they are. Yesterday also, I passed a guy on the main floor (the 3rd. There are 4). and he was like 'HI!', so I said hi back and continued walking. He went down a staircase and I walked down a hall to go to a different one. When I got down the staircase, I walked out the door, got almost to my locker and he walked passed me again 'HI!!'. I don't know his name, and have never been introduced to him (that I remember. I've met way too many people) but again today, I passed him in the hall and he yelled 'HI!'. I have to remember to be friends with this extremely outgoing Finn. (Did I mention that you are looked at funny if you even remotely smile at someone while passing them? I struggle with this a lot. I can't help but smile. So I just do it anyways. They look at me like I am foreign and continue on...) I'm glad its the weekend so I can catch up on my sleep. SOOOO TIREDDDDDD.


I will write more tonight after I get home from the centre festival concert thing :)
BYE, XXXX


ps: one last thing about my school. It has no bells. You have no idea when youre supposed to be in class or when youre supposed to get out. All the teachers just rely on the clocks but every clock in the school is different so there are always a billion people in the hall by the time your class even gets out. And in the morning, there are people in the hall and you just wait by your classroom, and then when people start to disappear, you know its time for class. Its so different from Canada, where you have a bell to warn you that class is going to start, a bell that class is starting, and then a bell that class is ending. Not in Finland. You just have to guess :) Oh and I don't know if I've wrote this anywhere yet, but my school is super tiny but has 4 floors and only 300 people. That's like the size as my grade at IDCI. Oh and my school has an elevator and people use it to get from the 1st floor to the 2nd floor or the 2nd floor to the 3rd floor and so on. SO LAZY. Take the 15 steps. And the staircases are spirally and its cool! And the inside of the school is painted orange and blue (so much better than the white walls of IDCI). I have a locker on the bottom but the lockers are split weird so each person has room to hang something up. I dont exactly know how to explain it... I'll take a picture some day and put it on here. Its weird but cool. But I'm leaving now. bye :)

Sorry I didn't finish writing this when I got home, I was so tired. It is now Saturday. Last night was a lot of fun. I went to Roosa's at about 5:30 and then we waited for her friends to get ready and then walked with 2 of her friends to the centre, which took FOREVER. We finally got there at like 8:15. At first, I was kind of lost because there were people everywhere speaking Finnish. After a little while, we found   another group of our friends, which included the Mexican exchange student, Arlene. After that, we all hung out in a huge group and spoke mostly English so both of us understood. We took about 600 pictures on Roosa's camera, (I will save them to my computer later ). It was a good night and I made a bunch of new friends.

Tiia, Arlene, me and Roosa. :)