Friday- I got off school at 1 and Outi picked me up with all my clothes and everything and we went to the train station. I was kind of nervous to take the train by myself because ive never done this before in canada. it wasnt scary at all. when I got on, there was someone in almost every single group of seats and finns dont sit beside eachother so i just found an empty one and then sat there until Kuopio when everyone got off. at kuopio i had to wait for 20 minutes while my train changed routes techincally. it was going from Oulu-Kuopio when i got on and then it was going from Kuopio-Kouvala after so it had to like wait a while for people. I dont know.
but during the wait in kuopio, Rebeka (brazil), gustavo (ecuador), katharina and kiara (germany) got on too and i knew them kind of and i had talked to them about taking the train together. so yeah and then the train ride went really fast and it wasnt scary and yaaaaaa.
when we got to the train station in Pieksamaki, there was nobody there. so we basically just wandered around until we found someone... we ended up finding amelie from quebec and then we all started taking some group pictures.. (like exchange students usually do...) and then the rotarians walked in. they were really nice and they took us to the camp. we were the first group there. there was only one person, Lucie who was there already because she had come with one of the rotarians. we sat around and people drank coffee and we laughed and got to know eachother. there are 19 people in my district, 5 boys and 14 girls. and they are all very different. some are very shy and some are very outgoing.
on friday night once everyone was there we had dinner and then we sat in the girls cabin (not sure how it was decided that our cottage was the leisure/party/hangout hall but it was....) we all sat in a circle and the rotarians and rotex were there too and we all just talked about our host families and school and the language and whether we were having any troubles. rotary just wanted to check up on us. it was realy nice actually to be able to sit and have this conversation with everyone because the more you listen to what they say, the more you realize that everyones going through the same problems (although i dont have any problems with my family, the language or school)
after that, we went to sauna and we went swimming in the lake and it was so cold but it felt so good. and it was manoels birthday so we all sang to him like 3 times and gave him and Andrea (who's birthday was on saturday) cake and sang to them and gave them presents and yeah!
after that, the party continued at our cottage. the only horrible thing is that the cottage was 2 floors but the top floor was kind of just a loft, so everyone trying to sleep on the top floor could hear every word of the people on the bottom floor. I stayed up until about 1:30 i think before i tried to go to bed. TRIED being the key word. i didnt succeed. people were running around the house and slamming doors and playing music so finally at 3:30, i yelled 'can you all just go to sleep so that the rest of us can finally go to sleep? we all have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.' and they did :D yay for 4 hours of sleep!
on saturday morning, we had breakfast at 9 (at least they let us sleep in!!) and then we packed lunches for our hike. the hike took about 2 hours. i think it was like 8 kilometres, i dont remember through. but it wasnt that bad. we stopped for lunch and started a fire and cooked our Makkara on the fire and it was fun :)
after we went back, we played volleyball for a bit and just hung out until we went to meet the rest of the rotarians who had been in meetings all day, as well as the rebounds. i actually dont know if anybody from the Siilinjarvi club came because I didnt see them there when i was there.... who knows. Erkka was there though.
after this, we had dinner (at 3:30 which is really early...) and then we had the camp olympics. we were in 4 teams and had to run up this hill and at the top of the hill there was a piece of paper taped to the tree and we had to read the lyrics and try and memorize them and then run back and write them down. the team to get the lyrics the most correct the fastest won. GUESSS WHO WON. my team. oh and we had to then sing the song.... which was the finnish national anthem :D and its been stuck in my head ever since. its so catchy.
after that, i forget what we did.... we might have all written our letters. we all had to write letters to ourselves 1 year from now. it was a lot harder than the last letter i wrote to myself (at wanakita that i will recieve in february). this one was much harder so i just ended up writing different things. and then someone had the idea that we would all write messages to the future ourselves. so we all signed eachothers things and yeah :D so that was cool..
somewhere during this, people started dancing. mostly the mexicans but then the more people joined in, it just got louder and hotter and there were so many people dancing in such a small space. it was really fun though. and we danced like popular dances from many different countries. but mostly mexico and brazil because the latinos LOVE to dance. its insane
i think at around 1, a few of us went into one of the bedrooms just because we wanted some peace and quiet and away from the crowds. when we heard call me maybe on the radio at like 2, we got really excited. when we went out, almost half the people were gone and it was mostly just us so we all just kept dancing. we danced until 4:30am.....
at this point, Sarah (USA) and I just decided that there was no point in going to bed. I think around 5 or 5:30, Manoel, Caique, Shelby, Rebeka and Katharina went to bed but Pedro, Sarah and I all stayed up all night... we were so hungry all the night. so when morning finally came, we were dying for breakfast. we werent even that tired, until right before breakfast, because we just needed food.
and then this morning, we just went to breakfast and then came to the train station..
everyone! mexico, ecuador, brazil, canada, usa, germany, taiwan, :)
oh but all of my leg muscles are killing me from running/hiking/dancing. :P
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