This happens to be the first post of my new blog, which was created to keep y'all Alaskans (and otherwise) informed of my doings in Finland. I'll get right into it.
I began my journey to Finland at aprox. 1:40 AM on August 7th with my flight from Anchorage to Phoenix. It was a horrible flight. Then I went to Philadelphia. An even worse flight. However, in the Philadelphia airport I met 17 other exchange students from all over the US. We all took the same flight to Frankfurt, where we met 10 more exchange students from Canada, France, and Germany. We flew into the Helsinki/Vantaa airport and loaded up onto a bus. I traveled for 36 hours total. (Sidenote: somehow, none of us ever went through customs. Our visas were never even looked at.)
We took this bus to Karkku, the site of a Finnish/Estonian/Swedish culture/language camp. We stayed there for a week and learned (you guessed it) language and culture. We spent one afternoon in Tampere, a neighboring city, and we also visited old churches and historical sites in the area. All of us exchange students got to know each other quite well.
Last Saturday (the 13th), I finally got to my host family (the Kettunens) and city (Porvoo/Borgå). It's a beautiful city of 50,000 on the banks of the Porvoo River (Porvoonjoki/Borgå å). My host family is absolutely wonderful. They're very kind, hostpitable, and humorous. They've already planned many trips for us to do while I'm here.
No comments:
Post a Comment