Two weekends ago, I went with my host family to Stockholm by ship! 'Twas a fantastic trip, naturally. We left from Helsinki at about 6 in the evening, bags stowed away in our surprisingly spacious cabins. The ship had lots of different types of entertainment, from shopping and dining to karaoke and dancing. After exploring most of the ship, eating dinner, singing some karaoke, and watching lots of black jack, we went to bed - and woke up just outside of Stockholm.
The area was absolutely gorgeous, as far as I could tell (it was foggy and snowing at the time). There were largish, pine covered hills with perfectly spaced chunks of granite poking out here and there, and the snow added a mystical and quiet aura to the air. After eating breakfast on the ship, we went out into Stockholm. It was incredibly beautiful (even more beautiful than Helsinki, I must admit) for two reasons. The first reason is that the city was never bombed in any war, so the buildings standing today are quite old and nice. The second is that the city has so much water in the middle of it (much of the city is built on islands), you can see across various bays and bodies of water to the other parts of the city. It was really nice to have that much visibility - it didn't feel crowded at all.
We first went to the Terracotta warrior exhibit (the Terracotta warriors from China, slightly famous, you may have heard of them). There were about 130 of the figures there. I was startled by the intricacy and detail put into them all those years ago - and by how much that intricicy has been preserved.
We then went sight seeing and shopping in the old part of Stockholm. I tried "kokosbollar", a very Swedish sweet consisting of nuts, chocolate, coconut, and some sort of cream filling. Quite tasty indeed. Then I met up with Liz Streeter, an Alaskan exchange student living in Stockholm. We had gotten to know each other in Alaska before we left for our exchanges. With her I saw some other parts of Stockholm, and then we went Fika-ing (a sort of going-for-coffee plus socializing art form...I didn't really understand it). And then it was back to the ship! Late that night the Helsinki-bound ship stopped in Ahvenanmaaa (Åland) to load and unload a few cars. Ahvenanmaa is officially part of Finland, but as it is an "autonomous region", it has its own flag, laws, and language (Swedish).
The next morning we were back in Helsinki, and I went straight from the ship's harbor to the center of Helsinki to cath the bus that would take me to the location of our Rotary camp, Tammisaari (Ekenäs). That day, the exchange students in my Rotary district (1420, if you want to know) and I just spent some time visiting, playing games, and dancing. The next morning we talked a bit about how our exchange has been going to far, and what our goals are in the near future for exhange. My main goal for now is the language. Finns do appreciate it when they are spoken to in Finnish, rather than English. I think too many exchange students in Finland don't learn even a bit of Finnish, and to me that was rather sad. Thus, it is my goal to learn as much Finnish as possible in the rest of the year.
Anyway, after that it was back to Porvoo for another week of school...which I really don't mind so much. :D
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