More Updates? WELL, okay! :)

Heeeeeej again!!
Like I promised, this is part 3 of the update!! This one is going to be mostly about my city, Porvoo!!

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOLD TOOOOOOOOWN!!

This is my absolutely favorite part of the city! It's so beautiful and the atmosphere.. it's indescribable. I'll show you some photos! : D

So take my figurative hand and scroll back in time!!

Cobblestone roads... I'm in love!

DID YOU KNOW...?

~ Porvoo is one of the 6 medieval cities in all of Finland 

~ Porvoo gained city right in 1380, however some sources say that it was a city way back to 1346

~ Porvoo is Finland's second oldest city

~ Porvoo hosts a cluster of energy and environmental technology enterprises 

This is one of the entrances to the church in the Old Town.

And this is the church!

The church actually had been burnt by an arsonist in 2006? They rebuilt almost the entire church!

It's SO beautiful!

And now a messy, out of whack collage of the Finnish flowery!!

      There are just a bunch of different shops here too! Clothes shops, cafes, flower shops.. in fact, I think that that store has something to do with cheese buuuuuut I'm not 100% sure... :P There are a million cute cafes and dessert shops, OH and there's a Brunberg's shop too! They are these aaaaaamazing chocolate manufactorer and we have both the shop in Old Town and we have the ACTUAL factory too! I've been fortunate enough to have visited both aaand try a bunch of different things! :)

That's all I have for right now but there will be definitely be more! Thanks for reading and stay tuned! : D

Part 2 of the update!! :)

Hej Everyone,
This is just a continuation of my other update! So.. yeah that's about it : D !

This is just Michael, my second host dad on our boat! Like I said in my other post (if you don't know what I'm talking about, go check it out), we have a summer house in Sarfsalö so we obviously have a boat and skiing and wakeboarding stuff!! : D i haven't actually done any skiing or wakeboarding yet because it was TOOOO cold!! But we have gone boating, in fact we've boated from Sarfsalö to Borgå and if we wanted we could boat to Estonia!! How cool is that?!

Just some pictures from when we were on the water :)

Okay, so these fish (not sure what type they are) swim all around and they are about 3-4 inches long. You can eat them, I have. You just take the scales and bones out and then you eat them! They haven't been my favorite things to eat.. but it was definitely something new.. even if it wasn't that tasty. :)

CRAYFISH PARTY!! Or kräftskiva in Swedish! This is a very popular Finnish tradition where people come together and eat crayfish, drink, dance and well.. just have a lot of fun! They usually only have them during the summer and maybe in September. I've been to 2 so far, one in Sarfsalö and one at home! In Sarfsalö, we had about 70 people in this hall and we had a live band play, The Motions and we had crayfish, sausages, salad, and bread to eat! It was delicious!!! While we ate, we would stop and sing these "snaps" songs, they basically are silly songs that people will sing then take shots! Of course I didn't drink, I didn't want to break any Rotary rules. Then after we ate the band started playing and everyone (pretty intoxicated by now) would start dancing on the dance floor! By midnight, they had pulled out some more sausages and these things called "Chocolate Kisses" for a midnight snack! Also very good! We also had this competition where there was a bottle of wine and a bottle of whiskey put on the ground and then about 10 m away was a line and you had to slide/toss a euro and whomever was closest won the bottle. I think that, that competition lasted an hour! In the end, there were 2 men who had their euro touching the bottle! It was so intense!!!!!!

This is just a picture of what the table looked like while we were eating! It's a messy meal!! The other picture is just where on the crayfish we had to get the meat off of!

This is what the crayfish looked like.. before we started eating them :) !

Swedish Snaps Songs (Good luck trying to understand them!)

Host Mom and Host Dad burning up the dance floor! (Catherine and Michael)

EVERONE'S DANCING NOW!!!!

This is the "Chocolate Kiss" I was talking about, It's a thin shell of chocolate then the inside is full of this flavored sweet mousse and on the bottom in a layer of wafer. SOOOOOO GOOOOOD!!!! this one was strawberry flavored but there is a lemon, banana, mocha, mint, vanilla, blueberry, and umm.. I can't remember anymore :) .

See? A good ole fun timee all around : D!

I have made quite a few friends and I have been hanging out with some. There is this girl, her name is Sophie Bannatyne, and she lives just a 5 minute bike ride away from me! We've become quite close and have spent a lot of time together, we also have a lot of the same classes together : D: D! But to be honest, in the beginning of school it was really hard to even have a conversation in school. Rotary told me "The Finns are shy, remember that." and I was like "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. We'll see about that!" ...OH MAN, are they ever shy!! I didn't even realize it! For the first couple of weeks I didn't say ANYTHING to anybody. I just didn't know what to say and I was too scared to go up and ask something becasue I thought that I would probably embarrass myself! But now, I have come to realize how dumb I was to think that and I now know how great my classmates are! Just a tip for any future exchange students, BE OUT-GOING AS HELL, you definitely won't regret it! Because if you won't, it's just going to make your exchange that much harder! And the truth is that the other classmates in your class are probably just as eager to talk to you as you are of them!

This is Muriel Unden, she's the other exchange student in my school. She actually isn't on excchange with Rotary, she's with some other program. But we spend every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday from 10-11:30 am because of our extra Swedish lessons! We also have lunch together and we have become good friends :). She's 18, so she's a bit older than I am and she's also from Belgium and speks French as her mothertongue! That's another great aspect of this exchange, I've met so many people from all over the world, you wouldn't even be able to imagine! It is so great to have met them because they are going through the exact same things that you are and you can always talk to them! They also effect your opinions and thoughts so much, just because they bring many things you've never even thought about before AND the similarities just makes you realize how small the world really is at the same time! It's undescribable.

This is actually just a regular parking sign in Borgå, there was just something small I wanted to point out was that the sign is written in BOTH Finnish and Swedish. It's the same with all of the products too. The thing is that Finnish is almost always written first because Swedish is a minority. Sort of like English and French in Canada. Minus the signs part.

There will be a Part 3 of the update!! : D Just wait, thanks for reading!!

SO.. I'm the worst blogger ever!

Heeej Everyone!!

I would just like to say I'm so sorry for being the worst blogger in the world.. but I'll update you on EVERYTHING!

 So it's just over my second month in the fantastic country of Finland! :):):) I am still head over heels in love with everything!!! My host family, Porvoo, my school, my exchange group.. and well just EVERYTHING!

 This is a picture of the countryside right by my host family's house! I and took this during my first week actually living in Porvoo! This was one of the first things I had noticed when I first arrived, was how many trees there were! Coming from a MAJOR farming community (and province for that matter!!), seeing so much forest in one area and not seeing miles and miles of crops was.. mind blowing and absolutely beautiful. I have fallen in  love with all over nature!

This is picture of a portion of my first host mom's garden!

Our backyard!!! : D

The garage and driveway!! :)

Karlsson Home <3

SAUNA (or bastu in Swedish :D) There is also one inside our house and that one is more modern than the one outside (this one) and I have never been in the one in the house!

Sauna-ing is also another event that I have been fortunate enough to experience, and I know what you're thinking. "Sauna-ing isn't that big of a deal. I do it all the time when I go swimming.". Well guess what, it is a big deal cause I did it the Finnish way. Naked. Bet you haven't done that :P. But anyways, it's actually not that big of a deal. I know I've told my friends and family back home and they're like "ARE YOU CRAZY?" or "isn't it awkward just sitting in a hot, sweaty room naked?" But actually no, it isn't. it's not like you're just sitting there and staring at eachother. You honestly just sit there and relax. You don't think, don't worry, don't stress and just forget about everything. It has got to be one of the most relaxing things I have done in my life! I know my mom and dad were like "... well what did you talk about in there?" That's also another thing you don't really do, you don't say very much to eachother and if you do you it's just a very general question about school or something. Gaaah.. I don't know how to explain it! It's just one of the most natural, not awkward things you can do! But you'll have to try before you understand ;)

This is the river that runs right beside my house! In the summer, I can just walk 10 minutes up the road and just go swimming in the river!

 These are Mopos. and I wish I had one. You're allowed to get a license for them when you're 15, HOWEVER, if you're an exchange student, you get your license for them.... never :( !

They have everything in pear here! Pear pop, pear juice, pear gum, pear chocolate, pear cider AND MOOORE!!It's so unbelievably delicious! : D

Just examples :)

Now I'm living with the Antman family : D! SO I'm now 5 minutes away from the city center and school! There are my host parents, Catherine and Mikael, my host siblings, Cecilia and Robert and the cat, Maya! Cecilia doesn't live with us in Porvoo though, she's studying biochemistry in Turku so she's lives there with her boyfriend. So I went from being the oldest in my family, to now being the youngest! And honestly, I don't know why my little sister complains so much! It's not that bad :).

Meet Robert Antman, my big brother :) ! He's 18 and cheers for Jokerit and he likes to eat, sleep and party!! He also used to play hockey and when he grows up, he wants to be Indiana Jones. He's super nice and fun and well.. just great in general! : D. He's the best big brother I could have hoped to have :). 

So the Antman's have a summer house at Sarfsalö and we have gone there quite a bit! It's about an hour away from our home in Porvoo and it's in the famous archipelagos of Finland :). It's also unbelievably beautiful!

This is a picture of the sauna (bastu) and the summer house :)

This is the otehr building we have, it's used mostly for storage but we can also have crayfish parties in there too!! Our bikes and wood is stored there and behind it we have our old  blue John Deere tractor : D !!

This is our front yard and driveway! We have 2 different apple trees that grow there and we also have a table for eating outside! in the backyard, we have a volleyball net and a whole portion of forest just for ourselves :) :).

Mushrooms, blueberries and strawberries grow wild in the forest and we're allowed to pick as much as we want! I've personally spent many hours just picking mushrooms and walking around in the forest! Another thing I have discovered that I love to do! :)

Welll it's getting quite late over here so I'm going to turn in for the night but I will finish updating you guys ASAP! Thanks for reading!

BYYE! :)

A Little About Me..

Hej Everyone!


This is my first ever blog, so bare with me here! I haven't even left Canada yet and I'm so excited! It's only 18 days before I hop onto the plane and get whisked away to Borgå Finland! I'm leaving August 6th and arriving in Helsinki on August 7th.


I got accepted as a Rotary Exchange student earlier this year (the reason I'm going to Finland) and have been growing more eager and excited to just leave and start my adventure! I've been dreaming of the day I would leave the small town of Vegreville, Alberta and what a way to do it!


My fam jam of 5 consists of my younger brother, Austin (14) and younger sister, Abby (10) and of course my mom and dad. So that makes me the oldest of 3 kids, I'm 15, turning 16 on August 4th (wink wink.)My family is really important to me, they're a big part of who I am today and I don't just mean immediate family, I'm talking about the whole works here. We're part of a very closely knit family, so we're also really close with our aunties, uncles, grandparents and cousins, etc. There are countless times during the year where we will have HUUUGE family get togethers or they'll just pop over fro UFC or supper. We also travel a lot together, we went to Mexico for a wedding, my sister and I have taken many trips with our grandparents around Alberta and Saskatchewan. When I was younger, I used to go to Nanaimo, British Columbia for 2 weeks in the summer to hang with my Aunty Jen and Uncle Nick. They'd take me around the island with me and tell me stories of they're travels. I guess that would be the start of my love for travel.


In this past year, I've travelled a bit through school programs. In March, I went on a 2 week trip to Ireland, Wales and London with about 25 other students. Tons of fun! A few monts later I went on a SEVEC exchange with Prince Edward Island, it also lasted 2 weeks. 1 week where they came and stayed with us in Alberta and the second week we spent in PEI with them. Both trips were spectacular, and  yet they just me anticipate my year-long Rotary Exchange even more.


ANYWAYS, I'll share with you what I know so far about my exchange.
1. I have 3 host families (Ingmar & Maj Karlsson, Michael and Catherine, Manda Karlsson)
2. Maj and Ingmar have a daughter my age, Karin and she's going to Ontario the same time I'm going to Finland. Michael and Catherine have 2 children, Robert (18) and Cecilia (21).
3. My schooling is Swedish as well as 2 of my host families.
4. Swedish is a... uh very unique language to learn.
5. This is going to be an amazing experience. :)


Follow my story if you'd like, feel free to comment.