Hyvää syntymäpäivää

My host mum wanted to do something nice for my birthday so the night before she threw me a party! We spent all that day baking. I baked pavlova and lamingtons, my host mum baked 2 finnish pies and my host sister baked cookies! When my friends arrived the room became very international! We had people from Finland, Germany, Australia and South Korea! My friends and I spent 2 hours eating and talking about our home countries compared to Finland! 

My pavlova! Be proud mum...

Afterwards we all watched 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower', while we ate chips and dip, even though we were all so full!

The next morning I was woken up by my host family singing happy birthday to me, first in English and then in Finnish. When I came downstairs it felt like christmas! I had a lot of pressies to open, including 5 pakages from home! 

My cousin gave me this attractive birthday sash... and it gets better... it flashes! 

My host family gave me lots of winter wollies to help me survive the cold! I got a beanie, a tube scarf and gloves! They also gave me a beautiful wood braclet and earings from a famous Finnish jewerlly store. 

My family in Australia gave me a cute little collection of stuffed toys. The one on the left is from mum and dad, the one in the middle is from Hayden (of course) and the one on the right is from Elli <3 

My host sister, Fiona and I :)

All my birthday pressies!

The next door neighbours even gave me these gorgeous pink roses! The little 5 year old girl wrote the card! It was really special :)

For my birthday I got jelly from Australia! Evidently Finland doesn't have jelly and my host sister and Fiona were really excited! It was really yummy. 

That afternoon we went to watch Akseli play in his soccer tournament. 

It was freezing cold! At leats it gave me a chance to wear my new winter wollies! 

After soccer Akseli had his party! Those of you who know me know I love jumping castles. At the party there were two of them! My 16th birthday wish came true! We spent hours on them. There were also two segways (be jealous Hayden), two go-carts, a massive blow up ball thingy and sumo suits!! It was a really fun afternoon. 

Helsinki

On wednesday Fiona and I decided to go touristing in Helsinki as our day was really short, finishing school at 1pm. The day was pretty horrible, it was rainy, windy and quite cold, but this didn't stop us! We caught the train from Kauklahti (where we live) to Helsinki. The first stop was the highest bar in Helsinki. Of course we didn't go to the bar but we looked at the manificant view! We didn't have a map and couldn't find where to get one so we looked where we should go next from up there! We could see over the whole of Helsinki!

The highest bar in helsinki...

We decided to head to the Kiasma Art Gallery Museum. When we go their we discover that half the museum was closed and it was going to cost us 8 euro's to go in, so we ditched it and headed off in the direction we thought was the famous white church. 

On the way we passsed some beautiful buildings and stautues. 

We were pretty proud of our navigating skills as we made it there without any problems and without a map! We were taking photos when the doors of the church suddenly flew open and all these people started flooding out, all dressed in black. Camera crews were even there. I still have no idea what that was about. We were lucky enough to be able to go in afterwards. The church has around 400,000 people visit it every day either for services, concerts or to just look around! 

We then walked through the streets to the harbour. 

On our way we came to another famous church in Helsinki. This one is orthodox. It was green and gold (felt a bit aussie) and just as beautiful as the other one but in a different way. 

On the way back we felt like such tourists as we found one of these things and had to get a photo in it!

Visit to the grandparents

Last weekend my host family took me to visit their grandparents house. The grandparents live near the middle of Finalnd. It was 5 hours drive from Espoo (where I live). We left on friday afternoon and arrived friday night. Their house is in the middle of the country side and is very beautiful! It is also 20 metres from a huge lake. As it is further up north than espoo, autumn had already come and all the leaves on the trees were yellow and red and were starting to fall off onto the ground. It was like I was in a story book as in Australia we dont really have autumn and it was such a new experience. 

As soon as we got there, I was greeted and hugged by the grandparents. They didn't speak any english and were 'traditional' Finns. The grandpa made Akseli translate that they have the worlds best sauna and 2 minutes later the grandma was rushing me and Selma off to the sauna. The number one rule in Finland is you sauna completly naked. Part of being an exchange studnet is to do what your host family does, so following Selmas lead, we stripped off and in we went. Here I met the aunty. To anyone else it would be very weird meeting someone for the first time completly naked, but not to the finns. She smiled shook my hand and Selma and her showed me 'what to do' in the sauna. This involved a bucket of hot water and tipping it all over us. They all laughed at how weird I thought this all was but I do admit I loved it and the experience. After sauna the grandma gave us all rice porriadge. My host family calls it the worlds best rice porriadge. Even though it is the only rice porriadge I have ever tasted I very much agree. It was delicious!

We woke up early Saturday morning and headed off to the markets with the grandpa. We were selling leather glooves and scarfs that were hand made by the aunty. It was a gorgeous sunny day and we stayed there for 5 hours selling our glooves, looking at other stalls and drinking hot chocolate. Selma caught a frog and I found a lot of lady birds. Topi (my host family's dog) even came along to help out. 

When we arrived back at the grandparents house, Selma took me for a tour of their garden. They had every type of fruit growing there and we just picked what we wanted off the tree and ate it! The apples were the best. I ate over 10 while I was there!

Tomatos...

 Strawberries...

Apples...

Selma and I then walked down to the lake. It was very beautiful and we got some great photos. It was quite a hot day and we ended up having a huge water fight and getting soaked. 

We then met up with the family friends we went to linnanmaki with as they were staying at their grandparents just down the road. We rode our bikes to their grandparents house. It was just as pretty as my host family's grandparents house. They also had a lot of fruit trees and were even drying out a whole lot of apples. The grandma was very interested in Australia and made poor selma translate a lot of questions. They then took us out on their boat. It was a lot of fun. 

When we got back they invited us to their sauna. We followed their car with our bikes along a dirt road for about 10 minutes before coming to a gorgeous private lake with a wooden sauna building on the edge. The grandpa dug out the huge lake by himself. This grandma liked the sauna very hot! We would sauna for 10 minutes and then run and jump in the freezing cold lake and then run back to the sauna. It was very fun and very finnish! We stayed here all afternoon.