Tourist Tuesdays

Last week was my exam week. Since the only exams I had were maths and english, I got a lot of time off school. On Tuesday I decided to go touristing in Helsinki. 

I awoke to icicles on my window! The temperature outside was -8 degrees but still no snow had come! Outside everything was covered in frost including roofs, fields, roads and ponds had even frozen over. The ground was also quite slippery! Even though it was so cold, it was a really lovely day as the sun was out which meant all the ice sparkeled :)

I caught the train into Helsinki. I first walked round to stockmann, which is a huge shop in the middle of Helsinki. Its the only place where you can buy magazines in english. After settling on a British magazine, I went next door to starbucks. With a coffee in one hand and a magazine in the other I walked across the street to maccas. It was a pretty perfect lunch. 

When I was ready to conquor the cold again, I caught a tram to the National Museum of Finland. It was a huge church/castle like building. 

The museum was really interesting! It was qutie different learning about the history of Finland compared to Australia. Instead of kangaroos or possums there were deers and elks. Instead of the convict era there was the iceage and the viking period. 

Since it was a weekday, the museum was quite deserted. Walking the huge halls by myself was a little bit on the freaky side. I could hear my footsteps echoing and everytime I opened a door it would make a really loud screeching sound. It didn't help that the musum was absolutly massive! 

I spent at least 2 hours in museum and as you can see, I took quite a lot of photos. 

When I finally made it to the top level, I came across a 'hands on kids zone'. This (and the weapons room) were my favourite parts of the museum. There was a lady working there who made me sit on this throne. She told me to think about all the things I would do if I was king... I did say it was for kids. 

After the museum I walked round to the big, white church. There was a huge christmas tree in front of it. After being asked by at least 3 tourists to take a photo for them, I finally got my own photos. It was exciting that it was such a nice day, blue sky here is rare. 

It is also cold enough now for iceskating! They turned the ground into an icerink in the middle of Helsinki! 

Starbucks

This week the first starbucks opened in Helsinki! The only other one is at the airport so the whole of Finland was super excited. To us in Australia, starbucks is pretty normal as we have quite a bit of them but to people here in Finland, starbucks is amazing. We had to que for 30 minutes just to order our drinks. It was absolutly packed with people! I went with Olli and Fiona and later on Tiina joined us too :) We were there around 2:30pm in the afternoon and already it was really dark outside and felt like at least 6pm. 

Once we had got our drinks and were sitting down, we started to watch the people around us. Every single one of them would line up their drinks and take a photo to show all their friends that they're at starbucks? We decided to join in and here's our starbucks drink shot.. my new name is Arianna. I'm still confused as to how they got Arianna from Breanna. 

Since christmas is not far away, Helsinki was covered in christmas trees and lights! It took me a while to comprehend that all the trees in Finland are real! In Australia most, if not all of our trees are fake! I guess the weather isn't right for real christmas trees. 

Helsinki Chocolate Festival!

This saturday I meet up with my host mum's friends daughter called Siiri. I went with her family to a chocolate festival in Helsinki! I have never seen so much chocolate and so many people in one place. It was a really yummy afternoon. The ticket to get in was the most delicious raspberry and strawberry white chocolate bar. Once inside we then taste tested lots of different chocolates. We even got a chocolate lollipop.  There was not only chocolate though, there was coffee and wine. 

After wondering around for a while, we went to watch a chocolate sculpting show. It took us a while to actually figure out what he was making but we think he was sculpting earth. We were expecting some amazing creation so this weird green and blue ball with clouds around it was a bit of a let down. 

I got quite a collection of chocolate from the festival... Overall it was a really nice day :)

Mushroom Hunting

This weekend my host family and their Aunty and Uncle took me mushroom hunting. The uncle is an environmentalist and he knows all about navigating and which mushrooms and berries are safe to eat so he took us deep into the forest. We each had our own bucket and by the end of the day they were completly full with mushrooms. We collected so many that we are going to be eating mushrooms the rest of the time I am here! Finnish forest is very different to our Australian bush. It is much more wet and at one stage we were hiking in swamp with water up past our gumboots. We got very wet feet which made it very cold. At lunch we stopped for a picnic and made a fire. We ate bread and cooked sausages over the fire. We also drank hot chocolate out of gorgeous finnish wood cups. As we had stopped walking, it got even colder and I ended up wearing my host dad's jumper which meant I had a total of 6 layers on #missingaussieweather. After lunch we found some berries. I am not sure if we have them in Australia but they are kind of like cranberries and are supposably very healthy. We then went back to the Aunty and Uncle's place for a nice hot meal and then home for a long sauna. 

Finland Idol

Last Thursday night my host family and I went to Finland Idol. Not many Aussie’s can say they have been to Finland Idol. Akseli’s soccer club got free tickets so his whole soccer team was there. The singers were really good but it was hard to follow as I had no idea what the judges or anyone in fact was saying. All live shows have the audience clap and cheer really loud when something is good or boo if someone says something bad. This was a little confusing but I did whatever the crowd was doing so I didn’t look like a weirdo just sitting there if I got on camera :) They were also giving out free ‘Tuc’ biscuits (yummy finnish biscuits). We ended up getting 6 packets between us. We still have ‘Tuc’ biscuits all over the house from it. It was a really enjoyable night. 

My host brother and host sister

This morning my host brother and I were forced out of the house to go on a bike ride. We rode on a track through the forest. It turned out to be extreme BMX riding as there was tree roots, rocks and mud puddles everywhere. Along the way we stopped at a desserted excersize playground, a little lake and even found a tree house type thingy where hunters go up to shoot deer. It was really fun but we got very muddy. 

Later this afternoon my host mum, host sister, host brother and I had a table ice hockey championship. I lost every game. I have decided that it is impossible to beat a Finn at it.

A few weeks ago we had a monopoly championship. It is a whole new experience playing monopoly in finnish. 

Fun in the Niska household :) Very appropriate with halloween only being yesterday.