from blazing hot to freezing cold

Hey! Mandi wrote you about her exchange time here in Finland, enjoy! :)

My Rotary summer exchange to Finland has been an amazing opportunity for me to experience so many new things. I have been to The whole system as well as the people themselves is totally different.

 In my second week i went to Muonio in Lapland and met the weirdest, coolest and simply the best exchange students ever. They were enjoying the adventure like every exchange student should be. I went downhill skiing for the first time in my life and decided i was going to jump in and go for downhill straight away. To be 100% honest  it looks so much easier then it is. i rolled down the mountain more times than i can remember, I was blue in places i didn't know i could be but i am glad i did it and i wouldn't think twice before doing it again. In Lapland they also took us to a reindeer farm to feed some of the reindeer and just get some basic information, on our way back to the hotel we stopped in Sweden and the thing i will probably always remember is the girl who licked the sign - I mean who does that and obviously her tong got stuck. We also road on a reindeer sledge as well as a husky sledge and it was incredibly fun but also incredibly cold. Before coming home we stopped at Santa clauses main post office and i honestly didn't know that that mainly children around the world actually write to Santa.

I have seen a little bit of Finnish culture during independence day, Christmas concerts, Christmas itself and new years eve. Even though i couldn't always understand what they were saying in church, school and well mostly everywhere it was still fascinating to watch people sing and perform, see all the happy faces on Christmas and of course all the magnificent fireworks on new years. 

Helsinki was super fun, i was out on the town for a day on my own. i saw the most amazing cathedrals, museums, art galleries and just the city itself. Everybody laughed when i told them i got lost trying to find the stone church, because how hard can it be to find a church?? I also met up with my South African buddy there and we had tons of fun together.

My host family taught me how cross-country skiing works and i think i was pretty good for a girl from South Africa who has never seen snow before. I also went to ride the horses and clean the stables a few times with my host sister Aino-Maria,it was a whole new experience for me to be riding in the snow especially with Angela. my host father also took us ice fishing which was very cool but also uneventful, the fishes are either very smart or just don't like cheese as bait.I have done a lot of new, fun and amazing amazing stuff in Finland, but for me the most exciting thing was going ice swimming with Eeva-liisa... and just for in case you were wondering, it is freaking COLD in there!!!

I have made a lot of new friends here and grew especially close to Angela my Italian friend. I went shopping, obviously, and went to a lot of great places with my host mom. She took me to the zoo and i felt like a little kid again, running around trying to see all the animals for the first time. I also had lots of fun with the girls (Aino, Janette, Sara and Riina) just hanging out and making the best Italian pizza ever.

What you think about Finnish..

PEOPLE: The people here are very friendly and kind, they try to help you out and really put in effort to teach you about their culture. They seem to be a bit shy to speak English but I've been told its because if they cannot do it perfectly they don't want to do it at all. But all in all their just amazing people.

CULTURE: Before I came to Finland I thought there was going to be such a big difference between our cultures  but after living here for 6 weeks I can honestly say that it'snot that much different from my own. Yes there are obviously small differences in how we behave or what we see as ordinary but I can truly say, these people feel a lot like my own.

FOOD: Oh my words why are there so many different types of milk, i mean its just milk!! The fish is very good and overall everything i ate was quite nice. some of the Christmas foods were, well interesting but i'm sure you'll get used to them if you've eaten it enough. My favorite is of course dessert which there were so many to choose from. I wish i could bring some of it home.

MUSIC: I can't understand ,most of the lyrics, well that's a lie, i don't understand any of the lyrics in the Finnish songs but their still nice to listen to. The English songs are cool and i already knew most of them before i came to Finland

WEATHER: At first it felt very dark and cold. I got used to the cold after a while and once the it started snowing everything was lighter ass well. The sky was always cloudy and sometimes i really missed the sun but i guess you can get used to that too. I love the fact that the houses are warm inside

OTHER THINGS:

I really would have liked to see the northern lights, but it gives me an excuse to come back again. The weirdest thing for me was the people staring at me on my first day and being in 4 different newspapers in 2 weeks, it made me realize...I MUST BE FAMOUS!!!

The best things in Finland

-For me it was just the experience itself. Meeting new people and seeing all these things I've never seen before. I would do summer exchange again in a heartbeat and really recommend it to anybody who is willing to try it.

Would you come back?

-If the opportunity ever presented itself i would love to come back and say hi to all my friends. But then I would come back in the "summer" ( I can't say it's summer if it is only 20 degrees outside) to see the other side of this amazing country.

SOMETHING MORE:

I just want to say thank you to everybody who has thought me something and everybody who was simply just a friend to me. Thanks to my host family ass well, they always made me feel at home and showed me everything they possibly could. The hardest thing for me was to say goodbye to everybody and I really am going to miss you guys!!! Al my liefde van Suid-Afrika