Yet another tale of travel

If you ever have a stereotype for an exchange student please make sure it includes the following: loves to travel and be with people.

This leads us to my 6 hour bus ride to visit (independent travel across the country!!) some friends in Kuoipo. 

 I woke up Friday at the blazing hour of 5.30 to make sure I would arrive to center in time to catch my bus. Because, oh no I was not going to buy train ticket on top of my bus ticket. Fun fact: Exchange students in Finland love the Onnibussi. Why? It is cheaper and wifi. But man is it a longer journey.  Oh boy was it cold.

about to head off. 6 hours. longest trip yet. oh yeah I am ready.

i ran out of food half way though. i was not as ready as i thought

Finland is a hidden jewel. A lot of people look over the beauty but it is completely a natural beauty here. I feel as though this is rare in today's world. 

I was cold (Finland, shocking right?) So I found out I could use my flag as a blanket! This led to the fun story of me waking up to a near by passenger just staring at me utterly confused. I didn't offer up an explanation. Didn't think one was needed.

my girls came and picked me up! On the left is Jazzie, a wonderful spunky Aussi oldie. And my kick butt host for the weekend (and one of the coolest chicks I know) Anna! She is from Brazil.

I was so hungry (again from running out of food) this meant we met up with some other exchange students and got pizza. Pizza is an international food. We all adore it and it is cheap to pool money and get a nice sized one. I have picked up this weird trait of eating pizza, its the way everyone really eats it. You take the piece and you roll it up. These pizzas are really thin. Its weird sounding and hard to explain hahaha

this is JB, we were here to celebrate his birthday . I also like using people's head as scale. (see earlier post where I used Harlado's head as scale) Oh and JB is a Frenchie. He is one of my favorites.

We all went to Jazzies house and had tea that night. It was so nice. We sat and showed each other photos of our families and we were nerdy and google earthed our towns. It was funny to think a few months ago I was google earthing Finland and now I am doing that to little old wake man. Silly how things change.

the next morning we had tea and watched videos of "you know you're an exchange student if" videos. It was hilarious because it was all true. We also talked about her perspective of the world cup and of the revolutions in Brazil. 

Just so you know it was the middle of the day when it was just freezing. It was so much colder in the morning. 

Brazil and USA

The exchange world is a family. A family which is the whole world. I really like this one.

We all went over and played cards as we waited for JB to cook us french food.  He taught me how to cook the chicken and this weird(but delious) desert. I taught them how to play Egyptian rat smack. 

We also played charades! It is not spurising that we can explain things really well without using words... its what we do daily.

In the house at one point there was: A Frenchie, Aussi, Brazilian, American, Japennes,  and a check. 

Brought some home with me(THEY NEVER HAD THIS BEFORE) 

so good

Also in this moment add to the picture: light conversation and laughter, nora jones and sintra music, and the smells of france.

We stayed that night and watched terrible horror movies from the 80s and played games. This is good.

The trip home was just as long but was done by train. It was very bad weather out side which led to me writing and reading Finnish history. If you can learn a lot from learning where the people come from. 

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