Concert and Isäpäivä

Saturday was spent at my High School here. There was a debate work shop, and if you know me I can argue and well speak English fluently. Therefore, I was asked to attend. It went well and I was the official "bell ringer" during the final debate. The debate was just really awesome because I was able to hang with some fins.

Afterwards I rushed home, changed, and went and met up with Kirsi. Her and her husband treated me to a lovely dinner and then the Live Final of a famous Finnish TV show, "We want more." It is about all the old bands which broke up and this show was suppose to bring them back together. I was at the final concert.

It was such an amazing experience (sadly my phone died.. resulting in no pictures.) But the immensity of the event still stuns me. The concert was feeding live to TVs all over finland and I was there. I was treated to some finnish licorice. I came home to have a small snack of food from the care package.

Sunday was Father's Day here. My family and I went to this expo things about farm animals. I was not expecting to be so excited, because well, I lived on a farm my whole life. But when we  walked in, it smelled like the Fair Grounds. It brought back memories of 2 dollar snow cones and late nights in the barn. I thought of the dreaded hay days and of how I use to ride my horses till it was dark. The horses. Walking in I saw a horse trailer and I got the biggest grin. We went to see the horses first! My family takes such good care of me here. There were cows and chickens. Things which I took for granted back home, and sometimes even hated, I was getting excited over and taking pictures of! 

Brittney! these things kept us awake so many nights

they are watching a cow show, just like the ones at the fair

sheep herding 

my favorite lady and some mushroom soup

turn around and you see laplanders

We came home to enjoy some finnish pizza. Mhh pineapple!

Hyvää Isäpäivää

Monday Tourism

I'm on fall break right now. Today, Kirsi, met up with me around noon for lunch at Cafe Engle and then we went and became tourist.

note: the other day a tourist walked up to me and said really slowly " Do you speak ennnglishh?" I was like yes. I am from America. I then gave her directions and helped her buy a train ticket. Hence why now I say "became a tourist".

planning out the attack route

I told Kirsi about how I needed a dress for the big Vanhan dance thing. And she set up an appointment for later that day. 

After coffee and lunch we went to the city museum. This is officially my favorite one. They had theses portirts of people on the wall and if you would watch them you could see them breathing and moving. This museum actually brought all the paintings to life. So cool. So so so so sos cool.

I'm hooked on ice skating now

There was this cool hall where they had photographs from back in the old days and photos taken recently in the same places. It was lovely to be able to recognize the places where the photos were taken and even more lovely to see what was there a long time ago.

one of my favorites. I was on this ride at Linnamaki

this is my city. haha I live here.

more ice skating

found out there was an underground movie theater which played vintage Finnish films which we went to. I understood a little bit too!

Next was a short tour of another "tourist" market.

 Off to the dress shop!

 Oh the dress shop!!! So there is this huge dance here where you learn old dances and perform them to the public and well I am signed up apparently and I need a dress. So I got an appointment with a consultant who asked me what I liked (aka my favorite flower and season, daisy and winter) and then bam . Perfect dress. Perfect Color. Perfect fit.

I felt like a princess. I told all the Rotarian about it during dinner later on. I spoke Finnish so that's cool.

this is the one I want to get. lets hope it is there on thursday!

I then had a rotary meeting. They don't make us come every week but I go. I want to go. Rotary is the reason why I am here and to be honest I enjoy going. The food is good and the people are even better. They get enjoyment from watching my conferment I think. They club is mostly older gentlemen too so our sass gets along quite well. Today I had to listen to an hour of a lecture on maps in Finnish. It was different but cool. I think it was about a war. We will never know.

I came home and we colored. I will update about this more on later... shhh.