Hello everybody,
January has been a pretty relaxed month so I havent had a whole lot to add lately but I will give you an update.
Coming back to school after break was a bit of a shock, but it is nice to have something to do during the daytime now. School is pretty busy right now, the 3rd year students (american seniors) are finishing their classes next week and there is a lot of "traditional" things that happen when they pass the torch on to the second year class (the class I am with).
One of these traditional things are the Vanhojentanssit, or the "old dances" (because we are now the oldest students in the school). Everyone at my school had told me it is like American prom, but it is MUCH different.
We go to practices twice a week for a month to memorize 8 different dances, and then in February we perform them on the Vanhojen day. So far it has been really hard for me to memorize them because I have never done any of this fancy dancing stuff before. My partner is alot better and she tries to help me but... its hard.

I have started back up with Finnish classes which is really good because I feel like my Finnish has started to plateau. My finnish is alright, I can usually communicate anything I need to, but my vocabulary is still horrible and I need to keep practicing grammar. I am going to have to ditch class today though to watch Obama's inauguration (its coming on TV here!).

Hello all! Merry Christmas, Happy New Years (and happy birthday dad!)

I have been having a pretty good time here in Finland lately, lots of celebration and lots of food.

Christmas is a very big deal here in Finland, and it lasts for 3 days. The first and most important day is Christmas eve. In the morning we woke up and had joulupuuroa (christmas rice porridge) and then we went to the Christmas sauna. Usually we go to sauna at night but on christmas you go in the morning. After sauna, we relaxed and listened to christmas music until the dinner was ready around 2 or 3. Dinner was the biggest meal I have ever eaten, it puts american thanksgiving to shame! First, we had fish dishes with cold smoked salmon, warm smoked sauna, smoked salmon rolls, salmon roe... pretty much every possibly form of salmon. Then we had another course of cheeses, meat and pate. After that was the main course of ham and casseroles, then we finished with desert. About an hour later we had coffee with chocolates and cake. After we were done with all of the food we opened presents. Everyone stayed up really late talking but I fell asleep pretty early because I was so tired from all of the eating.

On christmas day we visited family in Oulu and ate more christmas food. The next few days were mostly just relaxation and skiing. I have a ski track less than a km from my house so its really easy to go over for a ski.
Last week we went to a cross country ski area called Rokua which was about 80 km from Oulu in the hills. It was actually pretty steep there I felt like I was back at Eldora.
New Years was really fun I went to a party in the city center and we set off fireworks at midnight in the market square.
School starts back up again on wednesday it is going to be VERY hard to wake up at 7 for that first morning training!
Hyvää uutta vuotta kaikille

What I Have Been Up To Lately

I am so sorry I havent been updating this very often, I will be updating more often now.

A lot has happened since the last time I wrote in this blog, and time has really been flying by.

First of all I moved host families. With the exchange program I came with, I have four different families here in Oulu. The family I live with now, the Kytökangas family, lives the closest to the center of my families. It is about 5 km to my school and 7 from the city center, so it is close enough to ride my bike. This family has two sons and a daughter, but only the younger son Harri still lives at home, he is 17 yeárs.

Two weeks ago was our Lapland Tour with all of the rotary exchange students, around 120 exchange students in a tiny little hotel in lapland! It was very nice there, it can get VERY cold but the temperature was fairly nice for us. I skate skiied one day and downhill skiied another day. The downhill skiing was very limited there, there were two lifts, a pomalift that took you half way up and a T bar lift that took you to the top of the one run. Yes there was only one run, and if I was going fast it took me about 20 seconds to go from top to bottom! On the third day in Lapland we went to go see an old reindeer herder house to learn about the history, and we got to feed some reindeer (it was a little weird feeding the reindeer after having reindeer soup for dinner the night before). Then we went to see a husky farm (I am not sure what that kind of place is called?) and we went on a dog sled ride and a reindeer sleigh ride.

On the Dog Sled!

Crazy German guy who owned the Huskies

Sami man singing for us. (Sami are native culture of Lapland)

On the last day we left in the morning and stopped at the Santa Village again. I wasnt too excited as I have already been there, but everyone had a good time buying souvenirs and getting pictures taken with Santa.

Santa land and the Arctic Circle (I had my picture in the same spot in my last post but there was no snow)

I just started a new class period at school, and this time I am taking English, Swedish, and a computer art class. Swedish class is very hard because everyone in Finland starts learning Swedish when they are in elementary school, but it is fun and I am learning Swedish better than I did with German in the last semester. Our computer class is fun as well, we learn how to use photoshop and make pictures.

Christmas is coming up and it is a pretty big deal here in Finland. All the stores play christmas music and you see decorations a lot.

Biathlon Range in Muonio, Lapland

Broken Hard drive

I am so sorry I havent been updating my blog, but my computers hard drive crashed as soon as I moved into my new host family. I am still waiting for a new one to come from the US. 

I am moved into my new host family here, its a lot closer to the center and friends houses. 

Next week is a busy week, I have exams on tuesday and wednesday in French and Math, and then on thursday I have to give my powerpoint presentation to my rotary club. At 5 AM on friday I leave to go on our rotary Lapland Tour with all of the other exchange students, which means lots of snow and skiing. I will update and add pictures after that,

Syysloma- Fall Break

This past week was our schools Syysloma, or Fall break. Last weekend we had a Rotary camp for the inbound students at Hailuoto, an island about 50 kilometers from Oulu. All of the inbound students (exchange students in finland) from northern finland and the western coast were there. It was pretty fun, but there was not a lot planned for us to do there and we had a lot of free time. The Australians and South African there have been here since last January so it was good to hear all of their advice and experiences.
We came back from Hailuoto on Sunday, and on Monday morning me and my host dad drove to Kuusamo, a city about 250 kilometers northeast of Oulu. There was snow in Kuusamo, and they actually had 3km of ski tracks open in the city center. We skiied for about an hour and a half on monday afternoon.
On tuesday we hiked a trail called the pieni karhunkierros (small bear ring), which follows a river along the russian border. It was rainy and cold but it was a nice hike.
On wednesday we drove from Kuusamo to Rovaniemi, a city in Lapland, where my host dad dropped me off and I met my friend Atte and his girlfriend Marika. We were staying with Marikas family, who were all very friendly. In Rovaniemi, we went to the center, climbed up the ski jump, and saw Santa Claus at the Santa Village there on the Arctic Circle. We drove back to Oulu on Friday afternoon and relaxed Saturday and Sunday.
This weekend I am moving to my new host family, so I have been packing and getting everything ready to move. I will post again when I am moved in there.

Skiing in Kuusamo



Cabin on Karhunkierros trail



Reindeer

Me on the Arctic Circle

Leiri Paljakkassa

This past weekend I had the opportunity to go to a training camp at a small ski resort about 200 km away from Oulu called Paljakka. The team I went with was the competitive part of the Oulun Hiihtoseura. The other skiers there were some of the best juniors in Finland, a few top 3's in Finnish Nationals and two boys who were at World Juniors last year.
We left Oulu at around 2:30 on Thursday, getting to Paljakka at about 5. When we got there we went on an hour and a half skate rollerski.
Friday morning we went out on a 2 hour classic rollerski with technique work. That afternoon we went to do a "course preview" of the ski walking time trial on Saturday, and then we did a 40 minute tempo run.
Saturday was the hardest day of the camp, with 3 time trials. We left around 10 o'clock to go to the ski hill and to warm up. Our first ski-walking time trial took us from the base of the hill on a big switchback to the top of the hill, which took 10-12 minutes. When we got to the top, we jogged back down to start the second time trial. This one was straight up one of the ski runs to the top of the hill, which was very steep and took about 8-10 minutes. After that we jogged back to the cabin to get some water and then went to a lake near our cabin for our last time trial. We started this one as a pursuit race, with our first two times added together to determine our start times. This time trial was about a 3 km running loop in the woods and would have been pretty easy if we had not already done two other time trials. Overall I was the 4th out of 5 boys, which is not too bad because everyone there was very fast. That afternoon we went out and did an hour of skate technique work, then Saturday night we went to this big gym near the ski hill and played 2 on 2 soccer tournaments.
Sunday morning was on your own, and I thought I was being pretty ambitious to go on a 2 hour run/skiwalk but when I got home nobody was there. Everyone else was out training for at least 3 hours! When everyone got back we ate and packed everything to go back to Oulu.
It was a great experience to see how the Finns train and to get to know all the skiers a little better as I don't hang out with them very often at school. They invited me to come to another training camp either in November or December that is at Vuokatti, where there is a ski tunnel with snow in it year-round! I am pretty excited about that.

To all the BNJRT skiiers- get out there and train hard!

Kuopio

This past weekend I took a train from Oulu to Kuopio to visit another exchange student Jenny who lives there. Kuopio is a town in the east part of Finland, about 4 hours by train southeast of Oulu. It was the first time for me to go on a train like that, and it was nice to go through the countryside and see all the leaves changing. I even managed to buy tickets and talk to the ticket collector on the train in Finnish.

Kuopio is a really nice town, it has about 80,000 inhabitants I think, and is a little bit smaller than Oulu, but it there are more hills there and also there are a lot of lakes. On Friday afternoon, we just walked around the city and had dinner at a mexican restaurant (which was not very mexican, I had tomato soup and Jenny had pasta). Later we went to one of Jenny's friends houses and I got to meet some of her friends and see Riley, an exchange student from Michigan.

On Saturday we went with Jenny's host mom to this tower that overlooks Kuopio, but unfortunately I didnt bring my camera! We had to go up a lot of stairs to get to the top but the view was really nice. After that me and Jenny made macaroni and cheese, caesar salad and apple pie for her host mom to try some American food. Although we had to improvise with some of the ingredients, I think it turned out pretty well!

Jenny's host mom bought us tickets to see Chicago (the musical), which was really nice of her but maybe she didn't realize that we wouldn't understand it because it was all in Finnish. Well it actually turned out to be really funny. I couldn't understand a lot of the words, but it was very funny to watch. They had really weird hair and outfits, like something out of a Tim Burton movie but definitely not from 1920's Chicago.

I came back home Sunday but it was a longer train ride because I had to change trains in Kajaani. I had to go back to school on Monday, but test week started today and as I am not taking any of the tests, I have a week off right now. On thursday I am going to Paljakka with some of the kids in my training group for a dryland training camp, and I think it will be interesting to see how the Finns train during the fall compared to our team in Colorado. I will try to update again after that.

Oulun Rautatieasema Oulu Railwaystation

Jenny and our American Apple Pie

Our Amerikalaista Ruokaa