Shopping

In the other day, my host sisters and I went to the mall. It was so huge compared to the malls in Finland. And everything was so cheap! I think I'm going to spend so much time in there.

At Tuesday we went to the Farmers Market. Fresh vegetables, fruits, berries... Yummy. There was all kind of stuff on sale. I bought a new wallet because it was only 6 dollars and two American flags. And somebody was selling Finnish licorice! That was cool.

My new hometown

Let the pictures speak

Arrival

Me and another Finnish girl arrived to New York on Thursday 22nd. My first flight from Kuopio to Helsinki left about 9am and New York flight 2.10pm. I really like flying and 9 hours flight is not a problem to me. There was an AFS women waiting for us at the JFK airport and we took a taxi to Hilton hotel. The bed was so huge and comfortable!

Skittles, M&M and water bottle were the first things I bought in the USA. You really cant find Skittles from Finland and I really wanted to have some. 

Because we arrived on Thursday and my bus left on Saturday, I had to spend two nights at hotel. That was fine for me because I got more sleep and then my jet lag wasn't so bad as I thought it would be. I spent friday with two beautiful Norwegian girls, Anne and Maria. Maria was my room mate. 

We had to wear our name tags all the time! It made me feel like 5 years old or something. We had to wear them to get free food from hotel restaurant. FREE FOOD. Yes.

On Saturday we second arrival AFS students who will stay in Pennsylvania took a bus to Harrisburg to AFS orientation day. It was hold at church in Mechanicsburg. The AFS man went thought some things what we cant do during our exchange. That wasn't really interesting because I knew all those things before.

Later the host families came to pick up their students. When my host family came to pick me up I felt like the happiest girl on the planet!

Last days in Finland

Last days in Finland went so fast! I started packing two day before I left and it was pretty easy. But then my bags were like 3 kilos overweighted and I had to start again.

I love shopping gifts! I bought things like Marimekko bowl, salmiakki, Angry Birgs candies and rye bread to my host family. "From Finland with love" book is so funny, I had to buy it also.

Sadly there is no piano in my host family's home, but I still brought Finland's and America's national anthems and Finlandia-hymn's sheet with me.

Spring and summer pictures

I went to a motorcycle road trip with my dad. We first drove from Siilinjärvi to Iso-Syöte and after that to Rovaniemi, Luleå and Umeå. From Umeå we took a ferry to Vaasa and then we headed home.  (Sorry about the bad quality of two photos, I took them via iPad.)

I got a new objective to my camera, so I got new motivation and inspiration to photographing.

My mom and I spent a lovely holiday in Paris. We relaxed, ate well and enjoyed the Paris atmosphere. 

After Paris we headed to Belgium. It was nice to spend time with our Belgian exchange student, I enjoyed a lot.


By the way, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!

The First

Hi and welcome to my blog! I'm going to write about my exchange year in the USA during 2013-2014. I want to keep my blog simple and mainly post pictures with short captions only. I will tell more information about myself when I post more pictures, so make sure you check out my blog every week!