Hello all!
I hope you have all had a wonderful summer! Welcome to the first installment of my newsletter documenting my AFS exchange year in Finland. I will be staying with a host family and attending the local high school which will be taught in Finnish. Also in November my host family will be taking a two week vacation to Spain and the Canary Islands, and I get to go with them!
Now that summer vacation is coming to a close, it is time for me to embark upon my trip. I have spent the last week in upstate New York visiting family. I fly out from New York on Thursday the 21. I make a stopover in Copenhagen before continuing on to Helsinki, Finalnd. From there I will either take a train or a plain up to my final destination of Rovaniemi (RO-va-NIEM-mi), where I will stay until the end of June 2009.
The town of Rovaniemi, where I will be living in, is roughly 840 km (520 miles) north of Helsinki. It is on the Arctic Circle! It is home to about 59,000 people and is the official capital of the province of Lapland. It is also the official home Santa Clause. All the letters that are sent to Santa arrive at the post office in Santa’s village in Rovaniemi.
I will talk much more in-depth about where I will be once I get there. This is just an overview. Until then here are some great websites that talk about Finland, Lapland and Rovaniemi.
I hope you have all had a wonderful summer! Welcome to the first installment of my newsletter documenting my AFS exchange year in Finland. I will be staying with a host family and attending the local high school which will be taught in Finnish. Also in November my host family will be taking a two week vacation to Spain and the Canary Islands, and I get to go with them!
Now that summer vacation is coming to a close, it is time for me to embark upon my trip. I have spent the last week in upstate New York visiting family. I fly out from New York on Thursday the 21. I make a stopover in Copenhagen before continuing on to Helsinki, Finalnd. From there I will either take a train or a plain up to my final destination of Rovaniemi (RO-va-NIEM-mi), where I will stay until the end of June 2009.
The town of Rovaniemi, where I will be living in, is roughly 840 km (520 miles) north of Helsinki. It is on the Arctic Circle! It is home to about 59,000 people and is the official capital of the province of Lapland. It is also the official home Santa Clause. All the letters that are sent to Santa arrive at the post office in Santa’s village in Rovaniemi.
I will talk much more in-depth about where I will be once I get there. This is just an overview. Until then here are some great websites that talk about Finland, Lapland and Rovaniemi.
http://www.rovaniemi.fi/ http://www.ee.oulu.fi/alt07/Facts_about_Lapland.htm http://virtual.finland.fi/
http://www.rovaniemi.fi/?deptid=17958
I have been in contact with my host family since June. It’s a small family and they live in a good sized house about 8 km outside the city center. It’s Just my host dad Juhani Ruonakoski and my 15 year old host sister Mari Ylitalo. They also have a dog and two cats.
sent me an excited e-mail in June introducing herself and her dad. She told me weeks before AFS did. So when AFS finally called me to tell me about my host family I told them that I had already found out. They were very surprised! Since that first e-mail Mari and I have been corresponding regularly.
We have figured out that we have similar tastes in books and music. Its always fun to talk with her. She offered to take me on a shopping trip to Helsinki once I get there! She speaks English well enough that I can understand her, but she still has a lot of room for improvement.
That’s her on the left. Yah the one with pink hair! To the right is her 30 year old half sister Päivi, who lives with her 4 year old son in Helsinki.
To the left is my host dad Juhani (called Jussi) (In Finland Js are pronounced as Ys) and his grandson, Päivi’s son. My host dad doesn’t speak any English. This will be good for me because it will give me a chance to use my Finnish. At the moment I only know a little Finnish, enough so that I was able to write a paragraph or so to my host family.
I will start school on the 25th, the Monday after I get there! Even though it is my junior year I will be going into 10th grade there. I will talk more about the education system in latter issues. My school is called Ounasvaaran lukio, lukio meaning high school. There are only 300 students!
http://www.ounasvaaranlukio.net/site/
All in all I am VERY EXCITED to leave on my trip! I have had a week vacation in New York with my family, and all though it has been really fun, I feel more than ready to leave. The only thing I’m really nervous about is going to school. I’m a bit worried that I won’t understand much of anything, but that just means I’m going to have to learn quick!
http://usa.afs.org/usa_en/home
On Wednesday the 20th I am meeting up with my AFS group for an orientation at a hotel in Queens NYC. All the students in the USA who are going to Finland for either a year or a semester will be there. There are probably no more than 8 of us. AFS will tell us everything we need to know about our exchange stay. We’ll spend the night there and then fly out the following evening as a group!
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