Last Days

   Yesterday was my last full day with the Salminens. Most of the day was spent packing all my stuff up. In the evening Anna, Aada, Venla and I went swimming at a hotel. The pool had 3 slides but I only did 2. The hot tub was really more of a "almost warm" tub. Outside was a pool of water that was only about 50 degrees F. Inside was a water exercise class. They were listening to some 80's music. Barf. The swimming place had 3 saunas. I went into two of them. One of the saunas smelt really weird so I didn't stay more than 30 seconds in there.
    Today is my last full day in Finland. This afternoon I'm taking a 2 hour bus ride to Helsinki. The last time I'll see the Salminens is at the bus stop where they picked me up in June. 6 weeks have gone by so fast! I'll be spending the night with a YFU volunteer's family. Outi-Leena is the mother's name. They are currently hosting a German exchange student for the year. Outi--Leena will drive me to the airport at 3 or 4 am tomorrow. My flight to Munich leaves at 6:30 am. SO EARLYYYYY. My Saturday will be spent on airplanes. My flight from Munich to DC is 9 hours long, so I'll probably die of boredom.
   
Well I gotta go do stuff now.

Potatoe Fail and Friends

   Yesterday Jarno and Anna had to work so I was in charge of lunch. Mostly it was just leftovers. But I had to make the potatoes. Turns out I can't make potatoes to save my life. I boiled them like Anna showed me but they came out so hard and nasty.
    Later that afternoon I went to hang out with my friends Anna,Emmi and Eveliina. We went over to Anna's house and played SingStar! We did the "Greatest Hits Of The 80's" and "ABBA". I rocked "Fight For Your Right To Party" but did pretty terrible at "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". The other girls knew all the ABBA songs but I only knew two. We then took Anna's dog on a walk. We talked about the differences between US and Finland. Eveliina didn't understand why we put jam on bread. It was a pretty fun afternoon.
    This morning I spent most of my time packing. Packing to go home is less fun than packing to go somewhere exciting. Now it is down poring. I think that the rain is supposed to continue until Friday night. Sanni is having her birthday party this afternoon so that should be fun!

Shopaholic

   I'm updating from my phone because my computer has gone to the dark side. Literally,the screen is black. Yesterday was mostly a relaxing day after 5 days of family time. For Lunch I made an awesome beef dish. It required 2-4 handfuls of scrambled beef,a can of tomato product,2 carrots and a cute little onion. I cooked it all in the same pan and it was DELICIOUS. I will be making that again. Yesterday afternoon I went on a long run. I was thirsty so I decided to run into the woods to get some blueberries to eat. They were all dried up but I saw Sanni and Sara. I did a run through the woods andSara was running after me.
    Later that evening we all saunaed. I picked at a little scab and it started bleeding. And it didn't stop for a long time. The sauna helps to thin blood I think.


    This afternoon Sanni and I went to Turku with Aino and Hilda who are family friends. We took a bus into town. I bought some interesting things; a rhino eraser,lip earrings and a muffin. Many girls at the malls wear super revealing outfits. For a country with such shy people, they have no problem with showing butt cheeks.
    Now I'm going to take Sara for a quick walk.

Ruka part 2

  Thursday morning we didn't do all that much. I read a lot on my kindle. I am now on book 4 of the "Song of Ice and Fire" series (game of thrones).In the afternoon we went on a long hike in a national park. There were lots of waterfalls and a really scary rope bridge over a river that I crossed. I thought for sure I was going down. We hiked over 8 km that afternoon. Blueberries were everywhere! We also saw a few reindeer.
   Friday morning we went white water rafting! This was probably the funnest thing we did in Ruka. We went over 6 sets of rapids that were class 1 through 3. I thought the class 3 one was the funnest  but everybody else thought it was scary. Our skipper got injured the last time he went on it because the group hit  the part where you drop 2 meters at one moment. He didn't tell us this story until AFTER we got down the rapids. I almost fell out of the boat a lot. I did fall into the boat twice because my seat was so slippery. It was very hard to paddle while bouncing around so much. Sanni and I were joking about who we wanted to fall out of the boat. I was betting on Jarno because he was in the very front of the boat.
   After rafting we went on a tiny (1.6 km) hike to a fire pit in another part of the national forest. There was a reindeer only 30 feet from us watching us eat. When we were heading back to the car Anna showed me a map of where we were. Russia was only 12 km away! I joked about running there quick but Anna said that there were cameras all along the boarder and many people tried to get over there and they got arrested. Bummer. Finns are not big fans of Russians and I see why.
    Friday night I went in the sauna again. When I converted the temp from celcius to farrenheit I was amazed. The litter room was over 170 degrees farrenheit! This morning we just drove home for 12 hours. Pretty boring but I read quite a it.

This morning we just drove home for 12 hours