Febuary 10 to Valentines Day

I only did two things this week. I prepared for a debate in my European Foreign Policy class were we debated on whether or not the European Union should accept more member countries to further its foreign policy. The second thing I did was much more fun. A fellow exchange student organized a ferry ride across the gulf of Finland just to enjoy the tax free food and boose on the open water. Most of my night was well spent in the club on the boat. I will end with a picture of the open sea.

To end my week I went to a special valentines party before going out for the night. The Valentines party was decorated so amazingly, three exchanges students put hours of time into decorating and it really paid off and added to an amazing night. Here is a picture of Valentines day night, the girls that decorated made a frame for kiss cam, I was lucky enough to have a Finnish girl next to me, all in all the party was fun.

Febuary 3rd to the 10th (Pikkulaskianen)

This week was dominated by the large and widely popular student sledding competition called "Pikkulaskianen". The way it works is that each faculty or club has to design and build a sled to go down a small hill in the park. The winners are based on the fastest time and the most created sled design. My team was ESN the Exchange Student Network. Our sled was a bottle of a special kind of Finnish Liquor to commemorate our love of everything Finnish. It was basically a pallet we found, with a pair of old skis screwed to the bottom. Our sled actually went very fast and took out a few people at the bottom of the run, but everyone was O.K.! Once again here are some pictures of the event

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24th of January to February 3rd (The Lapland Trip)

So the most exciting thing I have done so far in Finland is go on a trip with about 100 other students to Levi, Finland. Levi is a small town that is situated next to Finland's biggest ski resort aptly named Levi. Levi is in the far north of Finland in the arctic circle. From Turku where the university is it took about a 15 hour bus ride. Before getting to Levi ESN had arranged a stop in Santa Clause's village, YEAH! The real Santa clause himself. Santa Clause's village is located right on the line of the Arctic Circle which I will have a picture of below. The other amazing part of Santa's village was that there were real people answering the Christmas letter sent there by children!! Here are some pictures!

The Arctic Circle Line

About a Third of the kids that went (I am on the top left)

So this was just one of the stops on the way to the Levi Ski Resort. For the trip our group got 7 cottages with about 8-10 people in each cottage. There were lots of activities to do doing the 5 nights we were there but I decided since this would be one of my only opportunities to snowboard I decided to do that all FOUR days. To sum it up in a few words it was AMAZING, here are some photos of the mountain.

More Trips, More Homework, Busy Times

It has been awhile since my last post so I am deciding to break up the last three weeks into three different posts. They will be organized by the 24th of January to February 3rd, then the 3rd to the 10th of February and finally the 10th to today the 16th!

 I will leave you all with this picture of Kraft Mac n Cheese I found, the only downside is it's 4.39 Euros!! Which works out to be about 6$ a box...