Alanna Paynter

My trip to Ecuador this summer was one of the most eye-opening and spectacular experiences I've ever had. There are so many differences between our cultures, but that was part of what made my exchange so incredible. This trip presented me with so many opportunities and so much independence that I've never had before, and the memories I now have will stay with me forever; some of the least significant of these are my fondest recollections.

Even though it is true that no matter where you go, you will have an amazing exchange, I can't imagine any other city being as beautiful as Cuenca. Nestled between mountain peaks, Cuenca is a small historical city overflowing with red tile roofs and cobbled streets. Architecture has always struck a chord with me, and Cuenca has some of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen. Although I traveled to other fantastic locations in Ecuador, I still can't help but think how lucky I was to be able spend a month in Cuenca.

My host family was another lucky break :) My host sister Maria Jose is hilarious and incredibly nice and easy-going. She and my host father both spoke very good English. My host mom didn't speak any English, but we loved to try to communicate in my halting spanish. Maria Jose's brother returned home from a long-term rotary exchange in Canada two weeks after I arrived in Ecuador, and he was very nice and always willing to explain something to me. My host family was very kind and gracious. They helped me feel at home and went out of their way to help me experience all the things that were new to me. I owe a lot of my awesome time in Ecuador to them.

Some of the highlights of my trip were spending a few days at my host family's cute summer house with an amazing view of the mountains, relaxing on the hot sand and eating lunch with an ocean-front view at the beach in Salinas, exploring Montanita (a small bohemian-looking town on the beach with tons of great food, great shopping, and hospitable laid-back locals), going whale watching and seeing humpbacks breach many times, and walking around downtown Cuenca with my family. These are the standout moments, but I think the small things are just as important to having a great exchange. When I look back at my trip, I think about these amazing experiences, but also about the small pleasures of eating yogurt in the sun with my sister and mom, laughing at jokes in movie theathers, and gossiping in a friend's bedroom the same way I would in Ohio.

There are a lot of differences between living in Ecuador and living in Ohio. Some are small and easy to get used to, and others, not so much. A small but important difference is that in Ecuador, the primary meal of the day is lunch, whereas for us, it's dinner. That wasn't too hard to adjust. Another small difference is that after meals, you have a lot of downtime to relax, rest, or even take a nap. Even though Ecuador is on the American dollar, everything there is much less expensive (probably because they actually charge what the product is worth, instead of extorting money from the costumer!). In fact, the only things that are cheaper in America are imported American products. The biggest cultural difference (and the most difficult to get used to!) is that everyone is much friendlier and more affectionate. This is especially apparent in greetings. Every time you greet someone, you hug them and give them a peck on the cheek. Sometimes you have to walk in a round to make sure you kiss everyone hello before you start mingling. Even if you don't know anyone at a party (like me!), if you're with people who know them, you still greet the strangers as affectionately as you would your own friends and family. This was so difficult to get used to, and at first I felt extremely awkward, but now that I'm home I find that I'm restraining myself from doing it! I also noticed a huge difference in the Rotary clubs. I can really appreciate Westerville Sunrise after experiencing a club that was, quite frankly, not as fun :) The exchange students don't get together for monthly meetings or training

or write essays or participate in community activities. I was actually the first short term exchange student in Cuenca to attend a Rotary meeting; usually only the long-term students come to introduce themselves. I am so glad to have a Rotary club that participates in community fundraisers, enabled me to make friends with other awesome exchange students whom I care for deeply, and prepared me for my exchange, and I mean that sincerely :) Another big difference was the driving. Ecuadorians drive like crazy people! There are very few people using turn signals, stopping at stop signs, staying within the lines on the road, or wearing seatbelts. There is more honking than there is during rush hour in New York City, and on the highway, people drive as fast as 120 miles per hour! That was pretty scary the first time it happened to me. . . and the second time. . . and the third. . .

Another difference I noticed was that everything is much more laid-back in Ecuador. There is not always a plan, not everything is organized, and there is almost never a rush. If something is going to happen, it'll happen eventually. No need to stress out about it. If it doesn't happen, that's okay; there's nothing to worry about. I feel like that attitude changed my perspective on a lot of things, and made me less prone to go berserk over the little stuff. Strangely, I also feel more resourceful and organized, but that can be attributed to the month abroad of growing and learning.

One piece of advice I would share with anyone going on a student exchange is to be open to anything! Even if you think it's something you don't want to do, you'll probably regret not trying it later. In my case, I regret never trying the Ecuadorian delicacy of guinea pig! :D Also, if you're a shutterbug like me, take your camera EVERYWHERE you go, or you will kick yourself repeatedly when you see something amazing you want to photograph and you left your camera at home.

At the end of my trip, I couldn't believe how quickly time went. I could've sworn a month lasted so much longer! My time in Ecuador was splendid and surreal. It was the best experience of my life, and I am so happy that I was able to take part in such a marvelous event. I would do it all, again and again and again.

Subject: Mid-Exchange Report – Gracie Bachmann

I am just about half way through my exchange and I am having an incredible experience, one of both culture and personal growth. It is really exciting to discover all of the smallest details as well as the greater differences that make my host family, Quito, Ecuador and South America unique. Here, I am the "gringa," foreigner; no longer just an American. Here, the people are Americans too, so I specify that I am from the U.S. and Ohio. Walter, I have really taken to heart the advice "say yes to all opportunities, however under whelming." This advice has lead me to church with my host parents, Carmen and Fidel, to the grocery store with Carmen and my host sisters, Ana Maria, Isa, and Maria Elvira, to new, exotic fruits, vegetables and dishes, to an all-female conference and lecture by a very old priest, and countless more experiences. My Spanish has improved unbelievably as has the way I communicate; I am more direct and bold. I ask lots of questions and I give lots of hugs and kisses to greet and bid farewell. I have absorbed manners and customs, and learned what I hope are the most polite ways to ask "may you pass the salt?" or "is there something more I can do to help?" At family gatherings or when hanging out with Ana Maria's friends, I am very much a stranger and it has been one of my challenges to become the most friendly stranger I can be and to become apart of the group. My exchange thus far has been a roller coaster of great experiences and challenges. I have really enjoyed settling into the everyday life here. For the past two weeks, being out of my comfort zone, I have been able to observe what I am really capable of.

I want to share with you a particularly exciting weekend we had:

On Friday, we left around 7 pm (?) and drove over the eastside of the Andes to Papallacta (pronounced paw-paw-jact-ah, more or less) Termas (volcanic hot pools). There, we had our own cabin with private hot pools just for the cluster of cabins. We had dinner (which is almost always make-shift or light) of baguettes, cheese, ham, olives, mayo, pickles and peach juice (durazno). Then we got in the hot pools, which are shallow but very hot. The water has a ton of good minerals and revitalizing qualities.

On Saturday morning, we had cereal, breads and croissants, eggs, strawberries and these small little round orange-colored fruits (fruit names are so hard... especially when we don't have them). Then we walked around the small resort, gorgeous; it is set in mountains which are a mix of highland and amazon plantlife. Then we took off for the Amazon, El Oriente. The vegetation slowly changed and we stopped off to the side of the road many times for photos. Most of this time, I don't really understand where we were going due to the spanglish, so this was a awesome surprise. We drove to this river where there are these long, canoe-like boats with motors. The boat took us down a river through the Amazon forest to La Casa de Suizo (The Swiss House), a really awesome resort in the Amazon(!). Here, we ate lunch under a thatched awning while checking the FIFA/World Cup score (very popular here). Our lunch was buffet style of a fried plantains, many rich colored vegetables, a yucca and carne soup, rice(arroz) and meat(carne), and many other delicious dishes. Then we headed back to the west to Machachi(sp?), where they (I mean Ana's dad's side of the family) have a hacienda (large farm--the small farms are called quintas), for homemade pizza and salad. We went to Muchachi by way of many pueblos (towns), one called Banos, a town with many indigenous markets and just really neat altogether. All pueblos and cities have a plaza that has a park in front of a church and other important buildings. The hacienda has an old farm house, Ecuadorian style of course; when you walk in, there is cow hide on the ground, a cool first impression. Their hacienda is a dairy farm and it is surrounded by the lush mountains, of which I never got tired of taking pictures. The farm hands also has small houses there.

On Sunday, I woke up at around 9 am and took a shower (it was cold because the house is the same temp as the outdoors--about 60 degrees), got dressed and played a new card game with Maria Elvira. We had breakfast; I had hard boiled egg and a croissant (with guayaba

marmalade). Then Ana showed me around the farm and I took lots of pictures. We hung out with one of the calves and walked through all the barns and equipment. We left and went to Cumbaya for lunch with their family and to watch the last of the World Cup. In Cumbaya, Ana's father side of the family lives. They all live in houses next to each other and share a yard. Carmen and Fidel are building a house there. Currently a lot of people are moving out to Cumbaya but working in Quito (just 20 minutes away). After lunch, we dropped Maria Elvira, Isa and their cousin off at church, then dropped Ana off at a service for a classmate who passed away on Saturday. Carmen asked me if I wanted to go to church or to go back to the house, where Fidel was going to drop off all our things (it wouldn't be smart to leave it all in the open bed of his truck) and I went to church ;). The church was fairly small and the service consisted of singing and music, lecture, communion and prayer. It was a Catholic church; about 95% of the people here are Catholic. I am glad I went. I met other people, friends of Carmen and Fidel, and learned a bit more about how they practice Catholicism.

I am having a wonderful and time and I can't wait to share it with Rotary. I'll send more updates later on. Thanks!

~Gracie

Christopher Mingli Jones

Katie Mitchell - report

Alison Martin

Drake Lundstrom – midterm ST report

Hello this is my mid way report and I would have sent it earlier but we have been really busy lately. When I first got to Ecuador at 10 pm (Ecuadorian time because it is one hour backward from Ohio time) I was greeted by my host family and a past exchange student named Lorena whom had stayed with me family. I also had arrived just in time to go to a party with my new brother Felipe. We returned to Felipe´s house from the birthday party of Jorge at 3:30am and I was asleep before I hit the bed because for me it was 4:40 am. When I woke up I had breakfast with my new family and at lunch I gave them the gifts I brought and they loved them. Afterwards we went outside for a while to practice using their new football. We then went to the mall to by their dad cards for father´s day. At the mall we saw the movie prince of Persia in Spanish. The next day we woke up our dad with breakfast in bed and gifts for father’s day. After a special father´s day lunch at a restraint we went to the house of Felipe´s grandparents for a king of family reunion. One of Felipe’s cousins can play the piano amazingly. The next day Felipe Javier and I went to their school to play volleyball and soccer. I met a lot more of their friends there and also saw a lot of people from the party again. We also went there the next day, and after we returned we had lunch and went to a nearby park that has people playing soccer there most days. We have one to the park many of the days I am here so that and staying at the house will fill in any blank spots I leave. The next day after going to the park we went to the mall and went bowling with some of my brothers’ friends and I won with a score over 100! My best game yet. The next day we went to a country club and had a lot of fun playing soccer and swimming. The 27th we visited a city in the crater of a volcano and the center of the world with some of Felipe’s cousins. We also got to eat guinea pig. The next day we went to an amusement park on a mountain. On the 29th we went to the school for some more soccer. The next day we went to the park. On the 1st we went with one of Felipe’s friends to a motocross course. The next day Felipe, his parents, and I went to the prom of his cousin and returned early (1am) to go to his sister´s birthday party. The next day we went to the market and there are so many new fruits here and they are so big! I had a very exotic milkshake. The 4th was my sister´s birthday and we had a cake before going to visit an art museum of Guayasamin´s works. On the 7th we went to a waterslide in the jungle at a river and to a zip line course. On the 10th we had dinner with an uncle who was visiting from Norway. The next day we went with the same uncle to volcano alley (a street with 4 volcanoes along it) and we got to climb one. Afterwards we watched the world cup finals in a restaurant, I forgot to mention but everybody watched every world cup game. For my birthday we I got a cake and a phone call from my other parents and I went rock climbing. On the 14th I gave my speech at a formal rotary diner and exchanged flags. After diner there was a clown and funny videos??? I was surprised to say the least and I understood some of the jokes. Here is one: If you marry you sister you don´t have kids . . . you have nephews! We leave to go to the beach Sunday see yah!

Youth Exchange Report ST

Ellie McKinney

It’s amazing how fast time flies. It feels like yesterday that I was meeting everyone for the first time at Camp Mary Orton! But now, I realize that my exchange is almost over. I left June 29th for France, excited and terrified at the fact that I would be spending an entire month with complete strangers. Granted, I had talked to my host sister, Sophie, a few times through email but I was pretty much in the dark about my family.

I arrived in the Paris airport at 5:30 in the morning, 20 hours without sleep at this point, and meet the Chaprons for the first time. Sophie, my 17 year old sister, is very quiet, I think, because she is tired. She and her family had to wake up at 2 am to come fetch moi a la airport!! Anyway then we get in the car and drive about 3 hours to their home. We go about the day like normal, they asked me many times if I wanted to sleep but I said I wanted to go to sleep at the proper time to re-acclimate my clock. So, finally after being awake for 38 hours, I go to sleep.

I will admit the first few days were not really fun. I’ve only had about 1.5 years of French (because of a teacher issue my first year) so I understood 1 out of 20 words they were saying. Mme Chapron and Maxime, my host brother, didn’t speak a word of english and Mr. Chapron didn’t seem to for the first day. Luckily, Sophie knows English or I would have been lost! But as the days went on, and we became busy, I began to really enjoy myself.

The culture is hard to compare. The US society is much "busier" I would say. For example: it’s typical, in the US, that both parents work full time everyday. But in France, the parents, at least in the summer, were often home all day, would go to work in the afternoons and then be home by dinner. Also, because my parents both work full time, I’ve learned how to cook and prepare food for myself. But, Sophie’s mother makes breakfast, lunch and dinner so she had never cooked a meal in her life! I find that difficult now because I’m so used to just getting food for myself and expecting everyone else to get their own food, but if I don’t ask Sophie if she’s hungry then she won’t eat for the entire day!

We did a ton of traveling while I was in France! The second week I was there, we drove 3 hours to the coast and visited St. Malo, and Mont. St. Michele!! I got to spend my birthday there, in Mont. St. Michele, where we walked the whole town, explored the museums and then drove home where they surprised me with a birthday cake and gifts! I was so grateful and the cake was so good!

I met a lot of Sophie’s friends, who are very crazy, warm, extremely nice people. My favorite friend of hers was Ambre. She’s adopted from Vietnam, but has lived in France her whole life. She was so sweet and talkative and really funny. It was hard to really become acquainted with friends because of the language barrier but we were still able to communicate other ways. One way that Sophie and I were able to relate was playing cards. I taught her the only three card games I know how to play and she and I played them every single day. Many times too. Whenever we weren’t busy or occupied, we would each look at each other and say "Do you wanna play cards?" It’s a lot of fun because we’re the same level so it’s always a contest to see who wins.

One of the most incredible experiences I had was the first weekend I was there. Sophie and her friends are obsessed with Japan. They all love the culture, the music, and the Manga. So, I got the chance to go with her to the annual Japan Expo in Paris. Now, I’ll set a little scene here first: I don’t know anything about Manga. All I know about it is it originated in Asia, maybe Japan, and that there are many books and shows all about it, with tons of variety and many different artists. I have seen a lot of kids at school talk about it, draw it, and we even have an Anime Club at Westerville South. My mother has seen a convention and told me about how everyone dresses up in costume and most wear cat ears, but I had no idea what it was all about. Anyway we wake up early on Saturday, got dressed (in gothic costume) and caught the train to Paris. When we got there it began to rain! So I was running, in flip-flops, in the pouring rain and we had to run around Paris looking for the entrance to the Metro station! We finally got to the building where the expo was held and, because went with a friend on crutches, we got in with a snap of our fingers. When we get inside, I see people everywhere in homemade or store-bought costumes, wigs, and all of these accessories! (One thing I knew, from Manga drawings, is that each fighting character has some sort of weapon but to see these in real life was scary because they were HUGE. If this expo were to be held in the US these weapons would not be allowed and if they were, we would have security almost as tight as the airport security. That’s how accurate these weapons were.) So, we were there for two days and we saw everything possible. We walked

everywhere and watched everyone and we even went to a concert! There was a lot of sushi but I refused to eat it so I had classic sandwiches and pasta instead.

I’m still not a huge fan of Manga but I have definitely learned how to appreciate it! I’m the biggest Harry Potter fan, so I just told myself how I would have been if it were a Harry Potter expo and I was able to enjoy it much, much more!

We left for the US on July 28th. We left the house at 4 am and arrived at about 7 to check our bags and board our flight. Everything was going swimmingly until we arrived at our connecting flight in Amsterdam. We went to the information desk for our boarding passes to Boston and found out that our flight had been canceled! So we had to wait for another hour in line to rebook, then catch our flight to London (instead of Boston). When we got to London, we wandered around for about fifteen minutes in the wrong terminal because we didn’t know we had changed airlines. Finally we knew our gate to Boston and waited around for some hours then eventually got on the plane.

The first weekend home, we were lucky enough to go to my God sister’s wedding! We got one day to recuperate and then Friday was the wedding. It was so much fun! We helped set up the reception tent (because my mother was the wedding planner) and then went back to our B&B to get ready! All dressed up we went to this beautiful garden where the wedding was held. It was right on the water and the sun was in just the right place to have the perfect wedding possible. The reception was the best I’ve ever been to with great food and an amazing band. Everyone danced the entire night and it was the perfect weather and day for a wedding. The married couple could not have been more lucky! The next day we were invited to go, with the family of the bride, on a boat ride around Newport! Again, it was a lovely day and the water was so nice. We then started driving home that night because it’s a 15 hour drive! But, we got tired and stayed in a hotel for the night. The next day, Sunday, we thought we would be energized enough to drive all the way home, with only a slight detour to visit some family but ended up staying the night in Rochester NY and driving home on Monday!

Since Sophie’s been here we’ve hung out with some of my friends, we stayed, for almost a week, in Dayton with family, went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and done a little shopping! It’s been a lot of fun and I’ll be sad when school starts again!

Many people talk about the "life-changing experience" they got from doing exchange. I won’t lie and say that I had one. I’ll just say that i know mine is still out there because I still have long-term exchange to look forward to. I don’t think I expected to have one on short-term because I knew it was likely that I wouldn’t have a deep connection with my host sister like some do, but I still had a wonderful time and we get along very well! I can still say that this was one of the best learning experiences I could ever have and would love to do it again, and prepare for it better this next time! I think I relied too much on school learning, and realized too late that I really didn’t learn all that much and should have worked more, but I’m still learning.

Dustin Chan, mid-exchange ST report

So it’s halfway through my exchange, and so far everything’s going really well. I don’t really know what to say, I wrote an outline and I’ll put all of that stuff down but it’s really hard to give my impressions of Finland. It’s a country that is pretty much impossible to sum up in a few pages of writing, but that doesn’t mean I won’t try.

When I first landed in Finland I didn’t really know what to expect. Everything was different. But it wasn’t shockingly different. Thinking about it now, everything is exactly what you would expect it to be had you known to expect it. I just think I didn’t think too incredibly hard about what it would really be like to be in a different country. Of course they’re not going to have the same street signs or the same type of houses or the same highways. Yet that’s kind of what surprises you when you first arrive because you were never told to expect everything to be different. It’s really cool though, like how all the trees are just tall, skinny and straight. Or how mostly everyone has summer cottages. I only know one person here who doesn’t. Everything being different isn’t really distracting, it’s really interesting and it really makes you wonder.

One thing that’s extremely different is security and customs. There basically is none. My family took me to Sweden for a day and we went and came back on a cruise ship. There was no security whatsoever. We didn’t need any form of ID or our passports. No one checked our bags and we never went through any metal detectors. Then, when we got there, there was basically no customs. There was a line for people who had goods to declare and there was the exit. Everyone went straight to the exit, even if they obviously had cases of alcohol on them. There actually wasn’t even that kind of customs when we returned to Finland. I wasn’t afraid that someone would bomb the ship though, probably because Europeans aren’t quite as crazy as Americans. And I think I know why, but I have to explain the cruise and the Stockholm visit first.

The cruise was a lot different than American cruises. None of it was for your entertainment, it was all based around getting the cruise line more money. On the cruise was a bar, one floor of gambling machines, a roulette table, a blackjack table, another half a floor of gambling machines, a section for games (which you had to pay for), and a tax free shop. The legal age for gambling in Finland is 18, but no one was enforcing that rule because it got them more money. The tax free shop was really funny. It was always packed with people because the taxes are so high in Europe. There were probably over 5,000 litres (the computer made me spell it the British way ) of alcohol in the shop, 1000 lbs of chocolate, 2,000 perfume and cologne bottles, and then there was a small section for shoes and clothes. It was funny to watch everyone rush to buy whatever they could get your hands on, I’ve never seen anything quite like it. My host brother’s brother bought 4x24 packs of strong beer that was discounted by 66%. The price was reduced by over 100 euros to 54 euros. Another thing I found funny on the cruise was that they really didn’t care about your comfort. My host mom bought tickets on the 7th floor for our trip back because she wanted to get a room with a window since it was the night cruise and she didn’t like sleeping without a window. Fair enough. So we got to our room and when we looked at the wall, there was a painting. My host brothers and me found that really funny but my host mom did not.

Our Stockholm visit was interesting but I’m sure we got the tourist view of everything. That’s all you can really do if you stay somewhere for a day. We saw the changing of the guard, walked around some tourist-filled alleys and went to a mall. I really wish we had gotten to stay there longer so I would have gotten a better picture of what it’s like in Sweden, but I guess I’ll just have to put Sweden on my long-term list.

Something that I realized while I was in Sweden is that European people are amazing. They’re incredibly intelligent and mostly all bilingual. I realized this when we were checking into our hotel in Sweden and my host mom and the hotel employee had a full conversation about the hotel rooms in English. I listened to try and detect any imperfection in their grammar but there was none. It was incredible, English wasn’t either of their first language yet they spoke fluently. Almost everyone in Europe speaks English. A random guy came up to me when I was at a rock festival and he said something to me in Finnish and I didn’t understand him so I told him I speak English (Minä puhun englantia) and he repeated what he had said, but this time in English! That was my first encounter with someone bilingual in Europe and I’ve come to realize that it’s just a given that people in Europe speak their native language and English. My host mom speaks Swedish too.

Finland and Sweden also both have incredible histories that Americans can only dream of. Stockholm was established in 1252 and Naantali (my host city) was established around the same time. That’s three times as long as America has been a country, and there are still traditions here that hold true. There’s a church near me, and every night a trumpet player goes up into the clock tower and plays a song. That kind of incredible tradition that bridges the old and the new is something that I couldn’t even imagine before, and now it’s right next to my host family’s house.

Another Finnish tradition is the sauna. It’s actually really fun, even though I don’t quite understand why. If you think about it, it’s really kind of a dumb concept. You sit in a room that gets incredibly hot (sometimes reaching 100C or over, 212F for you Americans) and sweat a lot. Then, if you’re at a summer cottage, you run outside and jump in the water that’s probably around 20C or 60F, and you do it all again. It’s not that smart, but it’s really fun. The first time I got a little woozy from dehydration, but it was still fun. Wood saunas are the best because they’re more humid so your skin doesn’t feel like it’s burning off and you get the fresh smell of wood burning in the air. My host brother thinks I’m crazy for this, and I may be, but I think that wood sauna air is the sweetest most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted. Yes, tasted. Not smelled, tasted. Maybe the sauna heat causes me to hallucinate, but every time I’m in a wood sauna I can taste the air. I probably am crazy though.

I have to talk about Finnish water because it was the whole reason I put Finland down as my 4th country. I heard a very long time ago about a study that showed that Finnish tapwater is literally the cleanest, most pure water in the world. Something like 99.9% pure. Eventually I ended up putting "taste finnish tapwater" down on a list of things I want to do before 30. So when I got the rotary application and I saw that Finland was an option, I put it down as my 4th country knowing full well that I was going to get a country in my top 3 choices, but thinking that if I didn’t at least I’d get to taste Finnish tapwater. So now I’m here, in Finland, having tasted Finnish tapwater. It tastes like water. Pure water, and that’s the only way I can describe it. If you encapsulated purity and ran it from a tap in the form of water, it would be Finnish water. It also feels different, heavier almost.

Driving in Finland is a lot different. I don’t mean me driving of course, I mean other people. Drivers seem on average a lot worse than American drivers. They’re always on the far far far far faaaaaar right side of the lane and they seem to have tunnel vision. Whenever something that could potentially be hazardous is going to happen, the driver doesn’t see it at first but when they do, they slam on the breaks and freak out. I really don’t know how the drivers in Finland got to be so bad, but miraculously I haven’t seen any accidents. I think that’s because the punishments for bad driving are so severe though. It’s a lot easier to lose your license in Europe and the driving ban times are a lot longer. Something that also freaks me out are the traffic lights. The traffic lights aren’t suspended and hanging on wires but they’re on poles on the side of the street. Honestly, they’re really easy to miss. In America you can’t really miss them because they’re right in front of you, but here the lights are on the side, so if you’re purely looking at the road you could drive right into the intersection and not know it. That doesn’t really concern me so much, seeing as my town doesn’t have any stop lights or stop signs whatsoever. There are just tons of roundabouts, yield signs, and intersections where stopping is assumed. Something that I’ve also noticed is that cars are really square here. They look like someone stretched them vertically in photoshop and decided it was a good look. I kind of like them, but it doesn’t really matter that much, it’s just something I took note of when I arrived.

The Finnish language is really interesting. It’s complex, but I don’t think it’s as crazy as English, but I only have a really narrow knowledge of the language at this point. I only say that it’s not that complex because they generally only have one word for everything. I know this because Finnish TV has American movies (really good ones that I would have never seen otherwise) with Finnish subtitles. I’ve noticed that a lot of different English words with generally the same meaning end up being subtitled as the same Finnish word. For example, father when speaking to preists or parents, dad, paps, papi, and every other word for father seems to translate simply to isä. I’ve noticed this phenomenon with other words too but I can’t think of them off the top of my head. Finnish is a really interesting language and it sounds beautiful, but it gets tiring listening to it for long periods of time because it’s a monotone language. That means that you don’t fluctuate the tone in your voice when speaking, so it constantly sounds like people are bored or just having polite small talk about the weather. It still sounds beautiful though.

I’ve mentioned summer cottages but I haven’t really talked about them. Summer cottages are really awesome, and a lot different than summer houses in America. I’ve been to 2 so far, my host family’s and my host mom’s parents’. They’re a lot different than American summer house because they’re a lot more connected with nature. There’s enough space between the cottages so that each cottage seems by itself, and they’re always surrounded by trees with the ocean or a big lake on one side. They’re really peaceful, except for all the mosquitoes. Summer cottages aren’t really any more peaceful than regular homes in Finland though. Sure, normal houses have a few less trees around them and are closer together, but if you sit in the back of your house you can still be completely unaware of your neighbours and completely in tune with nature. It’s amazing. The Fins don’t seem to realize this either because I go into the woods behind my host family’s house all the time and there’s never anyone there. So anyway, back to summer cottages. I’ve never been one to fish, I used to consider it boring but now I think it’s really fun. I’ve caught 6 fish so far, 5 perch pike or something and 1 pike. It’s relaxing to sit in the boat waiting for a bite.

The nature here is amazing. Something I honestly didn’t expect was the amount of cliffs boulders. They’re everywhere, there are what I consider 4 major cliffs within probably 4 kilometres of my host family’s house (2.5 miles). A really funny thing that I’ve noticed is that everything’s quiet on the weekends at night. On weekdays you can hear bugs, birds, cars, mopeds, motorcycles, and sometimes people outside. However, on weekends everything goes to sleep and all you can hear is the wind. I really want to sit on a cliff and watch the sun set but there are way too many mosquitoes, and it takes the sun like 3 hours to set because I’m so far north. I could probably watch the sun set and rise if I stayed out from 12-2. But as I said, there are way too many mosquitoes for me to be comfortable outside at that time of night.

I expected it to be cold in Finland. Everyone told me it would be cold since I’m so far north, but actually it’s been the warmest summer since 1930. That’s not much of a problem for me though since I’m used to warm weather, but it seems almost like the climate came to Finland with me. Eventually I really want to visit Lapland (the part of Finland in the arctic circle). It’s been snowing there. Snow in July, that’s my kind of place. Also, the aurora borealis comes almost 20 times a year. I’ll do that when I get older.

I still haven’t talked about the food yet. The food is delicious. Almost all of the meals are home-cooked, we’ve only been out to a restaurant once and it wasn’t as good. It’s a lot like American food, there’s not really one staple dish, they just eat what they like and what’s available. Most of the vegetables and berries are grown locally, all non-berry fruit has to be imported. There’s a lot of fish and these weird seasoned raw-fish appetizer things that are incredibly inefficiently packaged. We eat them at every meal yet they’re in these tiny little cans that last maybe one or two days. That doesn’t seem to be a problem though seeing as my host mom goes out to buy new food every day.

Nothing’s bought in advance which is really unusual to me. I’m used to buying food for at least a week in advance if not two or more. The locally grown fruits and vegetables are succulent and juicy. The fresh peas are delicious and I love popping the pod open and eating them one by one. A couple weeks ago I had the best strawberries I’ve ever had and probably ever will have in my life. They were the sweetest strawberries I’ve ever had, they were organic, and they just melted in your mouth. I’m sad that they’re gone. Something that I’ve also noticed is that when our family sits down for dinner, we almost always use two plates. There’s an appetizer plate and a main course plate. They freaked me out when they only put one plate down for dinner.

I haven’t talked about the people yet. The people are amazing. That’s good, because there’s really no diversity. Everyone in the older generation is white, works hard, has a family and summer cottage and enjoys things like fishing, golf, and music. Everyone younger than 18 has a moped, smokes, drinks, gambles, doesn’t really care about school, and enjoy things like fishing, golf, and music. It’s weird to see a country with no diversity when I’m used to maximum diversity in America. I’ve seen maybe 2 mopeds in my life and all of a sudden everyone under 18 has a moped in Finland. It’s also weird to see everyone smoking and drinking even though the legal age is 18 for both. And it’s weird to see people not care about school. The people that get good grades only do so because of their parents. 5 people I’ve met didn’t even qualify for high school. Maybe that’s just my host brother’s friend group though.

What I’ve come to realize from this exchange is how drastically different the tourist view of the culture of a country is from the actual culture of a country. I’ve realized this mostly because of a Finnish culture book I brought along with me. It’s completely and totally incorrect. Everything single thing the writer says is false, and that’s because she’s just a tourist. She’s never actually lived with a Finnish family so she has no idea what the culture is like no matter how many times she’s been to Finland. For instance, she said that waiters don’t come over to your table because they don’t to bother you while you’re eating, that Finnish people always follow rules no matter what, even if they don’t agree with them, and that Finnish people are absolutely obsessed with their cell phones. Actually, waiters in Finland are just bad because no one eats out. Everyone who’s actually Finnish eats good, home-cooked Finnish meals. The waiters don’t have to be good because they don’t get tipped and they know that everyone who’s eating at their restaurant must be a tourist meaning that they’ll probably only eat there once anyway. That’s why most Finnish restaurants are open only in the summer, because that’s when all the tourists are in town. On her second point, I really don’t know where she got that from. Finnish people don’t care for following rules. If they don’t agree with them they just won’t follow them. My host brother drinks and his parents know and don’t care. Everyone under 18 drinks and smokes and gambles and no one cares about that. The police kind of care about the smoking but they don’t do anything about the drinking. And on her idea about cell phones, there’s only one city in Finland where everyone’s obsessed with cell phones and that city’s way up north near Lapland. Everyone in the southern part of Finland uses cell phones just like anyone else in the world. It’s really good to be able to view a country from the inside and it’s interesting that I can see exactly how different it would have been if I had been a tourist.

20 days. That’s how many days have passed since I arrived in Finland. There are 19 more. I’m exactly at the halfway point of my exchange. The last half was a blast, and I can’t wait to see what the rest of my exchange will bring.

After watching a lot of news articles and talking with people about politics, I've realized that the Finnish people really don't know anything about foreign politics, only tragedies that occur and who's president. I feel like that needs to change. Not just in Finland either, the whole world should be educated about world politics so they can speak their mind if people start going crazy in a certain faction of the world (Tea Party). If the whole world actually knew how bigoted, narrow-minded and outrageous American conservative politics have become, I'm sure they would intervene and hings. Of course, they'd all hate America once they realized that half of the population thinks that Obama's a muslim terrorist who wasn't born in the US and is attempting to remove all white men from office, but that's the real America. Sad, yes, but exactly how low American politicians have sunk has to be shown before any change can happen. The American conservatives don't realize how low they've sunk because they're stuck in their own bubble of bigotry so the only way for them to actually face the fact that they're a disgrace to the entire human race would be for the whole world to speak up against them. But that's probably never going to happen and when FOX news finally brainwashes the other half of America they'll start the fourth World War and try to take over the world.