so far so good

Hallo!
   Another week of my exchange year has passed, and so many new memories have been made. I´m just going to start out by saying that Germany is A-MA-ZING! With every passing day I´m enjoying this place more and more and it´s like a dream come true to actually live here! Most people have the dream to travel somewhere farfar away and try out the so called ,,american dream life´´ , but for me it was enough to fly a few countries down, and fulfill my dreams here. I´ve been in Germany for only three weeks now, and I´m already head over heels in love with this place. I´m finally in that comfortplace with my family, and I can be weird around them and well, be myself.

selfie // Luka // yeah, I´m still a tourist...

HOW COULD I JUST NOT LOVE THIS PLACE

   From Monday to Wednesday we were with Maxi -my older hostsister- at their grandparents place (Maxi stayed until Friday but I left already on Wednesday. Oma and opa live in a small village in the mountains, and it´s so calm and pretty there (seriously, look at the third picture). It was nice to kind of take the time off, and live a bit in the German ,,farmlife´´. They have the cutest little dog there, and three mean cats (actually only two were mean but meh). We went to pick mushrooms from a forest near, and for a mushroom hater, it was actually pretty interesting! OH, and we also visited a womans house, who has the WORLD RECORD (I think...?) in collecting bells. Like seriously, she has over 10 000 bells in HER OWN HOUSE, and it was a bit scary for a clumsy child like me, to move between the endless shelves of hundreds of bells from glass or porcelain.... and she collects other things also, such as different animals from glass, and those plates you put on your wall, so her house was like a huge store of collectable things.

the slippers in the first pic were so huge and heavy, but it was not allowed to  enter the important rooms without them...

   On saturday, my hostmom took me to see the castle of Rudolstadt (picture 5 , the 4th picture). The castle was built in the Barocco era, and was used for maaaaaanymany years, until it was made in to a museum (sorry I don´t know the years...). The castle is so huge in overall, but we just saw about 13 of the rooms, and they were so pretty! I personally adore barocco style, and my heart just melt there. There were some problems with the instructor though... The other lady sold me the ticket for free (perks of being an exchange student), and while checking everyones tickets, the instructor didn´t understand why I had a 0.00 on my ticket, and started complaining something in german... The worst part was, I agreed on going on the tour without my hostmom, since she had seen it for a million and over times before... I guess the lady got tired of explaining the same thing to me over and over again, since after a few minutes she just let me through, and germans don´t really speak english... The whole tour was a bit awkward anyway, because I had the same info the instructor went through, in a notebook in english, and it seemed to be so weird for everyone else...

Mein erster besuch auf dem Vokelschiesen // they had different chips for different machines // yeah  // THERE WAS A FINNISH FLAG THERE SOMEWHERE I SWEAR

look mommy, I have friends // crossest thing I´ve ever eaten // more food // selfie #2

   The last high point of my week was the amusement park visit(s). On friday they opened the park, and we were a few of the first people to ride the machines... yay. We also visited the park today with Maxi, and I was dreaming about that blue apple ever since friday, yeah didn´t fulfill my expectations. We also ran into the prime minister of Thüringen, and I made a total fool of myself ohmy... Basically they were walking by and Maxi started explaining in english who was who, and then the prime minister walked to us and corrected something what Maxi said (sorry I wasn´t really paying attention), and then she stretched out her hand and asked where I´m from, and this idiot just pulled a casual ,,hi´´ and it took me a while to understand what her hand was there for... After a short period of time I introduced myself and tried not to cry of shame... I´m not much of an official person you know.

   Tomorrow morning we will be going to speak to the principal of my school, to find out about my upcoming year. And I apologize about giving the wrong information about my school in some post before. Turns out that when my hostfamily found out that I want to study in Germany in the future, they thought it´d be more useful to put me in a gümnasium (highschool) instead of the other school I was about to go to (don´t really know what kind of a school that was but oh well). And next week will be the last holiday week ! YAY I CAN FINALY GO TO SCHOOL TO GET SOME FRIENDS ! :):)

Tscüss!

FIRST WEEK WITH THE FAMILY & HOSTSISTER LEAVING TO ESTONIA

Hallo! 

My first week with the family went better than good ! I bonded with them really quick, and they started feeling like my own family in only a couple of days. This week went by pretty fast, and I´ve even learned some german... actually not really well, I´m still using handsignals as my main object in communication, but I´m sure as soon as school starts, the language skill will boost up.Of course, just as any other exchange student before, I had to make a fool of myself a couple of times (krhm actually a million times) while trying to keep the conversation going. And almost every time my hostparents ask me something in german I just smile and agree, and mostly they hadn´t asked me a yes or no question... awkward. But gladly my family understands that it´s really hard for me to actually remember any logical words, so they do the best to help me. We even have papernotes on different furnitures with german words on them (that´s actually really genious). 

NEW HARIBOS ARE SO GOOD! They should have them in Estonia also // bratwurst...// Rudolstadt

I don´t think there´s any need for an explanation...// hostsister trying out my favorite fastfood place for the first time

   The first few days I spent with my older hostsister travelling to Jena (+ Rudolstadt) and back for a little shopping and sightseeing. Gladly both of my hostsisters know english, so at times I can give myself a little pause from that mindtwingling language, and ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND SOMETHING (I know my head should be working in german all the time, I apologize). 

   Yesterday (saturday) my younger hostsister left for her exchangeyear to Estonia, and I think I made the worst decision ever by deciding to join the family with the trip to the airport and back... Everything was good and fun, until the emotional part for the family came - the goodbyes. In that moment there was a total flashback to when I was at the airport just a couple of weeks ago, all emotional about leaving my family and boyfriend for the whole year, and seeing everybody else cry didn´t make it any easier... Before I knew I was crying together with the family, but for different reasons. Half of the day I couldn´t stop thinking about my family in Finland and in Estonia, and was sooooo homesick, it was horrible. But when we made it back home, things started going better, I communicated more with the parents, and we bonded even more thanks to the emotional breakdown. At the evening we even went running together with my hostmom, and spent the rest of the evening all together filling in my scrapbook.

   Today we went cycling with my hostdad, and went to see (in my oppinion) the most beautiful places here! We were cycling between mountains and it was so cool !! I took a lot of pointless pictures of the same water in different places, so there´s not much for me to post... 

   I apologize for my messy (most likely with mistakes) text, but I have no idea what to write and what to tell you people. There´s so much new here that I could go on for ages... It´s a bit weird to get used to the habits of my family (and overall germans), but so far I think I´ve been doing pretty good... I hope. 

Aaaaand that´s all for now, Tschüß, bis später! :)

OWO & MEETING THE FAMILY

   Been a while since the last time I had time to come update this thing, and so much has happened since. We made it to Germany on the 3rd of august somewhere in the morning, and 2 of YFU Germanys volunteers took us from Hamburg to Lauenburg to our owo (orienterungswoche?). The rest made it there only at night, so we (Estonians) had the whole day to do whatever we wanted to.

   Me and Johanna decided to go play tourists and spent most of the day getting lost in Lauenburg. Luckily all of the stores were closed on sunday, so we didn´t have any opportunity to spend any money. The worst part about that whole day was going to sleep alone in a room for 6, while everybody else had roomies already (the other group came at 18 and the last one only at 23). But when my roomies finally made it there they were so noisy that they woke me up and good that they did ! We had a little bonding time for an hour or so until everybody blacked out again (I hadn´t slept at all in the previous night and didn´t get any during the day also). I had an Italian, Finnish, Danish, Norwegian and a French girl in my room, and I can admit that they were the best girls to spend your week with ! We bonded so fast and had so much fun together ! Overall there were only 40 of us in that camp, and the rest were in other camps.

   That week went by so fast and at the same time so slow. I had a lot of fun there and met some reaaallly great people but lets be honest, we all couldn´t wait meeting our families so it seemed so weird that everybody was counting days to finally get away from there (it may have been also because there was no Wifi and no internet anywhere in the whole village). 

   Exchange students are for sure the weirdest people you´ll ever meet, but they´re also one of the only people who actually understand and don´t judge, so it was so great to be in such environment and not feel retarded doing all those crazy things. Can´t wait to get together with all of those weirdass people and share my breakdowns and not so normal ideas. LOVE YOU ALL AND I HOPE YOU´LL HAVE THE MOST AMAZING YEAR EVER !

   Finally I can get to the interesting part, arriving to my hostfamily. We left Lauenburg yesterday all with different trains and ohmy, travelling hasn´t ever been so stressful before. There were some people who missed theyr trains simply because the doors just closed right in front of them, and that´s so creepy when you and the other girl are the only ones who made it on the train from the six of you... I was panicing the whole first train ride about will I make it on the next train, and the next train ride about will I find my family or visaversa. Luckily everything went really well and I didn´t have to contact YFU Germany at all. 

   When I saw my hostdad and other hostsister standing there on the trainstation I got once again so emotional and started crying right in front of them. The one hour drive to my new home was so interesting and there was so much adreanalin running through my veins, and at home I met my hostmom and it was so weird sitting around the table with them and not understanding aaaaanything they were saying (like literally they spoke so fast I couldn´t even understand the simple questions), but gladly after a while they slowed down they´re speaking and started using more hand gestures for me to understand better.

   Today we wen´t to my hostmoms parents place to pick up my other hostsister, and just to spend time with them. Later we went for a little walk with Maxi (older hostsister), and now were just relaxing and talking. :):)

Tschüss !

TOMORROW'S THE BIG DAY

Finally tommorow's the day I've been waiting for sososo long... The day I'm finally flying to Germany! I can't really tell if I'm happy or sad - I'd say both. During the past week my emotions have been jumping up and down and it's been one of those endless rollercoasters in my head. I still can't believe that I'm actually going to live in Germany for the whole year WITHOUT seeing all of my friends and family who I'm used to seeing every single day. Of course there's also those hopeless lists of fears stuck in my head about will I be okay on my own, but I know that my hostfamily will be there for me no matter what.

Oh and about the family,,, I've been talking to all of the family members and ohmy, they're such lovely people! They're all so kind, and even though they haven't even met me yet, they already talk to me as if I was a part of their family. I'm so happy that I get to spend my year with those people... :3

My plane will leave Tallinn tomorrow at 6.35 a.m. , which means we'll have to start driving at about 01.00 a.m. (kill me please). I won't be getting any sleep this night, and I'm also pretty sure I won't be able to sleep on the plane also (due to excitement overload).

I already left goodbyes with my family in Finland, all of my friends, and just saw my brother for the last time for the entire year (I just got emotional about it for the first time while writing about it), and tomorrow morning will be saying goodbye to the rest of my family and my boyfriend, so a lot of crying planned for tomorrow... 

Okay, so, I think I'll get back to my packing (have been ignoring it for the past few days), and make sure I have everything I have my bigbig day tomorrow! Fingers crossed I won't get lost anywhere and dye or something.