It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Fireworks!

Of course they don't celebrate Thanksgiving here (that would be silly) so the actual day of Thanksgiving wasn't that eventful aside from it being my LAST DAY OF CLASSES and skyping my family. I was really missing grandma's mashed potatoes that day!

The day after was pretty fantastic though for two reasons: 1) I didn't have to work/deal with Black Friday!!! 2) It was the Christmas Opening event here in Oulu!

They turned on the lights in the city center

They had a lot of
performances on
the main stage

Christmas decorations in every shop window

This time Santa came to me!
and I got to finally take my pic with him :)

Fireworks over the water :)

Beautiful Christmas trees

The next day (Saturday (yesterday)):
Us Americans got together and had Thanksgiving dinner. It was so great! So much food!

Food!

Shown: 7 Americans, 3 Belgians, 2 Australians,
1 French, & 1 Dane (1 Mexican came later)
It was so great explaining and celebrating this
wonderful holiday with other people!

After dinner, my Kummi family picked me up and we went ice skating! :D

Love these girls!

The rink is outside and it's free!

I haven't skated since last year so I was a little wobbly. Alina and Eerika had to hold my hand to help me stay balanced! haha!

Then we went to Micky D's for some ice cream!

After they dropped me off, I went to a friends house for a Christmas party. 

I love the holidays


Tomorrow I am leaving on my Sami Culture class trip! We will spend the entire time up north in the lapland and will be gone until late Friday night. Can you believe I still haven't packed yet?? HAHA! I better go do that now!

Busy, busy, busy!

1st off: This is my last week of classes! WOW! I have three classes and two exams this week, an essay due at some point in the near future, and my dreadful plant exam on the 12th of December, but then I'm done! 

With it being so close to the end of the semester and the on going "it's Christmas time!" feeling, my motivation is no where to be found! So of course I've been keeping busy with friends instead of studying ;)

At the lake watching the amazing
northern light display

More pizza!
For a b.day party

Pool on a snooker table
at the bar

Finnish Scrabble

ESN Sitsit party!

I need to explain this one. Sitsit's are student feasts. You sit boy-girl around the table and the proceedings are led by the master of ceremonies. The whole thing is basically singing crazy drinking songs and eating, but there are a lot of rules you have to follow, i.e., you can't talk/eat/drink while a song is being sung or someone is talking or you get a punishment. After each song, you have to toast people on both sides of you and the one in front before you can drink. The theme for this one was toga. After, we had a dance party. Such a fun night!

Pancakes!!!

Me with my Sami Culture teacher.
He's from Karigasniemi

Sami rock band, SomBy.
They are really good!

More explanations. The Sami are the indigenous people who live in the north of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the North-West of Russia. Their population isn't very big and there are currently 9 different groups, each with their own language and style of Gakti (traditional clothing). There was a Sami concert going on so me and some friends went to it after our teacher told us about it. The first group did more traditional Sami style songs called yoiking. The second group was the rock band pictured above. The third was a Sami rapper (who was my teacher's cousin). They all had very different sounds and styles of music, but they were all SO good! Best 5 euro I've ever spent!

Black light bowling!

Japanese food party!
These guys prepared traditional Japanese
food for 80+ people!
So fantastic! 

I'm loving it here way too much. I don't want to leave :( I only have a month left... *sigh* Oh well. That's still four more weeks of fun to look forward to I suppose! I should really get a bit of studying in at some point though ;)

Until next time,
<3 Hannah

In the capital with Nightwish!

As the title of this post tells you...

Marco, Tuomas, Floor, Troy, Jukka, & Emppu!

I SAW NIGHTWISH!!!!!!!!

They put on such an amazing show!! I thought I was going to die from starstruck-ness. Tuomas and Marco! <3 <3 In case you didn't know, they had to replace their singer during this tour. It was sad, but the temporary singer was really, really good! I hope that she is the new permanent singer! After the concert, they showed us the premiere of their new movie "Imaginaerum". I really enjoyed it! Such a good night! :D



So another thing the title of this post tells you, is that I was (finally) in the capital! Even though I was only there for a day, I determined quickly that I really like it! Helsinki might be the capital, but just like the rest of Finland, it doesn't have *that* many people. The city proper only has 600,000 people while the metropolitan area has around 1.3 million. I felt slightly overwhelmed after being in Oulu for so long (130,000 people) HAHA! I can't wait to visit again in December!

Uspenski Orthodox Cathedral

Lutheran Cathedral & statue of
Emperor Alexander II of Russia

The National Museum of Finland

Parliament House

Here is a link to one of my fav Nightwish songs. The music video is while they were filming their new movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g8ykQLYnX0

And here is a link to a very funny Finnish song called "Bouncy Feelings" filmed in Helsinki by a guy known as "Eggman": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHReqKRvonE

Moral of this story: I love Finland and everything about it :)
<3 Hannah

P.S. Happy Veteran's Day! Happy Finnish Father's Day! and Happy Make a Wish Day! :D

Life: Here and There

1st off: IT'S NOVEMBER! WHAT ZE HECK?! sloooowwww down time! I'm in no rush!

That being said: Where did "no shave November" come from? I tell people here about that and they all think we crazy! :D

Me and my French friend, Geraud, drew
French and American stereotypes while
we were bored in Finnish History class.

Speaking of CrAzY America ways... I missed being home for the first time since arriving here this past Wednesday. Halloween is one of my favorite holidays and I was very sad to miss out on it! It's not really celebrated here which is depressing, but oh well... Guess this means I'll just have to throw a costume party when I return to the states to get my fill of it! :D

Now I will update you on other various things concerning my life back home:

1. I registered for my classes for next semester... MY LAST SEMESTER OF UNDERGRAD!!! OMG!! THIS IS IN-SANE! O_O
2. I have an interview via Skype this next Thursday for the Peace Corps!!!! So excited! Soooo nervous!

Back to life here in good ol' Finland:

1. Me and some friends bought tickets to the Nightwish concert/movie premier in Helsinki next Saturday!!!!!! I HAVE BEYOND PUMPED!
2. It's a ways off, but speaking of concerts, I will be going to the Poets of the Fall concert in Helsinki on December 8th!! AAHHH!!!!!
3. Snow! There has been snow/ice all week, but it (mostly) melted today so it's safe to ride bikes again :D
4. I have a lot of homework that I really need to get to work on :/
5. This Sunday me and some peeps will be going to the university's choir concert. It's Mozart's Requiem and three of my friends are in it so it should be good!
6. I will also be going ice skating with my kummi family if the weather is agreeable! :D

That about does it! Sorry this post wasn't so exciting, but I had a lot of announcements I needed to make! haha! You really should listen to the bands (Nightwish and Poets of the Fall) if you haven't heard them. They are really great!

Until next time,

-Hannah

Pizza, cookies, and friends!
Nothing better :)