Heinäkuu – July

Moi

At the of July I took a trip to Oulu to stay with my oldies for a few days. They only had about a week or two left in Finland so I had to say goodbye to them which was hard but I am excited to meet the new exchange students in August. We went to the international markets in city centre and just hung out in the city.

For one week of the month my host family had a visitor from Germany who they hosted for a few weeks. a few years ago. When she was here we went to a high ropes course in the forest in a city called Kalajoki. It was so fun but the next day I could hardly move. We all went to the summer cottage for a few days with the German girl and we went to sauna, swimming and ate so much. We went to some town near the summer cottage where there was a bucket carrying race on that we watched and then went swimming at a beach there.

After we took the German girl back to the airport in Oulu, we didn’t go home but drove up into lapland. We drove maybe 5 hours to a city called Kuusamo where we stayed in a summer cottage. I got to see wild reindeer on the way which made me so happy and then I really felt like I was in Lapland. On our first day there we did a hike in a Oulanka National Park. The next day we went to a Pentix museum and store. Pentix is a well known and really nice Finnish brand. We went to this old reindeer farm that was now covered in scultures and artworks. On the way home we went to a beach. It felt so odd to be sunbaking on a beach IN LAPLAND. On the last day we went white water rafting, also in the same place as the hike on the first day and that was so fun. We stopped halfway and picked some berries in the forest and drank mehu. Those few days we were in Lapland Finland was soo hot. I think over 30 degrees even. Sometimes I didn’t feel like I was in Lapland because when I think about Lapland I think of snow and freezing weather. The nature is Lapland is so beautiful also quite different from Nivala. I think it was such a good trip and I am so lucky that my host family took me there.

At the end of the summer I went on a scout camp in Kokkola with scouts from around my area in Finland. I was the only one there from another country and it was so interesting to experience what scouts in another country is like. During the week we did things like abseiling, we welded pans, helped build a model of a plane, went to the beach and went on an overnight hike. We walked for half a day then slept near the beach in a shelter that we had to build ourselves. It was so fun except for all the mozzie bites I had when I woke up. I am so happy I got to go there as I met so many knew people and learnt about Finnish scouts.