I will be here from June 25 until July 19, here is Western/Central Finland.
My first family, the Ilottu family, is made up of 5 members:
Father- Ari, he is an agricultural teacher (like I was!) at a technical school in the county.
Mother- Tiiu (tea-you), is a home maker and a mighty good cook, she runs the kids and I around and picks up other jobs during the school year.
Daughter- Laura (low-rrrah), is 18 and was an exchange student to Maryland last year and speaks fantastic English. She will be a senior in high school this year.
Son- Lauri (low-rrrie), is 15 and will be a sophomore in high school, he enjoys playing sports and other typical boy things.
Daughter- Elisa (Ellie-sa), is 14 and will be in 8th grade, she LOVES playing football (soccer for those Americans reading) and spending time with her best friend Emmie.
The Ilottu family lives in the country side where they have a farm that produces mostly wheat and strawberries, all organic.
Tiiu is actually from Estonia and the family speaks Estonian in the home, this means that the children grew up speaking Estonian and Finnish, then learned English and Swedish in school, blows my mind! While I am with the Ilottus we will be going to Estonia to visit Tiiu's family. I hit the jackpot with this family, two countries to experience!
 I have been sent off to do some pretty fantastic stuff lately. First was the AG show I went to with family friend Jukka (who happend to be married to a wonderful woman named Andrea from America! So he spoke fantastic English) I saw more brands of equipment than I ever have in my life, and there was a set up for agricultural debates and Finnish issues in Ag. It was really cool to see how different the equipment was from what I am used to, lots of logging stuff, even a brand called Kara! 
I also got to spend the day with a woman named Anna-kaisa who showed me all around her families farm which is around 600 years old. They have a museum in one of the old barns with many many items that are, as she proudly put, "older than my entire country". The views are beautiful and she was a fantastic tour guide. They are also organic farmers , which as they explained to me, is easier here because it gets so cold in the winter that many of the weeds that germinated in the fall die before spring. Too cold for weeds?? Glad I'm only here for the summer!
 
Anna Kaiza showing me some very old Finnish birch bark shoes.
Everyone walks far more than I do at home which is nice, it is a great way too see the area and get a foothold on where you are at, worst case scenario how lost can you get on foot? Don't answer that. I have seen some beautiful views and things though, and maybe managed to keep some of the IFYE weight gain at bay.
We are going to Estonia by ferry on July 4th, which means I will be in two countries for my country's Independence Day, it will be sad to be so far from home but I'm sure I will be well distracted here and there.
Here in Estonia now!
The ferry ride was my first and I was a little bit nervous (maybe I have seen the Titanic too many times?) but it was fun. The ship was huge, 9 floors to wander through, multiple decks outside, shops and bars and a night club. It seemed a little crazy to me that all of this was on a ship. We took the family car and so there was no luggage to deal with and after 2 hours we arrived in the town of Tallinn.
Tallinn is the capital of Estonia and where my host Uncle, Aunt, and cousins live. The first big even here was the National Estonian song festival. This even happens once every four years and choirs from all around Estonia and some international choirs gather to sing songs reminiscent of periods of Estonian history. It starts with a 6 hour, three mile long parade ending at the Tallinn event center. There were over 4,000 singers and an estimated 100,000 people attend the event, I have never seen anything quite like it.
My host sisters, cousin Gerli and I went to visit Grandma by train in the nearby town of Tartu. Tartu is much smaller than Tallinn which makes it much easier to navigate on foot or by bus. Laura and Gerli are attending driving school in Tartu and have been staying here. I got to explore the city with Elisa while they were in class, we went swimming and walking.
In the evenings we would walk to the supermarket and get game snacks for whatever World Cup game was happening that night. The only down side was I was sleeping on the couch in the only room with a TV so I had to see the game through, which ended at about 2am that particular night, or morning to be precise.
The next day Elisa slept in later than I wanted to wait for so I hit the city alone (at grandmas urging). I was a bit nervous at first but it turned out to be a wonderful thing being alone and getting to make some decisions for myself. I rode the bus a full route to see all that I could (a specific no ice cream notice made me giggle).
Then I walked through a market and to a book store. Ate lunch in a restaurant that claimed to have Texas BBQ, I was feeling ironic. After which I caught a movie that I had never heard of that was clearly designed in and for Europeans, the great ting I discovered was that most movies are still in English, they just have Estonian subtitles. On the way back I opted to walk instead of taking the bus, which let me walk over some canal bridges and get an ice cream cone. I think I enjoyed having some alone time the most, it gave me a chance to really see my surroundings instead of just hearing about them from my hosts.
The next day we caught a bus at 13:30 back to Tallinn to Aunt and Uncle's house.
After a couple more days at the Aunt and Uncles we headed back to Finland on the same ferry that brought us here, it was a little less nerve racking the second time around. After arriving in Helsinki we caught our bus to Tampere (another three hours) but I think I like bus travel more than train, there is more to see and it is more comfortable, at least what I've experienced so far.
Tiiu and I spent a day running errands in Tampere, which is always fun. We went to an observation tower and she pointed out some of the larger churches and important buildings in the city which was really interesting to see from that vantage point. After our grocery store, library and small store errands we headed back home, tired as could be.
As my days here come to a close I have been busy busy with the last few things they want to show me.
Tiiu and I spent a morning looking through the family photos and pictures from Ari's trip as an IFYE to California and Michigan.
On my last day we drove around and saw strawberry farms, and an "all natural" market complete with a working blacksmith, very neat. The tour was concluded with a visit to the oldest, and biggest pine in Finland (which happened to be only a couple kilometers from their house). The tree looked like something that would be used in a scary movie, the information book with it actually said it was used in pagan rituals 500 years ago, creepy!
As I conclude my visit in the Ilottu home I have realized many things:
-Porridge is awesome
-Walking to stores is way more fun than I thought.
-Soccer really is a fun sport
-Always have one of these handy cheese/cucumber cutter things.
-Summer Cottages are fantastic
-So is the Sauna
-Pancakes for dinner are always a good idea
-Listen twice as much as you talk
-Any place can feel like home
-All desserts should have strawberries in them
I truly enjoyed my visit in the Ilottu's home and will miss them very much. But I am excited to meet my new family!
See you in the Sirkkamaki Section next!
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My host father Ari looking over the strawberry patch.
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