First Foreign Thanksgiving

Lately we have been quite busy. Felix my oldest host brother is home for a long weekend from his University and we have been trying to see as much as we can while he is here.

The turkeys are growing fast! They are already using a different feeding system to accommodate their growing size and appetites. We don't need to check on them as often anymore either which is a relief for everyone.

Petra took the farm apprentice Finn and I to a town nearby that is next to the Rhine river. The bridge that crosses the river looks like a mini Golden Gate Bridge which was quite funny. The view of the town and river at sunset were amazing.

I cooked a Thanksgiving meal all by myself!! Turkey, stuffing, garlic mashed potatoes, gravy, salad, and a sweet potato pie. All from scratch. I am rather proud of this accomplishment, I won't hide it.
Here is some irony in it though, I am with a family who has thousands of adult turkeys but we bought a tiny turkey from the store.

Yesterday Felix and I went to Köln which he says is the fourth largest city in Germany. They had a couple great Christmas markets we walked through and a Lindt chocolate museum. But what they are known for is their cathedral. When he told me we were going to see another church I was kind of bummed because I have seen so many and they are all impressive but all the same anymore. This was hardly a church, the term cathedral is much better fitting. It was amazing. And the history was impressive as well. The cathedral is built on the ruins of a church built in 870, in 1164 an archbishop transferred the bones of the three magi ( the three wise men). A golden shrine was built to house such precious relics, it was finished in 1225. It was decided 23 years later that there should be a grand cathedral to keep such a treasure. Construction was constant until 1560 however a building 300 years old needed renovations already and therefore the building is constantly under construction.

Things have been good here in this family and I am sad that I only have a couple more days here, I am excited though that my next family will be my own, although that hasn't really hit me yet. I look forward to my final days in Germany and my travels back to my loved ones!

Turkeys and the Rest

22,000 baby turkeys, one truck.

The truck was in the afternoon and we had our work cut out for us
.
Baby turkeys need a warm environment to survive, around 32 degrees Celsius and so the massive barn that they live in is heated to that. In the morning we needed to clean out the sterilizing fluid from the waterers in the barn and make sure that everything was ready for the turkeys. This was around two hours of  moving buckets of water, walking and moving in the hot box, we sweated gallons.
After lunch the turkeys arrived but not as normal. Because of the concern for disease transmission the truck is sprayed down with a sterile spray by the driver. He accidentally sterilized the inside too, with the turkeys inside.

It was just a moist spray but it made for some very wet cold turkeys getting unloaded on a cold November day. Turkeys come in boxes with four sections and we keep the hens and toms separate, each box contains sixty chicks. There were six of us unloading and it took a while.

We unloaded the boxes and set them inside the low fence after all the boxes were laid out the boxes are all opened and then the box is (rather unceremoniously) dumped upside down and removed, this helps all the chicks all adapt at once together.

After the chicks are out, they start eating and drinking almost immediately. But they must be checked on regularly, if they get cold it doesn't take long for them to crowd into a corner and suffocate one another. To check on them, we go into the loud hot barn and walk the pens changing water looking for chicks that are dead or laying on their side ( we flip them back over) and signs of crowding. This check is made every few hours for the first three days.

I have been up to much more than baby turkeys though! We went to a beautiful castle that had an art show inside. The art wasn't really my cup of tea (very abstract...) but we climbed the tower and got a great view of the forests and villages surrounding us. It was sunset and absolutely breathtaking.The castle was renovated in 1997 due to heavy bombing in WWII and when my host mom was a child she used to play in the castle ruins.

This family does some things that are really really similar to what my family does. Such as eats pizza while watching The Voice. Or has wrestling matches in the kitchen. Needless to say I feel extremely at home here which is wonderful after being away for so long. I get to drive here too, which is always a bit scary on the narrow crowded German streets but fun non the less :)



We have been making cookies in the down time as well, grandma (who speaks no English) and I go baking some afternoons, there is quite a bit of charades going on but we get it figured out.

And last but not least we went to the theater (or cinema as they say) and saw The Hunger Games movie. It was in German but that wasn't the biggest adjustment. The ONLY popcorn they sell is kettle corn. So weird, and depressing. I'm adding that to things I miss from the US. The movie was good, between the visual part, common sense, and my limited German, I knew what was happening, mostly.

That's all for now! Looking forward to the next adventures with this family!

Last Family, Last Country

I arrived to the Tremohlen family on the evening of the 18th in Kleve after a very long train ride across the entire country. I say entire country because I was close to CZ in the last family and am now 15 minutes from Holland.

My new family:
Peter-host father
Petra-host mother
Felix- brother, at school in Bavaria
Matias- brother 19
Judith- sister 16, spent a semester in New Zealand and speaks awesome English.
Lennart- brother 12

I have yet to meet Felix but everyone else seems very nice.

On my first day I got to ride in the truck to deliver sugar beats to the factory, I couldn't believe they are still harvesting! I also got to ride on the harvester.

Later on I went to town with Petra and Matias and we saw the new university in town and the old town center with the famous swan castle. I also learned that Anne of Cleve's (queen of England for a while)  was from Kleve, which is pretty neat!

One last note worthy fact is that the Tremohlen family are turkey farmers and they currently have 9,000 adult turkeys and will be getting 22,000 chicks in sometime tomorrow. And Thanksgiving is only a week away... :)

Living Alternative with the Kuhls

You may have noticed that I haven't blogged in awhile, I promise it is not because I didn't want to or didn't have anything to say, it is because I couldn't.

You see, I had been staying with a family that chooses to live alternatively. This means no internet, not television, no microwave, the mom has no cell phone and the children have no video games. This was an interesting lifestyle adjustment. I could use internet for email at a friend's place but I couldn't be there long enough to do much else. So I apologize to anyone who expected me to update this in the last month.

Due to the nature of this stay I am going to post the whole 19 days in one blog post, so deep breath, get ready.... Go!

In the moments directly following my exit of the train in Doberlug-Kirchhain I discovered that my host mom (Beate) and three siblings (Helena-11, Richard-9, and Karoline-7) spoke almost no English. And the father (Roger) was gone for a business trip. I knew at this point I was in for a crash course in learning German for the next few days. Since it was getting late we went home and ate dinner, I showered and went to sleep.

This family loves wine. Roger came home and he has taken it upon himself to teach me about wine. We dink some almost every night, sometimes a couple bottles! I'll be a qualified wine snob when I get home :).

Roger is an electrical engineer and he deals with technology all day at work which is part of why they choose to have none at home. Beate is a stay at home mom and a great cook, you must be when you have no microwave!

It is clear in families after the first week if there was a mass cleaning before I came or if it always looks as clean as it is.
*that was not meant to sound snobby -- at my home, we are the type to do a mass cleaning before guests.
This home was not cleaned especially for me, it was clear that Beate was just an extremely clean person, long story short, we cleaned a lot.

Every Monday Beate has an English class in a town about half an hour away which I got to attend with her. It was fun to talk and learn with all the people in the class, I really enjoyed it. After class, we would go grocery shopping, get lunch and do what ever we needed to in town before going back.

Since I am Lutheren, we went and visited Wittenburg where Martin Luther nailed his 95 thesis on the church doors and began the Reformation. Sadly the church buildings were mostly under renovations for the 2017 500 year anniversary but we did get to see the doors, the Luther museum, and a really cool tree garden where Lutheren churches from all over the world could plant a tree representing their church. While in Wittenburg we had sushi for lunch, I was shocked at how much I missed it! I don't even eat it much at home.

Another town that we went to was Berlin. I LOVE BERLIN. We took a hop on hop off tour around the city stopping to see statues and monuments, the wall, a museum and so much more. I loved how the city looked and felt and how the people were. Beate was the one who went with me and she was terrified most of the time which is sad, but according to Roger it was character building.

F60 is a massive machine that was used to removing the top layers of sand and sediment from coal beds for mining. It has been retired not but it is now used for tours and is accessible to the public as the largest movable piece of equipment, in the world. The F60 machine is near the town where Beate and I go to English class. To give you an idea it is 100 meters longer than the Eiffel Tower is tall and it is around 75 meters tall at the highest point.

There is a celebration called Saint Martin's day in Germany that was participated in on November 11 and the children and towns people walk around town with paper lanterns singing songs and then go to a church service followed by a party after. The celebration symbolizes Saint Martin riding his horse through the country and finding a man that would surely freeze to death in the night without help. Saint Martin took and cut his cloak in half and saving the man from dying.

I think I covered the high points of this visit, it is hard to write when you have lost the initial excitement of the event. I may update this one but for now I think it is a good outline.

Close but No Halloween

As I may have mentioned before this family sells chickens to restraunts all over Germany, being the social people my host parents are they are friends with some of the restauraunt owners and we were invited to the daylight savings meal at a French restauraunt.

It was really cool so see how the chickens that I helped feed and slaughter were eventually consumed.  The restauraunt served a menu that was filled with normal foods prepared in very strange ways such as a stroganoff that was deconstructed and an ice cream dessert that included candied potatoes, it was all very strange but good, I'm all about new experiences right? The food was wonderful, the company was better, much wine was consumed and I remembered to turn back my clock. I'd call that a good night!

The last day was spent in another town on "The List" -- Heidelberg!

I was so excited to see this town and castle because it is the one that everyone talked about, and it was wonderful, really wonderful. We went on a guided tour (in English woot woot!) and learned about the history of the building and those that inhabited it. Including the three times it was destroyed. The town was beautiful and there were many shops specializing in odd things. I found a chocolate shop that made chocolate dessert noodles, weird right?

On the way home we stopped at a Halloween store where Konner got the needed parts for his costume, this was hard since I have grown to really like this family leaving right before an event like their Halloween party was hard.

The final evening was spent sipping wine and playing card games. I really enjoyed staying with this family and was sad to leave it!

Rothenburg and Mannheim

Rothenberg and Mannheim are also cities that are on the aforementioned "list."

Mannheim is nearby and while there, we saw a castle that is being renovated to be a university, and a museum, as well as doing some shopping. It was a nice day in a lovely city.

Rothenberg is where it's at. 

This is one of my favorite days since coming to Germany. I absolutely adored Rothenberg. It is one of the oldest cities in Germany, one of the few that has survived all of the wars over time. Actually that isn't exactly true. At the end of World War II, Rothenberg was heavily bombed and much of the city and it's wall were destroyed. In the last 70 years people have been putting time, money and effort into repairing the city structures and the wall of the historic town of Rothenberg. 

What is this wall you're talking about Kara? I can hear you asking me now. In ancient times cities often put walls around the city to protect themselves from enemies. We don't see very much of this anymore because much of it is been torn down. Anyway long story short, there is about a 4 km walk along the top of the wall that you can do, and the view and history is amazing to see.

We also toured a crime and punishment Museum which talked about the different crimes and punishments for people over the ages. They made really hard decisions like whether to kill someone by hanging or boiling to death, also choices like what kind of shape of mask should a person wear and for how long. We also got to see different torture devices that were displayed. Most of them looked like something out of the Princess Bride movie -- lots of stretching machines.

Among other things, we spent time looking at a house that was built in the 1200s and touring a Christmas market that is open all year round.

My host mom's uncle owns a bed-and-breakfast as well as restaurants in this town. We ate breakfast lunch and dinner with her family, and for dinner we went to the main restaurant where we ate a delicious meal. I excused myself for a moment and while I was gone, my host mom apparently asked the chef to go light on the horseradish on my meal. He assured her that all Americans love horseradish. Sure enough when I got back from the bathroom and took my first bite, I said, "mmm, I love horseradish!" This became the joke of the night.

The Inbetweens

It has occurred to me that the things that I find interesting mean not necessarily be as interesting to you as they are to me. For example touring the city, I can't fully explain why that's exciting, it's exciting because I got to see it and it's hard to really convey that emotion so I want to make a post to talk about the daily life things that happen to me.

I slip on the stairs at least a little bit everyday. The stairs in Germany seem to all be in the semicircular pattern probably to save space but when I go booking it down the stairs in my socks I always almost eat it.

The family that I'm staying with has kittens, four of them, they roam around the house destroying houseplants and running into walls they're very cute, but they do keep me up at night.

Being a proud carnivore from America I'm really missing the protein-based diet. We ate a lot of meat at all of our meals in Finland. Now I'm majority of my diet is made up of bread, pasta, vegetables, carbs of pretty much any form. This is not doing kind things to my waistline.

After the first chicken slaughtering -- and they realize that I was not squeamish -- I was promoted. Adding the word eviscerate to my job description, simply put, I now pull guts out of the chickens too.

I am extremely uptight about refrigerating things that need to be refrigerated, the German culture does not share this view. Many foods are put into the "cool room" which is simply the pantry. Foods like pasta, potato salad, regular salad, eggs, sauces, soup, all just sit in the 60 degree pantry. I haven't gotten ill but that doesn't mean I want to take this new habit home either.

People in northern Germany tend to be tall, and people in southern Germany tend to be short. At 5'11" I fit in just fine in northern Germany, but now that I'm getting close to the center of the country, I tower over my host parents by at least 5 inches.

I will never take the prices of things in America for granted again. Life is way more expensive here.

Speaking of expenses, the chicken trailer that this family owns for the laying hens cost €32,000, they own two.

I am all for walking, I think exercise is great, but I don't think I will ever get used to the mentality of parking a car and leaving it for the day while you spend half your time walking from sight to sight and then the mile walk back to the car when you want to go home.

People here don't check the weather! At home I'm a weather addict, the app is on every device I own and I always check it during breakfast, it has been more of an adjustment than I'd like to admit.

The showers often don't have walls or curtains, you can sit down with the house nozzle and try to not make a lake in the bathroom, I'm not very good at that. They also have smaller shower stalls than at home, smaller than anywhere really.

I spent a considerable amount of time separating, peeling, bagging, sorting, and general processing, of potatoes. I'll be a potato pro when I leave.

 This tidbit piece has been more fun to write than I thought it would be, I'll have to do more of them!

THE List

Apparently there is a list. One of those lists that everyone knows but isn't officially google-able, you know the type right? This list is for must see places in Germany and my hm decided it was high time we start working on the list, or at least what was in driving distance from the house.

First on the list? Frankfurt.

I was really excited to see Frankfurt because it's the town you hear about all the important people flying into, I mean come on, the Denver airport has two flights a day going to this magical place, it's got to be awesome right?! And it did live up to the hype for the most part. We toured a huge, I mean MASSIVE church and the city hall building that Kennedy gave one of his last speeches in. The best part though was the observation tower we went in. It was an addition to the highest building in the town and we went up like 80 floors or something crazy like that. At the top was the most varied view I have every seen. It had buildings, houses, churches, a huge airport (hello Denver flights!!), and then sprawling farmland beginning at the edges of it all.

We had as good a day as you could ask for until we tried to leave during rush hour and it took us almost twice as long to get back as it did to get there, you can't have it all though, right?

On a side note, Germans seem to have completely embraced the idea of GPS in their cars and phones, short of going to the grocery store they use it for everything even when it is clearly telling them to go in the wrong direction we still follow the GPS. Maybe it's because it's in German and I don't understand what it's saying, but the generic female voice on the GPS now sounds like nails on a chalkboard to me.

Hard and Fun Times at the Farm

Sunday morning was slow and easy, the afternoon however was a different story.

We were told we were visiting a castle and a rock thing.

As with all castles, there were tons of stairs. We saw some amazing views and some great history. Pictures pending.

The "rock thing" is a geographical anomaly of many rocks and boulders that make a wide large trail up a steep hill. Naturally the goal was to climb it.

As some of you may know, my fat to muscle ratio has been seriously adjusted since I left home. That in mind, this hill liked to have killed me. I was red faced and dying for a while. When it was done, I was glad we came but there were certainly some parts in the middle that I wasn't thrilled about.

On Monday, we butchered chickens. 85 to be exact. Out the door by 7:00 am and cutting by 7:30. My job was butt fat remover and yoga instructor, I positioned legs and wings.

The rest of the day was spent putting straw in bunks and cleaning pens. By the time we quit, I was ready for bed!

• Today disaster struck. The apprentice didn't shut one of the chicken coops and a fox killed 85 laying hens last night. I haven't seen the scene yet but I've seen what it looks like when 10 chickens die, I can only imagine the mess 85 would make.

IFYE part 2 Family part 2

I got to the Biblis train station at about 15:00 on Saturday the eleventh, just as planned and my new mom Dagmar Ochsenschlager met me.

This family is made up of:
Dagmar- mom
Siggy - dad
Tassilo - brother
Connor- exchange student from Canada

They live in a small town of about a thousand people and run a farm and a bed and breakfast. The farm produces chickens for meat and eggs, 15 types of potatoes, turkeys, guineas, pigs, cows, soy beans, sugar beets, corn, and wheat. Most of it gets sold in their farm store by the house.

There is sooo much going on here. I'm sure it will be a good family for me to stay with and learn from.

Dinner the first night was bbq, roasting marshmallows, and cherry beer punch. Good food and good company, I'm off to a great start!

End of the Beginning

My last week was a marathon of work experience.

First with Sigret, she is a teacher at a school in a nearby town where she teaches cooking. In her class we make the food that they sell at the snack kiosk and any special meals for meetings. I also attended an English class for higher level students and was really impressed, Manifest Destiny, really? Even Americans don't spend much time on that!

Then on Tuesday I went to work with Pia who is a waitress and helper at a country club/bed and breakfast thing where we prepared tables and rooms and food and served and just ran around doing everything. Her job is exhausting.

On Wednesday, I went with Sigret again. Same stuff, different menu. Haha.

Thursday I helped with cows, cleaned stalls and made my taco dinner. I have resigned myself to the idea that it will never be as good as taco Tuesday with the Pynonnen family.

Friday, Marten and I went to Hamburg and saw everything we could in one day: a submarine tour, a port tour, the miniature wunderland, the dungeon, the red light district of Hamburg, and finally, the coast of the river so I could get some German sand incase I don't make it to the ocean here.

That night I packed and said my goodbyes to everyone and left in the morning at 8:00am for my next family!

I want you all to know that I had way more written about Hamburg, but then the computer deleted my draft, and I'm getting cranky with the Kindle and decided it was best to summarize and not chuck my Kindle at a wall. Google the dungeon and miniature wunderland because they were awesome.

German Conference

After three days with Marten in Gotting, I rode with one of his friends and fellow IFYE Charlotte to the German IFYE meeting near Hannover. The meeting was a great three days of tours, meeting people and exploring Germany. The only downside was that most everything said to us was in German, so there was quite a bit that I didn't get. Still, I got to see a monastery, the birthplace of Wilhelm Bush, a 500 cow dairy, and tour small towns along the way.

What I enjoyed most about the conference was getting to meet all the past IFYE participants and hear how the experience is something that they still feel so passionate about.

Among the people I met was Bettina Heineman, the coordinator for my travels and with whom I have been exchanging emails for months. It was so good to finally put a face to her! She gave me my train tickets for traveling to host families, and asked if I know how to ride a train. Before I left America this was a valid question -- she deals with people straight from the U.S. usually -- but not me, no, I consider myself a train riding professional at this point...

The trains in Finland, Estonia, Scotland, France, Italy, and Germany have all been lucky enough to meet me as well as the Paris metro system which is a certainly it's own breed of monster.

Wow I got off track there! The point is I came, I saw, and I survived the German IFYE meeting, and it was super.

Best Laid Plans

My hb Marten is the one responsible for me most of the time, and he likes to have a plan! Originally the plan was to go to Hamburg, then home, then Hannover to Octoberfest. Well I got up nice and early and was ready to go when Marten walks in and says "no today we are going to Holland, do you have your passport?" My other host brother Thorsten needed a part for the tractor from a town called Meppen which is close to the border and we were going to try to see Holland anyway to visit everyone's favorite aunt.

Meppen was the first stop and they were having a market so we wandered through the market on our way to the John Deere store. On an unrelated note, at home we have a couscous guy come is and chop corn with a Claas chopper which is German, it is this big beautiful machine that an American drives. Here they have a John Deere chopper, American, being driven by Germans. I found that all quite funny. ANYWAYS we get the part, the dealerships all look the same on the inside, regardless of if you are in America, Finland or Germany, which is a comforting thought. Off we went to Holland next.

All the houses in Holland look alike. It is the same nice brick house over and over which is nice looking and creepy at the same time. There really isn't much to say about this trip, the aunt and uncle are very nice, they fed us and invited me to come back whenever I want (maybe one day I will need a place to stay in Holland? I thought it was nice of them to say it though). As we were leaving, Marten told me about a firework factory that had blown up in the town about 13 years ago. It blew up blocks of buildings and set fires all over. His aunt and uncle's house was blown up -- they had randomly decided to go swimming on the other side of town when it happened. Life is crazy like that isn't it?

We dropped off the part and tried to go dirndl shopping but being so close to Octoberfest there wasn't much of a selection left. After that we met up with Kim and Bea who we're going to Octoberfest with us and away we went.

Octoberfest was fun, and surprisingly like I had pictured it in my head, large tables with German people in their national dress dancing on them and singing loudly with large, large beers in their hands. The part that I hadn't anticipated was how American the music playing was! It was a German band, mostly in their fifties singing songs like "we will rock you." They played German songs too, but that one really caught me off guard. We stayed until it closed at midnight but we only got there at 10:30 so no rowdy behavior from us!

And when my head hit the pillow that night I was already asleep, We had had a very long day and I was a tired IFYE if there ever was one!

College Days

The educational system is a large part of any culture, the structure and effectiveness of it shapes the future generations of a country. While in Finland, I attended quite a bit of primary school because of the ages of my host siblings, but with the Hambruch family, I am going to school after high school ... back to college for me!

The first day was spent with Wilken at the farm school. In Germany, you need to get some further education to be a farmer so they devised a program that allows people who want to farm to apprentice a variety of farms nearby and go to classes once a week for the classroom portion. Wilken has been apprenticing this family since August of this year. I'll be honest, school was a bit rough for me. We sat there for six hours (with breaks)  listening to lectures in total German. I did pick up the general topics of character traits needed to be a good farmer -- milk fat ratios, time logging and organization and some feed rationing. But aside from the general concepts, I couldn't tell you what we learned.
After school was done, Wilken drove me to the train station in Celle where I took a train to Gotting where my host brother Martin goes to university.

It just so happened to be Marten's birthday ( I apologize if I ever accidentally spell MartEn as MartIn, my brother's name is Martin and I spent a lot of brain power learning how to spell that right as a small child), so of course we had a small, controlled, social gathering to celebrate. It was a great way to meet everyone and have everyone practice their English and me practice my German.

The next morning I went with Marten to his introduction to physics class where most of the party also showed up. This class was a little easier to follow since numbers are the same in every language it was just the content that I couldn't figure out, as it should be.

There are some things that I regret not documenting more throughout my travels, most of which are bathroom related. It's not what your thinking. The toilets have a different flushing system in every country I go to. I think when I get home I will make a collage with the pictures I can find on Google. Here is what the situation is the apartment here in Germany is like.

Today Marten wants to show me a horse farm for jumping horses and a castle so I am certainly looking forward to all of that.

I'll end with a picture out the apartment window of a college town in Germany!

Guten Tag!

My first German family is the Hambruch family in Bad Fallingbostel. The family is made up of:

Ewald-Father
Sigrid-Mother
Stephan-Brother
Thorsten-Brother
Pia-Thorsten's Girlfriend
Marten-Brother
Wilke-Farm Apprentice

They own a mid-sized dairy and grow various crops, mostly for feed for the cows. The cows and ground are spread out quite a bit so sometimes there is a drive to get to somewhere.
It is common for children to take over the family farm and the parents to move out when this happens. Ewald and Sigrid have recently built a new house less than a kilometer away and now only the kids live at the farm full-time. I say full-time because everybody works here during the day.

I met with the former coordinater, Edith Schroder, and we started the paperwork for my visa. After the work was done, she took me on a tour of some of the town. The Heather gardens they have here have over 50 different colors of Heather growing in them. We also went and watched a shepherd bring in his flock of over 400 sheep from the field. He had to bring them in because of the wolves - I can't seem to get away from the wolves can I?

Marten was an IFYE last year to the USA, staying in Montana and Michigan. He and his brother Stephan both speak English very well, although I have to say they all speak more English than I do German so I can't complain! They are an extremely nice family and I think I will have a wonderful time here!

A Worthy Ending

Our last day was spent on a beach about an hour west of Rome. We took a train that cost a whole 4 euro. We wandered down to the warm, uncrowded beach and swam in the ocean and tanned to our heart's content.

At home I am considered the white one in my family, but in Finland I am dark. I was asked repeatedly if I was part Spanish, this was super annoying. I am also dark compared to my three travel mates who were quite crispy after our day in the sun.

Being on a beach in Italy was kind of surreal, when I really thought about it it just made me giddy. I walked up and down the shoreline and found pretty shells and a hermit crab. We laughed and played and got covered in the caramel colored sand. Eventually we washed off, got some gelato and headed back to our little square for our final dinner.

Dinner was good as always, with free bread and complementary champagne. We toasted to our amazing adventure before buying some wine and toasting some more in the apartment. In the morning we all left for our new countries at different times, Adam at 2:00 am (he didn't pay attention when booking that ticket either), Elizabeth at 6:00 am, me at 8:30 am and Natasha later that evening.
We all look forward to meeting again at the debriefing in December back on American soil!

Just a Little Stroll

We had originally worried that we would have a hard time seeing everything that we wanted to in Rome in the four days that we are here, but that wasn't such an issue. We ended up being in walking distance to nearly everything. We walked to the Parthenon, Coliseum, the Forums, the Vatican and the Treve Fountain during the first two days that we were there.

One of the coolest things about Rome is that it is so clear that there is an ancient city amongst you. There was about a square block of ruins just 100 meters from our hostel that had been unearthed and fenced off and given to the cats. Seriously, it was like a cat zone with about 50 cats just roaming around the walls and caves in it. 

We did our fair share of walking, but we also did more than our fair share of eating. I love Gelato, with a deep burning passion. I usually had it twice a day and we ate three real Italian meals a day. The lasagna was magical, the parmisan cheese they put on everything, the real Italian pizza... I could go on and on. I decided though that if I only get four days in this place I wanted to do it right.

Caio Italia!

I LOVE ROME

I could of built up a story and then exploded with that line but I just can't contain it. I love it here. Instead of being in a hostel we are staying an an apartment in the city near the burrow of Campo Dei Fiero. It is magical. We are on the third floor in a full sized apartment and outside our door is a square full of restraunts and shops. In the morning a massive market moves in and they sell everything Italian, fruits, vegetables, clothes, spices, souviners. And at night artists, musicions, street performers, and peddlers come out to try to make money. The atmosphere is electric with the warm breeze and night life all around.

Not to mention the wine in Italy is decent even when it is only 2 euro a bottle! I think heaven is probably a lot like Rome.

A Great City? That's Debateable

I have never thought that I was hard to please on this trip, I ate wierd food in Finland happily, I hang out at airports for hours on end with a smile on my face and a coffee in my hand, I sleep on a hard twin size bed for weeks at a time, I sit in the back of a crampt car content to stair out the window at the forign landscape, but I will say I am not a fan of Paris. To me the town felt dirty and crampt and cheap. I do not know if I just missed all the good areas or what but I do not belong to the group of people that dream of returning to Paris.

That being said the attractions that make Paris famous are pretty awesome. One cannot understand just how massive and glorious the Eiffel Tower is unless your are under it, on the top and seeing it at night, it blew my mind. The Louvre Museam was on my must see list of things to do while abroad, I am glad I went even though everyone said it was overrated. It is a life changing expierence to be around that much art and cluture even if you arent particularly into art and culture. I loved the paintings and antiques and displays that I saw, I even saw Marie Antwonette's dinner set (perhaps she ate cake off of it? :P) and of course the Mona Lisa, the painting was by itself on an entire wall with a sea of people surrounding it. Being the somewhat aggresive person I am I elbowed my way right in and got some good photos, and a selfie with her.

The architecture in the city is amazing and it has countless gardens and sculptures and fountains but when you are being constantly heckeled to buy trinkets or worried about getting mugged is it really worth it?

I am glad I went, and even more glad it was for only 3 days. It was an expierence of a lifetime that I only need to expierence once.

On the plus side Adam got the right ticket from Paris to Rome and my good travel luck trumped his bad luck and we made it to Rome just fine.

Bonjour Paris!

After the wonderful week in Scotland I headed East to Paris... alone. My Travel buddy Adam failed to book the same flight so I was alone for another flight, this one worried me a bit since I wasn't being met by anyone, just finding my way to the Hostel Woodstock.
I did get some directional help from a nice girl at the airport who gave me a crash course on using the Paris Metro and eventually made it to my destination.

Lucky for me the other two Americans I am traveling with were already there getting checked in, Elizabeth (you should remember her from the Rovaneimi adventure) and Natasha. We settled in and went out to see a church nearby. We walked around for a while and eventually had dinner at this little restaraunt that offered traditional French food. I am all about trying the wierd and crazy stuff so I ordered the Steak Tartar, seasoned raw meat. It was good, too many onions for my liking but decent enough. Looking back I do realize how dumb it was to order raw meat from a cheap french street restraunt but I got lucky and didn't get sick. Adam showed up around 11:00 pm, minus his luggage, he has the worst luck when traveling.

Scotland Part Two

The second half of our time in Scotland will be spent with Robert and Ross who live near Dumfries in Southern Scotland. Being boys they are also a little less plan oriented. We looked around the town of Dumfries, which had great old buildings full of history, including the building where the book Peter Pan was written! Also the poet Robert Burns is from Dumfries, they were dissapointed when I said that I had not heard of him, he is kind of a big deal here. Another fun fact is that the singer Calvin Harris is from Dumfries, Ross used to buy sandwiches from him, that made me laugh. 

In the evenings we went to the bars, which was to be expected when staying with two scottish boys for the weekend, don't worry we always took a cab home.

Being the daughter of a romance writer I was told to visit Gretna Green since we were so close. Gretna Green is the first town you get to when crossing the border from England and back in the day you had to be 18 to get married in England and only 16 in Scotland so many couples eloped in Gretna. It was a bit awkward going with two boys but I do like to keep my mommy happy :).

Anyone who knows me knows that I really don't like most American sports. We went to a rugby game and I was really worried it was going to be like watching American Football at home (which I find outright painful) but it wasn't! It was quick and more athletic and just all around better. We also stopped by a "Proper Village Cricket" game, I'll be honest I wasn't paying that great of attention but it still seemed better than US Football!

I have to mention the vote that was going on during our stay. Since I don't have extensive knowledge of the British Government system I can't get too indepth but the idea is that Scotland wasn't getting enough of a say when it came to the decisions made by the UK so they decided to vote on becoming an indipendent nation. People were really getting into the campaining, there were "YES" and "NO" written on pretty much everything; signs, buildings, livestock, haybales, hill sides etc. The vote happened on the 18th (after we left) and it was a no, which pleased our hosts :)

All of Scotland was great and it was wonderful to see some friends and have a more relaxing stay for a bit. I think a visit back is certainly in the future!

North Scotland Adventures

Kim is quite the planner. During the four days that we were there we saw so many things.

There was the day trip to Inverness, home of the Loch-Ness Monster! Where we saw a wool mill, various churches, castles and the Ness river, but sadly, we didn't see any signs of Nessie. Lunch at Johnny Foxes (we were told that it is one of the best bars ever). We did this on a day that Kim had to work, so the hour and a half train ride there and back and the touring the town covered the time she had to do that. 

That evening we went to a Young Farmers meeting with Kim. At home young farmers is mostly adults and they do adult things, although I have heard that they throw a good party. In Scotland Young Farmers is actually a group of young farmers (crazy, eh?) and they organize events and activities for the club and the comunity that really do sound like fun. I am truely jealous of the program that they have. It is also the organization that sent people into the IFYE program that we met at the orientation, like Kim. 

One morning we toured  one of the only carrot factories in Scotland that happened to be located close to where we were staying. Kim's brother Mark is a welder for the building so we got a private tour! 

I think we saved the best for our last day though, a distillary tour where we learned all about Scotish whisky making. At the end there was a tasting, after not drinking harly at all in Finland for three months the "tastes" had me quite giggly. Afetr that we came back to Kim's, packed, said our goodbyes to her family and headed down the road (with Kim) to meet with our other scottish hosts, Ross and Robert, for dinner. 

A long long trip to Kim

My two week free time period has started! My travels went as planned for the most part, except in Latvia where the border control looked my passport over for an unreasonably long time because I am about to run out of time before I need the visa. Made me REALLY nervous.

Kim met me at the airport and we set off on a tour of Aberdeen! We ate fish and chips and then ice cream (all of which was out of this world amazing) then we started looking at sights. There is a large set of castle ruins called Dunnottar Castle that are on an island on the coast. It was a bit of a walk, but the castle was worth it. Then we drove to the top of a hill for a great view of Northern Scotland. 

Eventually we made our way back to Kim's house and met her Mom, Dad and brother. Even though we had both had a long day and were tired we had one more task for this day, to pick up Adam. Adam is my fellow Colorado IFYE traveler and he is coming on my travels for the two weeks. He just happened to get in on the 10:00 pm flight, not the 10:00 am, so off we went for another 3 hours in the car.

By the time we got home we were all ready for bed!

The Calm Before the Travel

Today is my last day here at family Vahattitto and in Finland.

I have had a great last couple of days, full of everything Finnish. Yesterday we made apple juice and apple sauce and Olga and her family came to visit. She and her husband are 21 and they have a little boy named Tobias, oh my was he a cutie. The only way to describe Olga is bright and shiny, she dances around the room smiling and laughing, cleaning and playing. She is one of the most enjoyable people I think I have ever met, it is no surprise that Tobias is such a happy baby!.

After they left and everyone was showered and the kitchen was clean it was 10:30 already and instead of going to bed I put my coat on and set out to watch the Northern Lights. I waited outside until 12:30 and and still no luck. Jorma says that they are usually out around 11:30 pm. At least I know I tried. It gives me a reason to come back to Finland one day!

I'm going to add a deep thought that came to me while waiting for the lights last night. When I got here it was hard because it was different and new and I didn't understand many things about the culture, now that I am leaving I'm sad because I know what I'm leaving and how much I liked it. Beginnings are hard and endings are sad, you have to try realize when your in the middle of something and appreciate it before its gone.

Today I catch a train to Juviskula at 18:00, transfer trains and go to Tikkurilla (near airport) which I will arrive at around 23:30. I will then wait at the airport until my flight leaves at 7:40 to Latvia where I will get on another flight to Aberdeen and arrive at 10:00 (after a 2 hour time change). About 18 hours travel time.
I am going to be one worn out kid, but don't worry my host mom is packing me snacks :)

There are so many pictures that I want to post but there isn't a good place for them in the written blog, I am thinking about adding a page just for pictures, I hope it works!
Also soon I will be writing on the Scotland page, keep an eye out!

Berry Picking and Meeting Family

Lately we have been cramming as many traditional Finnish activities into my last couple of days

here. Yesterday was forest berry picking. I have been strawberry picking and even roadside berry picking but forest berry picking is a sport in itself. You start by putting on your normal outfit with a couple of additions. Rubber boots so that nothing falls into you shoes and you can walk on rocks and sticks and such, and a hair net to prevent these lovely flying tick things from crawling up into your hair. Then you wander through the forest staring at the ground until you see a good berry patch, we were hunting lingonberries. Then you take this odd berry picker contraption and use it to pluck the berries from the stems and collect them in the bottom of its little box. I enjoyed the adventure of it but I think if I did it all the time my back would be so very sore...



This is the fly, it is resilient and so gross.




We went by bike, I love that everyone uses bikes here, its not like at home where usually people riding bikes are a pain in the butt, people here are just like, "hey its a great day and were not going that far away, lets go by bike!".













                                  This is the berry picker.

The forest is all Fall-ish! When I went into the forest in June it was so dark, its amazing how different it is this time of year.

Another goal has been to introduce me to as many of their children as possible before I leave. In the last two days I have met three. Oola and her husband stopped by with their four kids, they are 27, Errki and his girlfriend Julia are here for the weekend, they are both still in high school but don't live at home since they are studying specific things, Errki wants to be an EMT and studies in Kokola and Julia studies music in Oulu. And last I met Tiina, the oldest of the original family, we went to her house for a birthday party where I met her 8 children (all 15 or younger). She was an IFYE in Hungary in 1997 so we chatted about that, she said the biggest difference was the food and how it made her gain 7 kilograms in 2 months, I commiserated. I think its wanting to try everything that you can to experience all you can (even Fish Loaf). The only solution is to just buy bigger pants and worry about it when you get home ;)

Motorcycle Rides and Bad Fish

I made breakfast this morning. A simple task yes, but figure in cleaning the kitchen, doing the dishes, setting the table, making the porridge, making the tea, and cleaning up it is really quite a task, AND i had to run to the store to pick up Makkara for breakfast (we ran out last night and it was a near disaster).
I went a little heavy on the salt in the porridge but it was still edible and we had leftovers. I know what your thinking, "you had leftovers because it was too salty dummy!". No we had leftovers because Hannu wasn't here for breakfast. So I try to make Sämpylä rolls with the porridge, forget them in the oven and they get a little browner than desired, not a banner day for my cooking skills.
After breakfast Jorma asked if I wanted to go for a ride on his motorcycle, I say yes even though I really have no desire to do that, but I am so glad I said yes!!
It was like a movie director designed this ride, there was a light breeze and yellow trees slowly losing their leaves as we went by. The sun was shining and fall was in the air I loved every moment of that ride. I wish I could of taken pictures as we went but it wouldn't of been the same. So now in addition to the sauna, bicycle, and berry patch I would like a motorcycle, Santa sure is going to be busy with my list, but it's alright I know him personally now ;).
I went with Tarja to the grocery store and we came across this thing at the fish section (forgive me I forget the name) and she asked me if I had eaten it before, I say no and she acts surprised. She then says so good this is so good you try when your here, I was sure you would of had it before! So we get it.
Once home she cuts it up and gives me a large piece. I am pretty open to cultural foods, I mean I've been eating canned herring and fried street fish but this was bad. Bad bad bad.

It was some sort of fish (whole fish and layered fillets) inside this baked rye bread shell. The bad part was how much fight the bones had, i was worried about choking after a bone stabbed my tongue and I needed my fingers to pull it out. What was worse was the amount of it on my plate.
Maybe she meant it was so good that I was trying it, not that IT was so good. Who knows. It would of been almost unfair for me to make it out of a country as different as Finland and not have experienced at least one food that I thought was horrible.

Later on Tarja and Jorma's daughter Oola and her family stopped by to visit, they were very kind and had four crazy kids on their hands, Did I mention my host parents already have 28 grand kids? It is hard to imagine until you are here seeing it.

I listened while they talked Finnish and between hand gestures, words that I recognize, and familiar stories I was able to keep up pretty well! It only took three months :)