I feel like I should have a closing statement or something, but it is difficult to put my experience into words. Finland is an amazing country….and I gained a second family there. I believe that  studying abroad is the perfect way to open your eyes about other cultures and see the world. Anywhere you go, people are still people. One of my friends said, “… I now realize that America and Americans are different.” I think this is so true. Some people from other countries have a bad view about America, and some Americans have a negative opinion about other countries, but we cannot pass that judgement on to the people we meet.
We looooove Finland a lot of, no??!!!
p.s. This blog is to be continued next summer when I go visit my family in Europe!!

The night before the spanish leave…Elisa decided this would be a better fate….and then we all agreed we would rather hang ourselves on the clothes line than go home!!
 

Im home now, but I wanted to share some pictures from the last days…
We went on a canoe trip a couple days before I left. We canoed for 2 hours and then stopped on an island where we chopped our wood, ate lunch, had a sauna, and coffee/tea.

Picnic on top of the ski center to watch the sunset

These are artwork from the underground….each station was unique and had a history behind the mosaics, paintings and sculptures…

More photos from Russia land..The elaborate rooms covered in gold and the blue building are Catherine’s Palace. the golden room is one of the ballrooms, and the darker amber-colored room is just that….covered in amber stones–the entire room. The plain looking builing with Russian writing on it is Lenin’s memorial. And then there’s Tom KPY3 and his new movie!

I took a Human Factors in Engineering course last week, and we took a trip to the airplane museum to take a look at some human factors in the airplanes….in the first picture you can see that there are swastikas on the planes….apparently Finland used this symbol before it was adopted by the Nazi party in 1935….interesting..

On the 31st and the 1st of May we went to Helsinki for Vappu

Moi Moi I am in my last weeks in Jyvaskyla We had a bye bye BBQ party for Simon Friday night…and it resulted in playing childs games
this first game was the best….one team stands in a circle, and the other has to jump across you, flip over, and hold on until everyone is on….once they are all on, you shake your legs until the count of 10, and if anyone falls, the team in the circle wins! Crazy Italian games!! The second was a pyramid, and the third was a circluar pyramid…..but as you can see, it didn’t work too well!
In a matter of a week, Finland is GREEN! Check out the comparison pictures of the view outside my wondow….And now it never gets completely dark….at night there is a beautiful blue/purple/redish glow on the horizon….and its around 80 degrees (F) !!

I can make pulla now!!!!