syttene mai - for the 200th time

It was a lovely sunny morning and even if we got late according to the schedule we were perfectly almost an hour before anything happened.

And what was about to happen?

This was a Saturday, THE Saturday of 17 of May, which is the Norwegian national/independence day. The special thing this year was that it was now exactly 200 years since Norway got it's first own constitution. 17.5 is "syttene mai" (17th of May) in Norwegian and it's also a common nickname for this day. I was really excited to get to celebrate this unique day with some locals!

As I stepped out in the at least +20 and sunshine at 9am I thought to myself: I'm gonna be red as a lobster before lunch
I was wrong,
it wasn't until after lunch, maybe around 15-16 o'clock
and I wasn't even that badly burned
only my back suffered

Yeah, so, the first happening of the day for us was to watch a children's parade through the town. I had never seen a real parade before (live) and this was a kind of parade that I had no expectations for, because I didn't know what to expect.

there'll be a lot of photos in this post
just saying
and I actually just picked the best and the most interesting and so on

the children's parade:

The seniors of the high school in town, called Russe (Abi in Finland)

Eventually we joined the parade ourselves with the rest

The parade ended at the sports center, with nice grass pitches. We left to one of the teacher's house, so I don't know what kind of program there was held. For the next hours we ate hot dogs and ice cream and talked. The whole day was basically a lot of chilling and talking.

As can be seen on some of the pictures, a lot of people walked around in these national costumes, called bunad in Norwegian. Different regions have different kinds of costumes/dresses. The fantastic thing about this is that so many people wore bunads, children, teenagers, adults and old people. Here it's cool to have one and to wear it, and many families have such clothes. This phenomenon has not really been seen in Finland, and it's a petty. Or I haven't at least not seen people walking around the whole day with any national dress. I think it's a petty, because these kind of clothes use to be beautiful.

The most surprising thing for me was that we were encouraged by the Norwegians to bring our countries flags with us and to wave them around just like the others. First it felt really strange, but then I got over it and thought, "well, if people have always been waving around with other flags than the Norwegian and still haven't got hurt, then why not?"
Until it was time, at the children's parade.
I just wasn't able to hold the Finnish flag in my hand among all the bunads and the hundreds of Norwegian flags on their 200th independence day. So I put it in my backpack, but it was too small so the flag stuck out anyway. But no one cared. And no one minded the Swedish flags either, but I heard that someone had looked down at some Danish flags (Norway was a part Denmark before it got independent).
I actually felt stupid walking around with a Finnish flag. You know, I was there celebrating Norway and not Finland.
I can only imagine what would happen to the poor souls waving a Russian (or Swedish) flag when Finland turns 100. Or maybe it's just me I don't know.
That was an interesting cultural shock.
It's funny how I suddenly cared so much about flags and nationalities.

After all the pølse og is (sausage and ice cream) it was time to join the big parade of the day. 

the Red Cross

I never though that such a small town would have so many football/soccer players

Welcome to Norway

In the big parade there were all the soccer teams, the car collectors with their cars, all the people from all the organisations and such groups and also more cars with Russes, who still had their water guns and who still missed me (I think I have to thank my camera at least partly for that, only idiots shoot water on persons holding cameras) and some of them ran into the audience and attacked their friends. our Abis also drive around, in February after their last day of school, but they trow candy to the audience.
And we joined this parade too, with the same destination as last time, but this time we stayed. The mayor held a speech, there were some performances and the Russe president held a touching speech to the memory of a student who just recently passed away. After the speech balloons were released in the air and they flew high up in the sky.

We foreigners didn't really know what was about to happen later that day, or why we sat there for around two hours, we were all kind of confused. And the plans changed all the time, or at least it felt like that.

After the speeches and performances there was this race...

... and I didn't get the idea, but it seemed like some kind of annual thing and it also seemed like they had a lot of fun.
The water guns were seriously everywhere.
And so many had burned themselves, it was like any day i July and no one had apparently prepared themselves. It must have been hot to wear those woolen bunads, or so I heard.

Eventually the new plans were sorted out and we left and had dinner, and this time we ate tacos, not hot dogs (that more or less seems to be an unofficial national dish and don't forget the ice cream).

We had a great time the whole evening, I got to know new people and got some great new friends!
I don't know what to say, it was very interesting and fun to celebrate an other country's independence day, especially when it was a special year to celebrate it!
When I at some point went to sleep, I fell asleep immediately, with my Justin Bieber sheets.

I have no idea why, but these a pretty much the only pictures of the actual environment, of which three of them are taken after the sun had set. I thought I was good travel photographer. I was wrong. It's funny how I've complimented the nature but don't have any pictures of it. Well, here are some, hope they in some way are enough.

This just means that I have to go back.
That'd be really great actually

hva er typisk Norden?

Here we go
If you didn't read my last post with all the background information, you better read it now

We left from Turku airport around 6 am on a Friday.
We flew to Copenhagen.
During the 40 minutes me ran to a Starbucks for the second or third cup of coffee of the day.
We flew to Kristiansand with the Swedes, who joined from Copenhagen. When we arrived we picked up our luggage and were about to leave until the Swedes realized that their luggage hadn't arrived. They got some help and sent a message to the flight company, and left with us, without their luggage.
Not really the best start.
Copenhagen airport strikes again.

I had never been in Norway before, but I had heard some, and seen some pictures. I actively tried to put all the stereotypes and general expectations aside, such as there are fjords and mountains everywhere etc. I thought it was a petty that we were in the south, because I would have liked to see a fjord myself. I thought that the southern coast of Norway looks like it does in Finland and Sweden.
I have never been so wrong in my life.
There were fjords.
Everywhere.
The only things I saw when we drove from Kristiansand to Vennesla were fjords, woods and colorful wooden houses on the hillsides. And super winding and small roads.
I never thought that stereotypes would be so real. Okay let's not generalize the whole country just because of an area on the south coast.
And I was so impressed, it was fantastic, so beautiful, wow, it was nothing compared to what I've seen on pictures!
Real life 1 - Photos 0

We went straight to the local high school, where we met the rest of the participators. The teachers tried to divide us into groups with the help of some kind of app, that would mix the nationalities etc, but surprise surprise, it didn't work, the program had some errors. Eventually we we're divided manually. The task was to rewrite the lyrics of any song, and it should have something to do with the Nordic countries, e.g. what is typical for them. My group rewrote The Fox by Ylvis, and "What does the fox say" was replaced with "What's typical for the Nordic countries?" (in Norwegian: Hva er typisk Norden?). It was a pretty funny assignment, and eventually all the groups of course performed their cover to the rest. After the performances we gave our presentations about our national anthems. This was basically the program of the day and it was time to sort out who was hosting who.
Just a day before our arrival a horrible tragedy had occurred and it affected basically all the students in the school, especially my host. This changed some of the plans about who hosted who, but everything turned out alright, everybody got a place to stay at. I'm still astonished of how strong my host was, how she still was able to host two strangers for two nights and to join us in the activities during the stay. All my respect to you and I wish you all the best in the future!

The night was spent at one of the girl's house, we grilled, ate burgers and hot dogs, talked and got to know each other a bit better. We Finns especially got to know the Swedes, as we spoke the same language. The thing is that we understood each other basically perfectly, as long as we didn't use dialectal words, we and the Norwegian guys understood each other as long as we spoke clearly and with as common words as possible, and no one understood the Danes. Well, my friend understood but the others basically didn't, or at least not as well as everybody else understood each other. So eventually English was used when needed. It's a thing that people speaking Scandinavian languages understand each other, but it depends so much on the dialects, the subject of which you talk about, how tired you are and so on. The Norwegian spoken in Vennesla sounded at times like Danish and it was a bit hard to understand at times. I haven't really heard Icelandic yet, at least not enough to say anything about it, but I assume that as I can't understand it when written, I can't understand when spoken. And I think that's a common thing for the other Scandinavians too.The thing is that written Danish is at times even easier to understand than written Norwegian, it's just that the spoken Danish is so different.  And yes, nobody understands Finnish naturally like this, but that was pretty obvious wasn't it.
I was so happy to understand as much as I did, even if I sometimes got it all wrong. It was such a funny feeling being abroad where they speak another language, but you're still able to speak your own language and you still understand each other! And I also felt stupid at times when I didn't understand even if there was such small differences and even  if it was so easy.

two days left to tell you about, I can do this!

and, in the next post there will be pictures!

nord IT - an introduction

Going it blog live I said
Going to be a more effective and consequent blogger I said

Funny jokes right

I recently went to Norway and here's some background information:

I participated in this project in school, together with three other schools, called Nord IT (click here to see the blog of this year, only in the Scandinavian languages). The theme this year were freedom, brotherhood, equality and the Nordic countries. We did some tasks during spring and then we all met in Vennesla, Norway, at the end of May this year. More likely last weekend.
The schools were from Finland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden. There was no school from Iceland, which was a petty.
This blog was created for posting the texts we were supposed to write and for other nice things, but as you can see, only we Finns and one Danish student have posted anything. I hope that the other post their material at some point, it would be very interesting to read them!
One of the main tasks were to make a presentation about you own country's national anthem. And like all the other tasks, it was very little restricted and you could use your imagination like never before. our presentation was a video were we talked about our national anthem and then we had edited clips where different people sang the anthem, to a whole song. It was pretty cool and funny, but not a technical master piece of art so to say.
And no, the video will not be found on the internet.
For those who understand Swedish, here's my blog post, a text about freedom. It's meant to be food for thoughts. I know there are a lot of things I could have mentioned but I wanted to keep it pretty short and people friendly.

We were four students and one teacher from our school that represented our school in this project. The four students were chosen of twenty applicants by an essay - why should I get to participate?. This was done because of the budget, Nord IT payed the whole trip and we got money for flying four students and one teacher over to Norway.
I was so happy to be selected!!

It was a three day trip and we got to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Norwegian constitution, on the national/independence day, 17.5 (in Norwegian: syttene mai),which was something fantastic to experience. I heard that this was the first time that a Nord IT meeting was during a national holiday of the host country (or of the participating countries overall). During this trip also I would live in a host family and I was really looking forward to it, since the only host families I've lived in this far have been Russian.

After some amount of work and last minute packing we were ready to leave.

Let's expect me to be back soon

the trip back home

The last day of the trip came faster then expected, as usually.

Yes, please don't remind me of my laziness and just be proud that I actually finish this whole travel story.

And yes it's midnight, which means that the risk of that I do language related mistakes is a lot higher. A lot. 

We left in the morning from the hotel. My host mother asked me if I wanted some food with me, and this time is said yes please, a sandwich would be nice. And this time I actually got only that sandwich, not like last year, I said (I was in a different family) some fruit would be nice please, and I got a whole plastic bag of sweets, fruits, bakery stuff, juice and so on. Just some fruits, yes. And this time I also asked for some water. I got 2 liters. 

Unfortunately quite many of the group felt sick and food poisoning was suspected (surprise). Later though it was discovered to be normal illness (still not surprised). I really felt sorry for those who suffered from this, because we were about to spent the next 10-12 hours on the road.

The first stop was at a super market, where we bought sweets, food, tea and other things like that. Me and one of my friends, who also stayed at a host family, hadn't had the chance to visit a market before this, so we really took advantage of this. This also meant that I had kinda all my money left that I had brought with me. So we bought chocolate to all our friends and tea. And children's books.And notebooks. And my friend bought a beautiful clock. And we still had a lot of money left. Why does this never happen in Finland?

An oh, they sold simple framed photography's of Putin in the market. 

The second big stop was in Repino, where we visited the museum of Repino's home, or more like his home that had been made into a museum. It was quite fun, but most of the people were already pretty done with being guided around in museum, and I was one of them. But I still can't call it a waste of time. 

During this stop I had one of my longest discussions in Spanish I've ever had and I was so excited no notice that I actually am pretty good, though I would need to learn a lot more words. At this point of the trip though I had so much difficulties in sticking to only one language and overall in tearing them apart, that my Spanish suffered a lot and my brain went though a lot of errors. 

Normally the condition of the public toilets is pretty bad compared to e.g. those in Finland. But still the best and most fancy public toilets (here public toilets are every toilet except for those in peoples homes) I've ever seen (and I've seen many, e.g. I have road tripped for three weeks last summer in the US) was i Russia. it was a building, a small house, with women's to the left and men's to the right and with a cashier in the middle. No, I'm not kidding, there was a cashier with a lady who you paid your precious visit too. Did I say one? I meant two ladies. And the toilets were clean, everything worked, there was toilet paper, soap and hand dryers and it was overall clean. We were all amazed. 

Imagine that you would work at a public toilets cashier all day. Actually it's a great way to employ people. And yes, they looked pretty done everything too. 

The third big stop was in Vyborg. We had lunch at the restaurant in the tower next to the market. The market is a really interesting place. People have learnt Finnish enough to get the tourists attention and to more easily sell their products. I just find it annoying. And even when I talked Swedish and English with my friends, they tried to get our attention by speaking Finnish. 

This is one of the places where you both find people done with everything and where you very well see that you're not within the borders of the European Union and the Finnish hygiene laws and rules. The fresh meat is on normal tables and so is the fish and such things, that really would need to be refrigerated. Do yourself a favor and just don't buy, even if it would be cheap and look nice. 

On the road we had a lot of fun, we talked, laughed, slept and ate. My friend basically laughed the whole trip, even if nobody had cracked a joke or anything like that. And that made us laugh. If you really live longer by laughing, then he's going to live forever. 

During the trip we had some weird assignment with some ipads, we were supposed to document the trip with the ipads (one day per group). I din't like it at all, it was so inconvenient to swing around with an ipad. And it is ridiculous how everyone (like the people at school) is forcing such devices into the system and thinking that it's so cool and modern when it's actually unnecessary and inconvenient. Well, me and my group (the third one was unfortunately one of the sick ones so we were only two) finished our photo presentation in the bus and our photo descriptions were less serious than our laughing friend. But at least we had a lot of fun writing them and we created some inside jokes.   

I've probably forgotten to tell something, but the trip was overall absolutely amazing and I had a lot of fun, thank you my friends, the old and the new ones, thank you my dear host family (I truly recommend staying at host family's if you only have the chance) and thank you my readers for your patience. Maybe I'll one day learn to be a more consequent blogger.  

haha and I'll be back soon (a week is soon for me), because I'm leaving to Norway next week, with a small group from school, we are participating in a project called Nord IT. 

I'll try to blog live from there. 

I'll try. 

Now good night.