A Really Big Truck

The week started with a visit to an observation tower. Where I live, the landscape is pretty flat so we could see for kilometers out. I of course signed the guest book while I was there.

The next day was a normal school day. The afternoon was another story though.  As I biked away from school, there is crosswalk that I can cross or I can go a little further down the road and there is a crosswalk there. There were two cars coming and since I didn't want to wait, I turned left and turned at the next crosswalk. There is a little piece of sidewalk before a large driveway for entrances to the shops there. A truck came out of the driveway so I stopped on the piece of sidewalk. It was a large truck, as in it was twice the size of a normal truck, which of course makes it harder to turn with it being so large. It ended up digging in a little on the sidewalk and I could have reached out and touched it if I had wanted to. I didn't and it drove by and turned left and drove away. As it drove away, I heard a clank behind me. I turned and saw that the pedestrian crossing sign which had been on a pole above my head had been knocked off it's post by the truck. I ended up setting the sign by the base of the pole before I biked home. At Finnish lessons we went over the body parts and family members before I had hockey practice.

The circled sign is no longer there

Tiistaina there was frost. There was even some on my bike seat. School was school. Psychology was fun because we did a game with a partner where a sheet with numbers was colored in (one number had one color). They were randomized around the sheet and we had to find the number and then we had to say the number.

On Wednesday I worked on my paper for history class. I worked on my research paper about the Sami people (in English). It was very interesting. Then we drew something to do with perspective in art class before I had hockey. I learned about Girl's Hockey Day which will be on Saturday before we played soccer. As we did, jets flew over us. My coach said they were tour jets from Jyväskylä. Later that evening, we went outside and watched the northern lights. They were beautiful and they were the first time I had ever seen them. I was also in the newspaper!

Torstaina school was normal except at lunch... there were desserts. I don't know why but they were good. In history class we played African Star to learn about imperialism. It was very fun. I won once. In the evening I had hockey practice and my teammates tried to describe mämmi to me.

Then it was the last day before fall break! We had normal classes but our double period of art was cut short since we had homeroom where we got our grades.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog for this important news update:
Jim, the news reporter: We have breaking news coming into the newsroom just now: American people do not know how Finnish grades work. We go to our field reporter Diane for an update and see what information she can give us about the current situation
Diane: Well Jim from what I understand so far, it's that American people do not know how the Finnish grading system works. Well from the information we have learned so far, I can tell you that it is certainly not the same. Here is what we know so far: grades in Finland range from 4-10. A four is a fail and a ten is the highest grade someone can get. A ten is not like an A in America as it is extremely difficult to have all tens compared to America where it is difficult to get straight As but not impossible. As I said before, grades in Finland range from 4-10. These are the word representations of the possible grades in a Finnish high school:
10: Commendable
9: Excellent
8: Very good
7: Satisfactory
6: Moderate
5: Passable
4: Fail
S: Pass
We also know that students will always receive an S as a grade for a review class no matter if they got a 5 or a 10 on the final test
These are all of the details that we know so far Jim.
Jim: Thank you Diane. We promise to keep you viewers updated on this story as more information becomes available to us. We apologize for the interruption and we now return to your regularly scheduled programing.

As I was saying, we got our grades back during homeroom. Here's what I got:
Music: 9
Philosophy: 9
History: 9
Math (review class): S
Mother tong-

Breaking news:
Jim: We apologize again for the interruption, but we have just learned more information about this new and breaking news story. We have just learned more about the individual involved. Her name is Emma Mulhern and she attends Alajärven Lukio in Alajärvi Finland. We have learned more about this person's grade report. Because she is an exchange student, some of her teachers didn't want to give her a number for a grade, so they gave her an S. From what we understand so far, Emma did not receive a number in English class because her teacher did not want to grade her as it was her mother tongue. That is all we have for now.
What is that I'm hearing now?
We have just learned that Emma's mother tongue teacher did not want to give her a number because it is not her mother tongue. I repeat, Emma did not receive a number in English and mother tongue because English is her mother tongue and Finnish is not. We will keep you up to date on the latest information which I am hearing we will find out after the next exam week. We promise to give you another update then.

Well as you already heard, I received an S in mother tongue and in English class because my teachers didn't want to give me a number because I am an exchange student, basically. That afternoon, I went and bought a bunch of chocolate and salmiakki to send for the country fair.

http://www.torstai-lehti.fi/2015/10/07/girls-hockey-day-tulee-taas/

Tänään Girls Hockey Day tuli! (Today Girls Hockey Day came) Silja, Heidi (two girls who play on my hockey team) and myself went to the ice rink where we did different activities with the younger girls that had come. Did I mention I had been in the paper earlier in the week because of Girls Hockey Day? Then I did some packing when I returned home since I am changing host families soon. Then in the afternoon we had a hockey game. We didn't win, but it was fun to hang out with my teammates on the way back to Alajärvi. They are all really awesome. Then one of my coaches gave me the banner from the team we played against since he said they had plenty of them already and because I played well.

Fall Storm

On Sunday I wrote answers to questions that the local newspaper had written for me.

Maanataina my chemistry teacher destroyed a coin (to be fair he just put it in a liquid, so I guess you could say the liquid destroyed it) and school ended early (I think the teachers had a thing or something). In the evening I worked with another student on spoken Finnish (adding -ks to end questions versus adding the -ko/kö) before I went to hockey. We had a scrimmage against the "Old Boys" which was fun. I don't know who won.

The next day we had regular classes except we had student council elections during psychology. We voted for people from the first grade and two people from my class were running. They both got in.

Keskiviikkona I did my presentation about women's position in Islam with my partner in Finnish. In psychology we did an activity where five people went out of the room. One person came in and they had to draw an image that we shown to us through the document camera. It was only shown for a second and then they had to draw it. Then the next person came in and we did the same thing to them but this time they saw the picture that the first person had drawn. It was like telephone but with drawing and it was fun to see how it changed over time. Hockey was in the evening and I tried to get my teammates to say thirty three.

On Thursday, I saw on Facebook a post that my host dad wrote about me moving into my second host family. It was really sweet. Then we had a fire drill in the morning. We all went out onto the fields and we lined up by our homeroom and they counted us all before we returned to our normal classes. Later that afternoon my friends taught me the Finnish body parts and then I had hockey that evening. One of my teammates got picked up from practice in a very large tractor. That's Alajärvi for ya.

Perjantaina it sprinkled in the morning and everyone was concerned about the storm that was supposed to happen in the afternoon. Classes continued as normal until last period. Everything was normal until the lights started flickering about twenty minutes before class ended and we could hear the roar of the wind outside. Ten minutes later, the lights went out and people asked if we could go home but the teacher said we had to wait until three. When I got outside, the wind was blowing hard and all of the bikes had been knocked over from the wind. It was harder to bike home since it was so windy. I noticed more cars were out than usual, probably getting supplies for the storm (there is usually a big storm in the spring and in the fall so everyone knew what to do). As I got home, I saw that the neighbor's trampoline had been blown into the forest nearby. At home, my host parents gave me a flashlight in case the power went out.

On Saturday, we headed out to my hockey game in Alajärvi. There were a few large branches that had been knocked down and maybe a tree or two that we saw on the way. We didn't win the game but I got a penalty and they had to ask me the pronunciation of my last name. Then I went home and did some coloring with my host family.