A Surprise Party for My Final Days in Finland

by Natalie Griffin, Greenheart Travel High School Student in Finland

On April 8th, my second to last day here in Finland, I had already made plans with Evelina to go to her house. When I arrived we walked to her room and when she opened the door, I was surprised to see 4 more of my friends: Karoliina, Anni, Josefina, and Milla who all shouted “surprise!”

We then went down downstairs and started my surprise party eating mud cake, chips and dip, cheese balls, and carrots and cucumbers. Then we walked around outside for a bit before going back inside where they surprised me with presents.

After that we played a game called “murder” where we all had to pick a card from the hat and whoever got the card for the investigator would leave the room while the person who pulled he murderer cards and the victims sorted out the order of killings. Whoever had the card that said “k1” would die first and “k4” would die last if the murderer wasn’t discovered. The murderer would fake kill the first victim and the victim would scream, cueing the investigator to enter. The investigator had to ask everyone else where they had been and each person had make up some kind of excuse on spot. It was a lot of fun to see what kind of excuses each person would make, trying to trick the investigator into choosing them.

The investigator, after hearing each person’s story, then would choose someone to question to further and bring them away to another room, if they heard a scream from a new victim then they knew they chose the wrong person and would have to choose again. We had a lot of fun during the game but after a while we switched to playing a clean version of truth or dare which was more of just getting to know each other better.

Both Josefina and Karoliina had to leave early, but the rest of us continued to talk and eat more food until Sari came to pick me up too. I’m gonna miss them all a lot and I had a ton of fun here in Finland. I hope I can return soon!!