School in Finland, Skating and Exploring Helsinki

by Natalie Griffin, Greenheart Travel high school student in Finland

Throughout the week my school days have mostly been the same. We have 3-4 classes a day and school starts at 8:15 a.m. and ends at 12:45/2:15 p.m. In gym I did cross-country skiing for the first time and it was really hard. We also did ice skating and played a game on the ice that’s similar to hockey, which was also difficult for me since it’s already hard enough for me to simply not fall while slowly moving forward on ice skates.

I had a physics test that my teacher translated into English for me but somehow I managed to get a better grade than some of the people in my class, despite not learning physics since last year. We don’t get much homework, except before tests we get a lot of review work.

The weather has been much warmer but my host family says that it will get colder again soon. People here drive no matter how icy it is but go slowly and have good tires. My walks to school have been like ice skating with the mixture of warm and cold temperatures. 

Also last week, I had my family try peanut butter and jelly toast for the first time, since my parents sent me a jar of peanut butter, and they loved it.

On January 30th, I went to Helsinki with my host mother and host sister and we went to two museums and a couple stores. Helsinki was colder because of all the wind, but it’s been warmer lately here so it still wasn’t too cold. The city was made up of a mixture of old, pretty buildings and new, tall ones. The people there were nice and gave us directions when we were lost.

We ate at a pizza buffet were you could take as much food as you want. We’re planning to go back to Helsinki sometime to go shopping more and visit more sites since the city is so big. 

For the entire time last week my host family had their friend’s dog over because Jasmin loves dogs and the family of it doesn’t have much time to exercise their dog. She was an adorable golden retrieve dog who loved to be petted. However, she went back at the end of the week since Kasper is allergic to dog and his allergies were bothering him.