So yesterday the entire school was at the theater watching ”Mannerheim”. A decent play, but for a Swedish theater there was too much Finnish involved. At least two of us didn’t understand much of the Finnish conversations at all 😦
But the highlights of the day were before the play. At school, for example, our English teacher congratulated me. ”What for?” I thought, but as it turned out I was going to receive a prize for my English essay from the final exams a while ago. It turns out they select the best essays in Finland and award them. I had no idea, so it was a nice surprise… I still don’t know what the prize is or when I’ll get it, though.
Later on, before the play, which started at 19.00, three of us went to do some shopping in Helsinki as well as eating at an Indian restaurant. Mmm, spicy! We also experienced an explosion: We were at a book store when they announced over the speakers that a place for parking was under construction underneath the building, and that an explosion was going to take place soon, and that it was nothing to worry about. A few minutes later it happened, and it lasted for about five seconds. It was loud, and everything shook like during some kind of earthquake. Books fell off the shelves and the occasional people not having heard the message even got frightened.
It was a cool experience.
To talk about something less violent, today schools all over Finland were celebrating Finland’s 90th anniversary as an independent country (it’s actually tomorrow, Thursday, but as it’s a holiday it’s kind of difficult celebrating it at school on that particular day 😛 ), after hundreds of years under Russian and Swedish control. At my school this was done through a gathering full of speeches and such, about Finland, independence, etc. Not too much fun, but in good company we did the best of it 😀 There was also a pretty bad band consisting of old students, but even though they didn’t play or sing very well, they did play some nice classics, which improved things a great deal.
For lunch today, I had tortillas at Christa’s, an American girl, house. Just her and I. That was great fun, even though we only had less than 10 minutes before we had to be back at school (where they served fish, which was why we left in the first place).
Anyway, two great days, in other words! Now I have four days off from school, including the weekend… I’m counting the hours, ’cause to be honest, I can’t wait to get back there 😀
