Just Another Ordinary Day

This morning I went in to the main lodge early so that I could use the internet. There are always so many people trying to use the wifi at once that the system can’t handle it. It works really slowly for some people, or not at all for people like me. I called home via skype so that my parents could actually hear my voice. Even though it was first thing in the morning for me, it was just before my parents went to bed at home.

When I say “camp” it is really a boarding school. It is definitely a church oriented school. Many lukios (Finnish upper secondary schools) don’t commence until next week, like this one. There is a main building with a lecture hall, several classrooms, a cafeteria, some dorms, and a large lobby for hanging out. The picture above is the entrance to the main building. Scattered around the school yard are many other dorm buildings, the sauna building (with two saunas), the boat house, two docks, and an outdoor chapel that looks over the lake.

In language classes today we started learning pronouns and how to conjugate verbs. Their conjugation patters have some similarities to French, which helps me a lot. We practiced spelling using the Finnish alphabet. It is often difficult to distinguish between all the different vowels. I am writing down lots of vocabulary, but it will take some studying for the words to actually sink in.

Our lecture this afternoon was about our year in Finland. It highlighted some of the holidays and hobbies of each season.

We had another sauna session today. It is very refreshing to switch from steaming hot to freezing cold in such quick succession. One of the dips into the lake had a wonderful surprise: there was a perfect double rainbow lighting up the sky across the lake from the camp. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera to capture the moment.