Timezones and Umlauts

Hei!
I'll get back to my epic journey, but first I will tell you about today! Dylan (another exchange student in Finland, from Canada) and I went for another one of our long explorations through Helsinki today. We walked around the massive Cathedral near the heart of the city, went to an open market by the Baltic Sea and ate cheap Thai food, got lost on side streets and back roads until we found a park where I ate ice cream and he had a strange Finnish soda, and then we made it back to the regal looking train station and parted ways. I am honestly in love with the life this country has provided for me.
SO, last time we spoke I got to Karkku! I won't go into much detail here, because most days were the same, so here are the basics: On a normal day we would all wake up around 7:30 and have a breakfast of either bread, cucumber, tomato, and butter, or porridge with jam (I chose the bread option). We would proceed to the morning briefing, the head to Finnish lessons. Finnish lessons would last about 5 hours (we would have lunch in there somewhere) then we would go to a lecture about various Finnish things (school, food, lifestyle) then enjoy about an hour of free time before dinner. After dinner was the time for going to the sauna, then swimming in the lake. I LOVED this part of the day! On the only not typical day of the week we went to Tampere and went on a bus tour, then had time to shop and see the city a bit. The bus tour took us through the historical parts of the city, and to an amazingly beautiful church. I went shopping with a friend named Lauren after, and we had lunch in a cute little café and listened to people speak Finnish while dreaming of a time when we would understand them.
Now, all of this sounds great, but there was one part of this week that almost wrecked everything... Jet Lag. Finland is 11 hours different than Alaska, and I felt every single one of those hours each and every minute I was awake. I looked like a zombie, even with the makeup I put on to try and liven up my miserable pallor. Somehow I fought through it, and after a week and a half I fully converted to Finnish time!
This was my time at Karkku, and I enjoyed every second of it! It was the perfect way to begin my life here in Suomi.