Language Camp

We arrived at Karku where the Rotarians of Finland had rented out a small college campus to house us for the week, while they tried to teach us the basics of the language and introduce us to the culture. (I never did learn Finnish, except for: my name is, where is the bathroom, how much is, I am an exchange student, etc … and I don’t think I ever pronounced them correctly. I can’t roll my r’s and that was a huge detriment).
When we got to the camp we were shown our rooms. My roommate, Lauren Sina, was flying in from the west coast, and would be arriving later that day. Oh that fateful day when the Rotary club of Finland placed us in the same room. The first day was fairly simple, there was a dinner and a introduction talk once all the students had arrived. Then we were all invited to go to sauna that night. (A quick word about the sauna, it is a dry steam room, and there are very hot rocks that you throw water on to make steam, and you go in naked and beat yourself with birch branches. The Finns are very proud of the sauna, for which their country takes credit. There are five million people in Finland, and one million saunas. At least those were the numbers when I was there). So the first night in Finland, we all saw each other naked. (well, us students were separated by gender)
Lauren knew another exchange student Alicia, who was from Oregon, just a town away from Lauren. We three became thick friends, along with Gary from up-state New York and Jason from Florida.
The days at language camp were fairly structured, (which as we learned on the other Rotary trips is the way they like to do things) we had breakfast, (this is where I fell in love with strawberry yogurt and granola) then a few hours of language class, lunch, and then more lessons or a field trip. And every evening there was sauna, and a lake to swim in.
The very first day, we were all in a daze, well the technical term is jetlag. Lauren and I woke up at what we thought was four in the morning but what really turned out to be two in the morning (in never gets completely dark in Finland in the summer, just like is doesn’t get completely light in the winter), both of us quietly laying in our appointed dorm room, wondering if the other is awake.
“are you awake?”
“yeah, are you?”
Why do we ask that question back? So we decided it was a good time to walk around the camp and take pictures.
Evenings, this is where the fun came in. one of the nights Gary had convinced me to walk down to the town, about two miles away, and he would bye me dinner at the little café there. One of the Rotary rules stated that we were not to leave the camp. So we walked and walked and walked and walked. When we got to the corner across from the café, we could see through the window all of our teachers from the camp hanging out, drinking beers.
“well, shit, we better walk back”
the walk back was shaping up to be even longer, and I was getting tired, when a passing car stopped to give us a ride. There wasn’t much room in the back, I had to sit on top a car seat but Gary and I were grateful, and were attempting our limited Finnish, (well really Gary was learning Swedish, since he was going to a Swedish speaking part of the country) to thank them.
Over all it was an enjoyable week, but the whole time I felt I was in a bit of limbo, and I just wanted to get to my town and my host family. The very last day, all of the host families came to collect their students. In the crowds, my host parents found me, I gave Lauren a hug good bye, and hopped in their car to be taken to Turku.