Natalie From America

Copenhagen Top Five I finally traveled to the number one spot on my travel list this weekend: Copenhagen, Denmark. It lived up to every expectation. There was so much we planned to see, and I wish we could have stayed longer, but we made do and had  such  an incredible trip. As we only had a solid 48 hours in Copenhagen, here are the top five things we did/saw/ate while there. #1: Tivoli Gardens As one of the oldest amusement parks in the world, Tivoli Gardens was one of my favorite attractions we went to. Walt Disney himself would visit Tivoli to find inspiration for the Disney Parks, and I could see why he was so drawn to this place. First of all, it was stunning. We went at night so it was lit up, which I felt was the only way to see it. It included everything from gardens and ponds, to rollercoasters, to fine dining. I could have walked around this park for hours had we given ourselves the time to do so. And of course, we couldn't have gone to the park with...

I've realized that I have been seriously motivated by this blog to do things. I find myself often saying, "Gotta do this for the blog," or " I need this picture for the blog," and the best one "Gotta eat this, or drink that...for the blog." Honestly, it's been a very fulfilling last few days. I owe part of that to wanting to build content for this blog. It's really been forcing me to get myself out there and experience things in the world so that I can share about it. Earlier this week, we took a trip to Southern Finland to and visited a city called Turku. It's about 170 kilometers (~106 miles, for my American friends) from Helsinki and about 312 kilometers (~193 miles) from Stockholm. Due to it's close proximity to dense urban areas, and the University of Turku being the second largest university, there were an immense  amount of English speakers. At no point did I feel out of place, or abnormal for having an English conversation. In...

I write to you all having survived the unseasonable, Finland heatwave. And I know I speak to you as a very privileged, American girl, but even the Finns have reassured me that this heat was  crazy bizarre. It's really reminded me, thought, of the privileges I do have: air conditioning. This luxury does not exist in peoples' homes here. But luckily, and with gratitude, there is a book store down the street (that has only Finnish books) which I would pretend to read so that I could dry my sweat and ease my mind. At said bookstore, we recently purchased games so that I could bond with my roomie(s) just a little bit more. Ticket to Ride is a classic, I highly recommend (thank you, Ashley!). However, I didn't think about the implications of bringing it home, but also reading the directions. But, at least now I can bring a board game home with directions in Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish. It's cool, you can look up directions on the internet! We also got Uno, a...

I've gotten a lot of questions about a few things surrounding Finland culture. Some of those questions include curiosities about whether or not I'll teach out here (I'm working on it!), general questions about the people, food, going out life, etc. So I'm gonna break down some of those questions and hopefully help you get to know a little bit more about life here, from a 24 year old, white, American, girl's (woman's*) perspective. 1. Have you tried any Finnish food? I am convinced , there is no 👏 such 👏 thing 👏 as "Finnish food". You want some pizza? Got that. You want some sushi? For sure. Do you want literally any food from any culture ever ? Then walk down any street and you'll find it. I don't think that there is even such a thing as a 'Finnish restaurant', they genuinely do not exist. But you can definitely get some Finnish dishes; ie. seafood, potato pastries (have tried these), and reindeer (yet to try). *I googled Finn...