Natalie From America

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...

Before I dive into this post, I wanted to take a minute to thank those of you who have either reached out to me wishing me well on my move here or taken a minute to open my blog and read it. It has meant a lot to me to feel supported 4,000 miles away. When I started this blog, I started it with the intention of keeping family and friends in the loop with regular updates and include some nice pictures. What I've come to find, is a world of interconnectedness, of people interested in travel, of genuine people who want the best for me and have lended me a helping hand. It has given me so much  reassurance that I have made a great decision coming to Finland, and  I'm truly so grateful. This week I spent time with my mom who visited a country other than Greece, in Europe, for the first time! We explored Helsinki, Tampere, and Valkeakoski together and I was able to navigate surprisingly well.  We walked the piers, caught a boat ride, and enjoyed fresh se...

Thursday July 19, 2018 (Finland time) Alright guys... I made it! For approximately 45 minutes during my 24 hour travel experience, I didn't think I was going to be able to say that. But I'm here, reporting semi-live in Valkeakoski, Finland at 6:30am local time. I've been up since 4:00am, but it's cool because I have talked to about 4 family members already this morning. Let me back track for a minute to address my travel day. Apparently, one-way tickets to Europe can be extremely expensive. So... the easiest (and cheapest) way for me to travel was to go from Chicago to London-Gatwick to Stockholm to Helsinki. Yes, it sucked, thank you for asking. I left Chicago about 1 hour and 30 minutes delayed, and that obviously gave me major, sweaty, anxiety. By the time I got to London, I had approximately 30 minutes to get to my gate. So basically I was running around like a chicken in the airport, sprinting to customs, full on sweating. Come to find out, the customs line loo...