Birthday!

Today is my birthday! I am finally...FINALLY 21!!! The day has come...time to throw that fake away! :-)

Although since I'm in Finland, being 21 doesn't make a bit of difference in my partying abilities here but we are all still going to celebrate like we're in America! Alex has been stressing to everyone that it is a big freaking deal hehe...I'm usually not one to make a huge hooplah out of my birthday but this year I give myself the right to make it a huge shebang. Even more so because it is so NOT an important birthday here or to any of the other internationals!

Tonight a bunch of us are pregaming in Alex's apartment and then heading downtown...I think I will go somewhere to get a fancy beverage and then out to the clubs! I am very excited although right now the thought of drinking is not super appealing...I have all day to change that though!

I am finally recovered from my hangover from Thursday night...twas a doozie! I think everyone had a really good time at the Anything But Clothes stammtisch so I will post a few pictures of the glorious outfits of the attendees. I did not win the free trip to Lapland, but thats ok! I didn't plan on winning and some people put a huge amount of effort into their costumes...everyone looked fantastic!

Now it is time for me to rest up and prepare myself for one of the greatest nights of my life. Peace out suckas!

Hookers, chocolate, circus troupes, and flutes....

So Wednesday night a few of us went downtown to a bar called Memphis. The other university in Jyvaskyla, JAMK, was hosting some sort of event for their international students and so we all went down there to check it out. Once I got there, I found my friend Kyla (who gave me the rest of her burger---so delicious it is worthy of a little mention) and we had a beer then decided to play it low key for the night and go bar hopping to check out a few other places around the area so we would know what was up. We left Memphis and went to Parnell's which is an Irish pub sort of spot and Kyla got some delicious sort of Irish cream beer (...I think) and then we went to REDNECK. Yes, in Jyvaskyla there is a bar called Redneck. I'm pretty sure it was put there just for us, as I (being from North Carolina) am well acquainted with the redneck lifestyle and Kyla (who is from Tennessee) is also prettty up on the way of the rednecks. When we walked in we realized we were the only people there, so we had a little photo shoot to showcase the decor. (Sidenote: On the way in I slipped and fell on some ice and bruised the shiznit out of the palm of my hand...only to further bruise it Friday night. More on that later.)

Yummy, creamy beer at Parnell's

I forget what mine was called but it had a bear on it!

REDNECK!! wooden picnic tables, tractor seat barstools, old crappy motorcycle hanging on the wall...love it!

Check out the super cute window valances hahaha

Love the barstools! 

Every bar needs a creepy painting and white-n-red checkered tablecloths!

We got our dranks and were just enjoying the atmosphere, I harassed the bartender about the happenings at Redneck...they only play Finnish music which I found strange. We've decided that we might need to begin my birthday festivities on Saturday night at this wonderful little slice of home. So Kyla and I are sitting there, and these two girls come in and sit at a table near us and so we start talking to them. They were Finnish but spoke English okay but enough that we could get buy. Long story short, a few minutes later one of them goes outside to have a cigarette with an older gentleman. Fast forward ten minutes later and she doesn't come back, so the friend (her name is Marjut) who was still with us starts freaking out. Then we find out she is only 17, they are from another place in Finland called Oulu, neither of them have ever been to Jyvaskyla before, and they are only in town for the night. This girl was waaaaasted, so Kyla and I went into mommy mode and refused to leave her by herself. As the night goes on and we check most of the bars in the area for her friend, we find out more about her: she has been is foster care basically her whole life, the friend we lost (Marsa) is basically like her sister/best friend/only thing she has, and she has just had a really sad life and she was so sweet so Kyla and I became even more worried about her. I bought us all a pizza to share hoping that maybe she would sober up some and we called one of Kyla's Finnish friends to see if he could get more information about where this chick was supposed to stay or what we should do with her. So then Marjut gets a call from another friend saying that the Marsa (the one we can't find) is at Hotel Alexandria and we should take her there. (Oh yes, by the way...we tried calling Marsa at the beginning of this whole debacle, but as luck would have it Marjut had both of their phones on her person.) So we are walking around trying to find this hotel, and by this point it is 3am so as much as I want this girl to get somewhere safe and be with her friend I'm like really ready to go home and get rid of her. So I ask the next person I see if he knows where Hotel Alexandria is. He tells us he isn't from Jyvaskyla but he is meeting some friends in the city center and they can help us. So we follow him and see his friends (meanwhile the drunken 17 year old is speaking to him in Finnish, takes a beer out of her purse and opens the bottle WITH HER TEETH...the lid was not a twist off, I promise.) and this d-bag of a dude stops at an ATM, gets cash out, and then Marjut basically tells Kyla and I to eff off and they start walking away arm in arm. BITCH WAS A HOOKER!!! We didn't even know, and she was plenty happy to have our help (the whole night she kept telling us that we were wonderful people and she was so thankful to have met us because she didn't know what to do and all this crap...) until a man stepped in and she had a chance to make some money. So Kyla and I both got realllll feisty and kind of flipped out on these dudes but apparently prostitution is legal in Finland (I googled it all the next day) as long as you're 16 or older. So we pretty much wasted our whole night taking care of this poor girl who we felt really bad for and then we got slapped in the face. (I mean that figuratively although Kyla did get hit in the chest when we tried to stop this girl from going with this nasty dude.) I got one picture of the three of us together to document my evening...this was before we knew she was a prosty.

This is a terrible picture and she looks kind of cockeyed, BUT she was actually a really cute and sweet acting "little girl" but I guess we were just being naive. Although in our defense she didn't look, dress or act like a hooker until the very end of the night. 

So that was awesome!

Friday during the day we went to the Panda chocolate factory! It is in Jyvaskyla and they make yummyyy chocolate! So a group of us went out there thinking we could go on a tour or something interactive/ behind the scenes because someone had told one of us that they do tours there. We arrive and walk into the factory shop where you can get discounted prices on the chocolate, but not really that discounted because you have to ride a bus both ways out there so it really isn't cheaper...in fact it probably ended up costing more haha but thats ok we were there for the experience! But once we got there we were told that they do not do tours and haven't for years! So we all bought some chocolate (some of us may or may not have gone a little crazy and bought a ton..although it makes good gifts!) and headed back into town....when all was said and done we probably spent about 20 or 30 minutes at the factory. But here are a few pictures!

I have no idea what this says

A giant spool of licorice!

I wanna get chocolate wasted!!!!!

Friday night we went to BRA. And yes, I got my ass kicked again. So that was fun!!!! We were all having a good old time when all of a sudden this group of shirtless men in spandex ran out into the middle of the dance floor wearing fake mustaches and they started doing acrobatics and gymnastics!! They were yelling and throwing each other around and doing flips and going craaaazzaaayyy! It was pretty cool so after their performance I hunted them down for a picture :-)

I'm a sucker for spandex and fake facial hair!

So we danced and we played and we frolicked and we drank all night long! Here are a few pictures from the events at BRA...

Helen, Alex, Cass, Jaanika, and myself

Me, Adrien and Cass at BRA!

Me, my new Finnish friend Aleksi (he was a huge help at the chocolate shop, telling me what everything was) and Pascal...time out??

I LOVE THE SWING CHAIRS. 

aaaand just a little obnoxious picture for all to enjoy!

So as we are leaving BRA we encountered a little flute playing man in the middle of city center. The generous drunk that I am gave him entirely too much money just because I was enjoying dancing around in the middle of the road...I'm not used to having coins that are actually worth something! Those euro and two euros coins add up fast when you just throw them in someone's money box! But oh well, the pictures were worth it! He was playing Irish jig sounded music...I think you can almost hear it just from looking at the pictures!

so awesome!

For a musician, he didn't seem to enjoy us enjoying ourselves to his music...

getting cray-cray!

Steve also joined in on the dance moves...

just doing our thang...

haha heel kicks? i dont know

This is when I got yelled at for almost stepping on his money box! I had just given him literally TWENTY EUROS and he was an asshole. 

So I enjoyed the dancing but not the music man. He sucked. Anyways, on the way home I slipped on ice and fell backwards and took a tumble straight down to the sidewalk and hit muh poor little head. While trying to break my fall I further injured the palm of my hand which is now severely bruised and yesterday my head hurt like a mofo (combo of both a hangover and slamming it into concrete...hehehehe) but today it feels a little better. My whole body is kind of in pain today though so I think my fall resulted in my writhing around on the ground for a bit too...haha whoops! Finland is kicking my butt, but I'm kicking it right back!!!

Love, Peace, and chicken grease! (god I would kill for southern fried chicken right now!)

Stammtisch pictures...better late than never!

Ok so I forgot to post about the Stammtisch (it was last Thursday)! It was definitely a good time and I tried my hardest to not drink quite as much as Tuesday night last week at the back to school party....and I (barely) succeeded!  Many peeps came out dressed in their finest summer garb, but I was lame and did not participate due to a lack of available summer clothing. We played all night long and jammed to some tunes...I might have even found a dance partner or two.  I won't bore you guys with details and stories...just check out los fotografos.

Martin and I with his festive "summer" pants rolled up...

Some of the crew!

Muh girl Alex and I..

Taa dah! 

Martin the friendly Czech giant...

The stache has gone international!

sobz...

Me, Alex, and Cass!

Poor Pascal didn't quite make it in...

I love Pascal!

Get it! Dancing? I'm not sure

The chicken reappears....

I'm still SO confused!

Martin, breaking it down...

Martin makes me feel short and Alex is a thief..(the hat she is so proudly parading around with..not hers)

Last night I went to the meeting to plan the next Stammtisch...it was up to us English speaking countries to pick a theme! There were many good ideas, but I mentioned an American classic that stole the vote.....ABC-Anything But Clothes! The idea of the theme is to be as creative as possible making an outfit from materials not usually worn as clothing, such as garbage bags. We will also be hosting a fashion show for the top 5 or so costumes as there is a 300euro prize up for grabs...a free trip to Lapland! I need some ideas of what to make my costume out of so if you think of anything brilliant, send it my way!

I've been trying to upload pictures on here for a few days, but blogspot has been kind of a bitch. or maybe its my internet?...its probably my internet.

Hasta la vista!

Low key weekend...

Not a whole lot to report for the last few days...I went sledding yesterday though! It was cold as nuetzzzz (-teens during the day and I'm pretty sure it hit -30 as night fell) so moving around outside was good but being outside at night was not. Although we did have the most sun I've seen since being here! Goodness gracious great ballz of fire I miss the sun. I have taken sunny days for granted my entire life. I love it, I wanna be in it forever, and I never want to leave it again. This is most definitely a good experience and I am and will continue to enjoy my time while I am here but it just makes me realize that I am made for sunshine, heat, sand, and all things warm and tropical :-)!!!!! You can take the girl out of the beach, but you can't take the beach out of the girl! Last night I met a group of friends downtown in the city center at the Kebab House for dinner...by the way, the kebabs here are out of this world. Roasted meaty goodness wrapped in flour tortilla brilliance, smothered in yum delicious sauce with crispy, crunchy lettuce....I could eat them errrrryday! Today, it was also very cold so Alex and I drank beer for the better part of the day in my luxurious bedroom and just hung out. Oh, I did some laundry too! Although I've been working on it, I still don't have enough credit hours here to be considered full time back at good old NC State so I have a meeting about all that bullshiz tomorrow. And my BFFerz Amz is finally on my side of the world, which is definitely good news. Hopefully I'll be taking a little trip to Copenhagen to visit her for my 21st! I miss all my other peeps back home...and as strange as it sounds I wish my parents were coming for a visit sooner than they are planning! I may or may not miss Mike a little bit as well :-)

Here are some pictchaaaas from our sledding adventure....

I love this picture because it is so sunny out I have to squint!!!!!

Trekking to the hill for sledding!

So cold! I know you can't tell how cold I am, but I am..trust me. Just pretend!

SUNSHINE. enough said!

Mas sol! yay yay yay!

Our little buttcheek sleds...they were free, I'm not complaining AND they kicked ass!

Getting ready to shred...

Sledding with the rest of the children

Lo siento for the boring blog today. (Throwing in some Spanish since I apparently am not able to take a Finnish courses while here and that is about all the foreign language you're going to get.)

Moi moi! (bye bye in Finnish!)

PS- just realized I never blogged about the Stammtisch....more on that later ;-)