X, I came to win, to survive, to prosper, to rise

 

Hey!

I have just survived the first week of school after a two-week break and the weekend has never felt so good, hahha. I wanted to share some of my iPhone snapshots because I´ve noticed that I usually capture all the cool moments with my phone and not with my camera which I don´t carry around so often here. Some of these pics are from the break and some are before the break and they aren´t all so interesting but at least they describe my life here soooo here we go!

1.  This picture is from my small but cute hometown, Lodi!
2. We made signs for my sisters football player friends because that´s what American teenagers do haha
3. And here are the players and the signs and us. As you can see purple and gold are the colors of our school, Tokay!

1.  I looove bath & bodyworks´ little hand sanitizers!!
2. Lodi is known for their grapes and I swear I´ve eaten more grapes during my stay here than during my whole life in Finland XD They taste so much better here and the vineyards are so pretty!
3. There´s so many Mexican food places here in California and Chipotle is my favourite! The kids meal is so good and it only costs about 2,80€, can you believe it?? And it´s not as unhealthy as Taco Bell for example or at least I hope not because I eat too much Chipotle!!

1.  I guess I should´ve posed like a badass like Renee and Hannah haha
2. & 3. Okay so we had our churchs youth group meeting and we played twister with paint! It was so messy but so much fun and I think I was the winner x)

1. Our homecoming game! Brazilians stole my phone...
2. Homecoming week and You So Don´t Go Here-day. Me and Renee dressed up like Lodi High School cheerleaders and my skirt was too small for me but I survived. It was a fun day because a lot of people from our school dressed up!
3. More signs for the homecoming game

1.  Hahaha I just thought this was kinda cool
2. This is a bad picture but one day the sun was all red the whole day and it was so weird.. Someone said it was because there was a fire somewhere and the smoke in the air made it look lred but I don´t know, it was super pretty!
3. We thought we found watermelons with my hostbrother but in fact we have no idea what those were, not watermelons anyways...

One day we made a day trip to the lake with exchange students and the weather was perfect! In the first picture is German exchange student, Jessika, who is like a little sister to me. I just love having someone from Europe here as my friend because sometimes it takes an European to completely understand an European, if you know what I mean..? :D

1.  I love sushi... A common white girl...
2. A picture from the Grape festivals!

 Foreigns´ shopping day!

1.  Night swimming when the nights were still warm
2.  Lazer tagging! It wasn´t as fun as in Megazone!
3. 9/11 was a suprisingly normal day here! Except I made a cool snapchat story haha

1.  Wannabe cheerleader-selfie
2. Another picture from the festivals
3. Shopping day outfit

1.  Hannah´s birthday party! That was the funniest night so far!
2. I just love biking and sometimes I just leave the house and bike somewhere I´ve never been before and just enjoy being alone and listening to good music while I bike
3. The birthday girl and me!

1.   My hair just a week ago when I spent about two hours to get it straight!
2.  My hair at the moment, I just suddenly wanted to cut it and add more layers and I have to say that I love my hair now! It´s just so much healthier and curlier and softer
3. My friends were like "It´s not even much shorter" but honestly if you compare the first picture to those two others you can see that a half of my hair is gone, literally. My head feels so much lighter now!

I´ve spent this morning facetiming my family and it gave me so much more strength, now I feel so loved and powerful! I´m so blessed to be here and I can never thank my parents enough for making this happen. And of course my host family for having me, they have taken such a good care of me so far. Since I´m feeling so good I think I´m going to hit the gym, see you soon :* And enjoy your weekend!!

IX, Enjoying October

Mun ensimmäinen retki meren rannalle Kaliforniassa, oli hyytävän kylmä mut silti tosi kaunista!

Retki järvenrannalle, tai jos tarkkoja ollaan niin järven pohjalle koska järvi oli niin kuihtunu että ei ollu jäljellä ku pari hassuu lätäkköö siellä täällä ja autolla tosiaan pysty ajaan keskelle järvee joka oli ennen syvän veden peitossa. Mua oikeesti huolestuttaa tää Kalifornian kuihtuminen!!  Mut anyways oli paljon paljon kuumempaa kun meren rannalla ja tosi hauska päivä muutenkin :)

Eilinen retki Apple Hillille joka oli vähänniinkun suuri syysmarkkina joka keskitty eniten omenoihin. Päädyttiin illan päätteeks isoon shoppailukeskukseen ihan vahingossa ja oli kiva viettää aikaa host mumin ja Alicen (yllä olevassa kuvassa) kanssa pitkästä aikaa :)

 Näissä ja monissa monissa muissa merkeissä sujahti tän onnellisen vaihtarin kahden viikon fall break, huomenna palataan sitten taas koulun penkille. Mun sunnuntai on kulunu niin huippu fiiliksissä, ehkä se vaikutti asiaan et heräsin aikasin lenkille ja tein kunnon kuntopiirin ulkona jonka jälkeen söin tosi hyvän aamupalan :)) Hyvää alkavaa syyslomaa sinne kaikille Suomeen :*

VIII, New in

Good morning! At least for me in here, at the moment I´m spending the laziest Saturday morning ever, I woke up at like 11 or something and I´m still in bed, listening to music, drinking coffee and blogging. But hey, there have been many mornings during this week when I´ve woken up at 7 or 8 just to facetime my friends in Finland so I enjoyed this morning very much. Aaaand my host sister is working, my host dad and brother are at the cabin and my hostmom is not home right now so I´m home all alone which is really relaxing right now. Sometimes I just enjoy being alone, I guess we all do.

Anyways, as you may have noticed, I decided to write this in English, just so I could be international and cool and stuff. No seriously I don´t even know if I have any readers outside Finland but last time I checked I saw many people around the globe visiting my blog and since I´ve also been asked to write in Englishhere, why not.

So for you who don´t know yet, I´m a 17-year-old girl from Finland who is spending an exchange year in Lodi, California! I´ve visited United States many times with my family but this is my first time on the West Coast and I have to say that California is so beautiful! 2 of my 10 months have already passed and it still kind of feels like I´m just spending a little longer vacation here  and that I´ll be home soon. But no, I´m going to stay here forever or that´s how it feels like right now :D But I know my year will start going  faster and faster towards the end and soon I´ll be back in Finland. Before that I just want to enjoy every bad and good day here because I know how lucky I am to live in California and to get to know so many new people and places. And to make one thing sure, English isn´t my other native language so forgive me my spelling mistakes. My own language is Finnish but in Finland we start studying English usually when we are 10 years old, that´s why I can survive here. I explained that because many Americans think we speak English in Finland because we can speak it so well. Now you know!

I had no interesting pictures in my camera so I just decided to show you couple of my favourite things I´ve bought here.

 

We were looking for dresses for a birthday party with my host sister and we ended up buying the same dress but in different colors! The white one is an overall from Hollister.

 Bath & Bodyworks....<3

 

Just basic clothes...

I´ve seen so many pictures of flashtattoos on instagram and weheartit so I bought some online! I´m super excited of wearing them in Hawaii on February.

 I found perfect boyfriend-fit sweatpants.. I´m just waiting it gets colder so I can use them!

A couple of more dresses from Forever 21

Sweater and very long socks from Hollister again :)

See you soon with hopefully more pictures!