Somewhere really far from home.

Hello, friends!

This post is a little delayed as I’ve been so busy recently and I haven’t got around to write this. Anyway, I’ve already been in Finland for about 3 weeks now, and I’m leaving on the 11th of July. Honestly, I’m pretty homesick and I really want to go home to my family and local food.

Anyway, the reason I’m here in Finland is for volunteer work. I’m working with some refugees in a centre and helping to integrate their lives with the Finnish people. Initially, I was supposed to go for another project where I’ll be working with Finnish children in a summer camp. But due to some unfortunate circumstances, I had to be transferred to this project. I’ve already bought my plane tickets and the work is for a good cause. Plus, I really wanted travel to Europe as I’ve never been.

So I packed my bags, and said my goodbyes to my family and headed off. The flight was uncomfortably long; however, I met this lovely Finnish girl who was sitting next to me on the flight so it wasn’t as bad. By the time I touched down, I just really wanted to take a nice hot shower.

I met some wonderful people working with me on this project, and honestly, I’m so surprised how quick we got so comfortable with each other after just a week. Besides working on the project with the refugees, we’d also had explored around the city we’re currently in- Tampere.

Tampere is a really small town compared to where I’m from. So it’s really quite and different here. The shops close around 5 or 6 in the evening and that’s just ridiculous to me because almost everything closes around 10 at night. The food here is also crazy expensive, but that’s mainly because the currency exchange from my currency to euro is just really big. So we’re just usually cooking at our accommodation.

Just last week, my friends and I went to Helsinki for a day trip. It was extremely fun, and I had a great time. The picture above is one of the churches, it was extremely beautiful inside and out.

We went around sightseeing and tried to go around as much. We even took a ferry to one of their little islands. I sadly don’t remember what its name and tried Googling, but I can’t find it…

There were plenty of old buildings and museums to wander, and we tried looking at all them.

There were also so many beautiful flowers everywhere. I couldn’t stop taking pictures of them. But here’s one of my friends and I laying down in a daisy field.

Before I go, I also want to show you this beautiful picture of this red ship. I was just so in love with it.

That’s all for now.

Have you ever been to Finland? Or maybe you’re from it? Recommend me a restaurant or type of food I should try if you’re familiar with it.

See you in the next one!

Cheers,
Sylvia