TIME TO TELL A STORY (aka the longest f***ing bonus ever)

Good evening, fellows,

and welcome to this very extreme and super long non-theatre blog bonus I wrote (it’s also partly an apology for being such a careless and inactive person in this blog). It’s about my trip to France and about who I was there with (mainly Emma though). The language is English, and there are two reasons for it. First, there is a slight possibility that some people from other nationalities read this and it would be great if everyone could understand it somehow (I now sincerely apologize for all my foolish grammar mistakes here). Second reason to write in this beautiful language is that the whole week was kind of... done in English. We were speaking English, we were thinking in English, we experienced and discussed and worked in English. It is hard to explain those things in any other language. So… Welcome, tervetuloa, willkommen (do I have to write that with a capital W? Freaking German), bienvenue.

At first I’ll tell you some things you should know before reading my ‘diary’ about the trip. First of those things is that even though we really love our teachers and even though they did a great work to make this trip as cool and amazing as it was, there were some little things in the organisation that failed. I’ll now make a list about the times the organisation failed us so you’ll know what I mean when I mention them later.

The Organisation Fails Us pt. 1

“Oh, so we won’t know who our host will be? They won’t contact us? So we can’t ask any questions from them, we won’t have any idea of where we are going? Sure, that’s really great.”

TOFU pt.2

“We need boots? Thanks, a night before we leave is truly a great time to tell us this. Boots are kind of heavy and we are not allowed to put stuff to the bottom of the plane. Solution? We are so not taking boots.”

TOFU pt. 3

“Oh so the bus just… Leaves us here? At 1AM? To the cold dark school yard? Great. And what did you say again? Our hosts are not coming to get us so we have to wait until everyone else has left and then go with some French teacher we have never met and she will take us somewhere? Suuuure.”

TOFU pt. 4

“But… Yesterday you said we could put things to the bottom of the plane when we return! You can’t take that back anymore because we kind of bought a shitload of liquid stuff.”

TOFU pt. 5

“Hm? I thought we were supposed to be free from school at five? No? You are going to copy these super important papers just now and we will be late from our meeting with our host? How nice.”

TOFU pt. 6

“So… No one told us how we are going to get away in the last morning? Is the teacher coming to get us? When is she coming to get us if she will? Oh how I love this amazing feeling of knowing nothing about things you should be like hundred percent sure.”

The second thing I’ll tell you is that a big part of the jokes we had with Emma were sort of Finnish puns, so explaining them may take a little more time than it would have if I wrote this in Finnish (they will also not be funny when I have to do that, but whatever). So, let’s get down to the business, won’t we? 

Day 1 – Sunday

The journey began at Sunday morning. The Paris airport was, thank God, simple and easy to navigate in and we made our first cool discoveries; Emma bought some citron juice called Pulco (and fell in love immediately) and I bought a smoothie with a hat on it. After that we met the Austrians and went to our bus.

In the bus there seemed to be an implicit agreement of a game called “Who spots the biggest amount of false Eiffel towers” and every time someone was like; “OOOH”, everyone stood up to see even a little glimpse of the tower. I think we saw it actually, but I can't be sure. Emma told me that her “most valued treasure” was the ring she had, and it was made of opals, or oh-pals like we called them for the rest of the bus trip.

I felt pretty multicultural in the bus. I was a Finnish girl in France, sitting in the middle of Austrians who spoke German, listening to Russian music and thinking in English. When I realized that, I tried my best to make myself think something in Swedish too, just to add the effect. (Didn't work, too bad, Swedish is not my piece of cake.)

Day 2 – Monday

Some school, yeah yeah… And after school we went to the city. Rennes is such a beautiful place to walk around, and I think it’s pretty awkward to have people to come to Lappeenranta after this. I mean, we might still have snow around when they come in May.

We got to know people a bit. We also bought some macaronis, and I accidentally crushed Emma’s macaronis back at our host’s house. I crushed them like I crushed my dreams, and I had to take a very apologetic face after that so she could see how sorry I was.

Oh and the school food was marvelous. Really.

We don't have this luxury in Finland.

All fun and games

Until I ruined it

Way to ruin a moment

Day 3 – Tuesday

Tuesday was the first actual day to concentrate on the project, information overload and stuff like that. We went to our groups we had chosen, and my group consisted of two Germans, Alex and Sonja, two Austrians, Jasmin and Michelle and two Frenchies, Elise and Tommika. And me of course. So we started to discuss our creative ideas and see if we could make some sort of theatre performance.

I was pretty thankful that most of my group had great English skills, because otherwise it would have been pretty hard to do anything. My German skills are less than okay, especially when the Austrians had their own, funny accent. The funny thing was that not just the spoken language but also the body language mattered.

“Is your teacher sad?”

“Oh, no, that’s just the Finnish face.”

At first the project was a mess. A hysterical mess, because it was kind of theatre but it had to be done in fourteen hours and there were videos we had to make, lines to study and stuff to get to ourselves. It was the most hysterical presentation I have ever been part of. Really. But it was funny though, because our group was the best ♥

After school we went to the city and discovered that everything around us was super frenchy. There is no other word for it, we couldn’t describe anything without using that one. Also we went to the city by bus and Emma left from different doors that I did (dramatic.) I was left alone with a German girl, Jasmin, so I just made her my friend. Literally.

“I have been left alone! My friends left me! You are my friend now; you have no choice!” I was very thankful that she didn’t have anything against that :D

Day 4 – Deathnesday

At the Wednesday morning we decided to be independent women and go to have some breakfast to the city. In a very frenchy way. The whole city was full of little bakery shops, except on that morning. We had to walk around for ten minutes before we found even one. But it went very smoothly and we were proud of ourselves.

The idea of the day was to go to St. Malo. And we did. We just weren’t actually expecting it to be like that. The weather was, let’s say, slightly windy and wet. The wind was something like 90km/h (about 25m/s I suppose) and if someone can’t imagine how much that is, just imagine that we could barely walk in there. The wind tried to kill us. We were almost thrown to the ocean. Dear God.

Then we went to visit St. Michel, a castle. The weather was the same and we had to cross a bridge to get there. It wasn’t more than 200m long but my God it took long. Every step I took was hard, because the wind tried to make me fall down (and as much as I love to talk about jumping from a bridge, that wasn't the place I wanted to die.) I was stuck inside my scarf, it was completely wet and in my mouth and every single water drop felt like a bullet on my skin. And we saw kids in there! Like five year olds, who were crying and scared for their little lives. Now wonder because I was too. We kind of hanged on each other with Jasmin, screaming, laughing and crying.

We fucked up the timetable a little bit with Emma (everyone just left without us and we had to find our way back alone), but we still made it out of there alive. In the bus we discussed the trip of the day, and came to realize it had been both icy and epic (jäätävää ja eeppistä) so the day had been epicy (jääppinen). When we left to our host family, I summed the whole day in one sentence;

“Yolo yolo fuck it I’m not going anywhere anymore.”

Also our teacher started to call as with name “mehukatit” (too long to explain in English though, but juice cats) because of TOFU pt.4. We were very in love with our juices. Also in the night Emma came up with a new Olympic sport; jiggling. Pole jiggling is like a fancy word for pole dancing, and then there was synchronized jiggling, steeplejiggling, shot jiggle and so on. We are so very funny.

Our fancy little breakfast

Very charming. Much sophistication. Wow.

Day 5 – Thursday

Thursday was just another day at school. The Finnish face started to spread, we made videos for our performance, I freaking understood German so well I could translate it in English and in Finnish, Herr Sicklinger became my hero and TOFU pt. 5 happened.

At night we had this dinner party and Sonja brought some schnaps-thingies for us. There was like half a shot for everyone, and I was pretty surprised that it tasted good. Usually every strong alcohol stuff I've tasted have tasted like a liquid death but that one was kinda great.

I never really got the original idea of “Olala!” “Schinken!” but I just integrated in it. When someone yelled olala, everyone else shouted schinken or kinkku, because why the hell not. Very German.

He truly is my hero, and also the king/queen

of meowing and make-up tutorials

Ahh I taught them well

Day 6 – Friday

We had our performance on Friday. I heard afterwards that it was very amusing and that our teacher had laughed so hard she almost died, but oh my God that was the moment I missed Estradi the most. I missed the organised directing, I missed the details, I missed the feeling of being sure of everything. But I have to say that when I think it afterwards, improvising was pretty cool and funny in English.

After lunch we went to the city with the Germans. Our brains were really messed up by then. Information overload… Or language overload. You couldn’t be sure what language came out of your mouth when you started to talk. Jasmin was wondering if birds have ears. I started to complain about something in Finnish to Alex. Jasmin from Austria came to me and spoke German and I had to ask her to stop. Emma spotted a guy who had exactly the right amount of beard. We had no verbal filter because no one understood us in public. Every time someone held a door open for me I had to check the nationality so I knew what language to use to say thank you. The same thing if I had to apologize, but there I also had to check if I had to use entschuldigen Sie or entschuldigung (freaking German). Every time I stopped to wonder what language was I thinking in, I realized I wasn’t thinking at all. Also TOFU pt. 6

ERROR

brain.exe has crashed

Our host family just kind of gave all of this to us. Because they are the best.

Day 7 – Saturday

Very worthy sushi

We woke up at 4.30AM and our bus left from Rennes at six. I spent too much money on a gas station. Like really. At the airport we were going to go to the package drop, only me and Emma (the horrified kids with juices), when the mother figure Sara told that she has to do that also. That was the moment our lives went like hundred percent easier. Hundred percent = Sadalla prosentilla, so I also made a pun; Elämämme (our lives) helpottui (got simplified) Saralla prosentilla. Finnish is funny isn’t it? Or maybe it's just us (not).

Everything went so smoothly and we were just in time… But then our train from Tikkurila to Lappeenranta decided that it was a good time to be late for like forty minutes. Emma was pretty pissed of, I drank some chai latte and tried to not kill everyone with my new knife because I was tired and bored, and then we went to S-market to buy some sushi. It saved us. Hallelujah. Emma said that her mood went from “the train is late” to “sushi” in a minute. I created a scale based on that information (and few other things), and you can see it under this part of the post.

When we finally got to train, Emma wished me “happy angsting” because we started to listen music and stare out of the window. Because that’s what you do in train. Especially when you’re tired. The sushi was worthy.

Thanks. That’s it.

An awkward group photo with the very best people

Emma’s scale of moods

The train is late (god fucking damn it)

Charger not working (REALLY U LIL SHIT?)

The fullest elevator ever (ahahahah this is funny)

Shitty wifi (aka every single public wifi)

Shoelaces open (fuck it)

Neutral

No rain or wind trying to kill you (a new feeling based on deathnesday)

An actual sun that’s warming you (very frenchy)

The window place and the sunset (aiiiirplaaane)

Nutella (everywhere)

Sushi (prevents us from killing people)

Also here, have this little video (mostly in Finnish) filmed with Emma's camera :3