5 months video!

The Christmas Holiday

So Christmas happened. It was harder than I expected to be honest, but it was still interesting and an experience I will never forget. I really missed my family during Christmas time though, since it's a family holiday. It was nice, however! 

On the 24th, I spent Christmas together with Sara, since we both spend Christmas on Christmas eve in our home countries. We made "rice pudding", which is a traditional Christmas dish in both Finland and Denmark - but let me make this clear, it's not the exactly same thing as the British version of it. It's really good.

On the 25th, I spent Christmas together with my host family. We opened some gifts in the morning, and went out for a meal to a restaurant called Toby Carvery together with some of my host family's relatives. It was really nice, and I really enjoyed spending Christmas with them! I wouldn't mind having a culture in Finland, where you went out for a meal on Christmas, it was actually really nice.

You got those wee crowns on your head, which was an interesting feature :D

After Christmas a friend of ours from Aberdeen came down to visit us. We took Anne to the Edinburgh Dungeons and rode the Star Flyer (might not be the correct name, haha, oh well). It was absolutely amazing!

I really can't believe that the year is almost over! 2013 has been absolutely amazing. Can't believe that I can say that I came to Scotland last year in just a couple of days, and that I can shout out "I'm gonna meet my family and friends again this year!" It's ridiculous how quickly time passes. But it's okay, as long as you enjoy every second of it.

So HAPPY NEW YEAR every single one of you! No exceptions. I hope 2014 brings you all a lot of happiness and great moments!

And on that note, in just a couple of weeks we're going to put up our 5 months in Scotland video and that is going to be my last video from Scotland together with Sara :( Our thought for this video is, that we're going to answer questions you guys want to know. So start sending questions now! Anything about being an exchange student, about Scotland or about Edinburgh - yeah anything you want to know! We'll give advice and share experiences. So gogogogo for it!

4 months video and Christmas joy

Hiya!

Here you go, our 4 months in Scotland video! Enjoy and embrace it.

A part from that, our holiday started this week. It's nice to just get to relax and not need to wake up early every day. Edinburgh is also so pretty during December! I love it. Only downside is that there's no snow, but then again there's apparently no snow back at home either, so that makes me a bit happier!:D I'm so excited for Christmas though! It's weird to spend it away from home, but at the same time it's going to be a nice experience. 

Happy Christmas everyone, hope you all have a great one! x

LONG TIME, NO SEE!

I'm the best blogger in the world aren't I! It's not because of me though, I promise. It's because of the ridiculous excuse of an internet I have. Right now I'm at my friend Sara's place, so I decided to take this opportunity to tell you that I'm alive! Firstly, we made a 3 months video last month about our trip to London, and you can watch that here:



Our 4 months video will be up some time next week! I'm gonna make sure I link it here for you. And I'm gonna try to blog more during the last time here, at least once a week, since I'm already leaving in February - so if you have any specific suggestions, let me know.

Also, if anyone wants to stalk me a bit more than what is possible on this blog, make sure to click your way to twitter and follow @creisilie. I dare you.

So what has happened here? - Pretty much everything that is possible to happen. This week for example, we got to go and see the Lion King with our organisation and I spilled brown paint on my school uniform on Thursday, so I had to walk around with just a tank top under my blazer, which felt weird. Yesterday I went to see Catching Fire with Sara, and I'm buzzing to see the second Hobbit film as soon as possible. Life is in other words great!

Thomas, Lauren, me & Sara at our school's Christmas concert

Couple of weeks ago during double English. Made that morning so much better!

Being responsible and celebrating the 4 Advent Sundays by myself!

We celebrated the Finnish Independence day (HYVÄ SUOMIIII) after school by making makaroonilaatikkoa and suklaakakkua.  

And here's a sneakpeak about what our 4 months video is gonna be about! STAY TUNED!

Long time, no see

Hiyaaa!

Yes, I'm still alive. I have been having serious issues with my internet, which is driving me crazy, so unfortunately blogging hasn't been my first priority. Everything is going well anyway, and at the moment I'm actually thinking about staying here until June, instead of leaving in February.

Nothing is decided yet, but I really feel like I'd be so sad if I leave in February. But we'll see!

Last weekend was good anyway. On Friday I went for dinner with Sara, Chanti and Greta to a restaurant called Radhuni. I know that I'm a person who easily gets excited about food in general, but that was like extremely good! After that we rushed to the park near-by to see some fireworks, because apparently Scottish people can't get enough of them. There's always fireworks!

On Saturday I met up with Greta and Sara again, and just walked around Edinburgh. We did also visit a Swedish café, which was absolutely amazing! It was just so nice to walk into a place where they sell knäckebröd and kanelbullar. You just instantly feel like at home!

On Sunday we celebrated our friend Rachel's birthday by going iceskating and eating dinner at Pizza Hut. It was extremely fun, since no of the Scottish people involved knew how to actually ice skate. I got to drag them around the icerink and teach them - which actually was fun. 

Oh, and since all of the exchange students in our school were put into the politics class on Wednesday afternoons, the teacher thought that it'd be smart to learn about the Scottish Independence Debate and inform the Scottish students about it.

So that's the final result! Took a good 5-6 weeks to make it, and the twitter-birds on the bottom of the page are fabulous. 

But that's all for now. I'll try to be back as soon as possible again - I just have to figure out why my internet is as slow as a snail crossing the street. 

Take caaaaaare! 

Bowling and Scottish countryside

Now I'm back at school again and all these exams and tests are starting to build up. I'm not gonna stress about them though - since I'm an exchange student. As long as I pass, I'm fine with it!
I also started reading the first book of the series Game of Thrones, and it's just brilliant!
But anyway, now when life is normal again, it's nice to look back at what I did last week, when we had our October break!

The first day of the October break, me and the other ETS-students from the closest area, got the chance to try some Scottish dancing with some French short-time students. It was so much fun, and we got promised, that we get to join in next time as well!
After that we had a horror film-night, we went to Edinburgh lots of times, scrapbooked and went to the zoo. On Wednesday, ETS had once again planned things for us to do - we got to go bowling!
It was lots of fun, and I'm actually quite good at it - won the first round and two strikes. It was also very nice to meet all the other students again, since we live in different areas.

From Thursday to Saturday me and Sara decided to join our area reps' to their cabin, which was located somewhere in a small village near Peebles. It was superduper beautiful, and they were so nice to us. On Friday we took a couple of hours long car trip long the Scottish borders, and saw all the mountains and the crazy amount of sheep. The scenery is just so breathtaking, it's crazy! I'm so happy I got to see that part of Scotland as well - the real countryside.

 

2 MONTHS IN SCOTLAND

Time surely flies by quickly! So here I have my 2 months in Scotland video, which I filmed together with my fellow exchange student, Sara :) awkward in the beginning, and a bit more natural in the end - but it's fine. Hope you enjoy!

This October break has been crazy busy btw! On Wednesday we went bowling with our organization and Thursday-Saturday me and Sara went on a little adventure with our area reps, to the Scottish countryside. It was so beautiful, and I will post pictures from there as soon as possible.