August 6th/Tempere

Today was a big day.

We went to Tempere. It is a city here in Finland, the 3rd biggest city in Finland actually. We left at 1pm and the ride to Tampere was only about 40-45 minutes long. Once we got there we wait about 15-20 minutes for our tour guide to finally show up. Was she came we spent about an hour in half sightseeing with out tour guide on our bus. After we were done with that we were given until 6 to walk and explore Tampere. I went with Amanda, Olivia, Alexis, Amanda and Brandi. Olivia and I needed to use the atm so we could get money out but we didn't know where it was. First we went up to one lady and she didn't speak much Finnish only Spanish so we failed at that, then I went up to a younger lady and she was able to tell us where the ATM (Otto) was. We get there and our cards do not work!!! They don’t have a chip and since theres no chip we get no money. So there was a McDonalds on the corner of where our bus was so we stopped there and got fries (reminded us of home), this is where we spilited it was now Olivia, Amanda, Brandi,and I. We tried to use our Finnish to order butttt that didn’t work out to well. Once we got our fries we went to go sit down and was sat  down next to a lady and her daughter who were in line in front of us. I assume she heard us talk about how their was no more ketchup so she gave us 3 packets and that was supper nice!!! She was really sweet! After we left Mcdonalds we walked around and got ice cream (I had 10 euros with me from when I got starbucks in Amsterdam) then went into a Finnish mall where we tired another Otto which failed again. We then walked around for a good 45 minutes. We were back in the city square where we saw the camp leader and asked her about our cards and she told us where a bank was. So Olivia and I ran about 4 blocks to the bank to exchange our money which only took a few minutes so we had about 15 minutes until we needed to be back.  Which was great! After our trip to Tampere, we had dinner and I went back to the dorm house to take a shower. Then I went to the lobby and imported my pictures since I was here and then wrote my first day blog post. Then Olivia and I went swimming in the lake it was about 60 degree’s and it felt pretty nice haha. We went up to the sauna twice but just to get under the hot water in the shower room then went back down to the lake. At about 9 we came back and she took a shower and I got dressed and headed to the lobby. At 9:30 there was a Tea/ Macreana Party, and they were playing Brazilian and Mexcian music, it was great! I did dance a few times but then at 10:15 as we were about to do the Cupid Shuffle the Rotex shut it down and we had to go to bed. Where I currently am and now Good Night.

-Hailey