Easter on the West side of the world

I keep it short because I had a really short Easter holiday here (off from school an hour earlier). And you guys in Finland had like 5 days long holiday.. Here's a photo of a dissapointed Finnish man with his brother. Ofc I had a great Easter with a family (and chocolote..) ! :--)

Springville High School PROM and POST PROM

Finally it happened. This Saturday. Prom.

Prom doesn't mean a sound of a car or anything. It means the biggest dance during a school year. There's usually photographing of couples, Prom dance and Post Prom afterwards. Only seniors and juniors (two oldest class degrees) are able to come to this dance with their partners. The Prom dance is kinda awesome disco party, where is few slow dances, and the Post Prom is hanging out and having fun together after the dance.


I went to our Prom with Erle, an exchange-student from a different school. I knew her from our exchange-student organization's meetings. I think you can figure out that she is in the pictures which I put to this blog. (::

My Prom experience started with a thingy called Grand March. We, all the couples, walked to our jim, one at the time, and people took looots of pics. I'm sure they got good ones.. at least of me. :--) Because I had a cool suit, which I had to rent btw (around 100 bucks).

Me and Erle (theme was New York)

Me and my bro Kyle

With my mom

Almost all the boys

Me and two of my very best friends: Nathaniel and Brandon.


When the March was over, it was time to do my favorite thing: eating! We went to one of my friend's house to have supper. There was like 20-30 people plus me and Erle. We all had fun and food was delicious. It was time for Pool playing with full bellies.

Our next step was going to the DANCE. As I said, it was disco. Lots of good music, people and great dance moves by Sami! Who wouldn't like dancing? ;)

The dance was over 12PM. Busses took as to the Post Prom 1230PM. PP was in a YMCA house-center-what-ever-u-wanna-call-it-building. There was swimming pools, hot tubs, bouncy houses, a basketball court and lots of good food (again.. come to US and u won't get hungry for sure haha) At first I ate with others. There was Buffalo Wild Wings stuff! Those most awesome chicken wings ever made + all kinda junk, and I mean really good junk.. chocolate, strawberries, candy, tacos, you name it!
Next I found myself from that swimming pool, which water wasn't warm enough.. After swimming a while I went to the hot tub with other hot people. But I'm pretty sure water cooled down a little bit when I stepped there.. ;--/
All night long I had fun with all the amazing people, and especially with my best friends. It's really nice to realize right now who are the people that are my real friends and who I'm gonna miss the most.. Less than 2 months.. oh boy. =( Playing and jumping in the bouncy houses made me feel I was that tiny little child again. Sometimes I really miss that time, when my only problem was how much your Action Man was able to do without breaking a part.
All of us got to choose a bag full of FREE stuff. I chose one with a Iowa Hawkeye- blanket, candy and lots of gift cards. I was lucky one and got to choose a second bag too. I ended up with 10 free haircut cupongs. Ofc I need to cut my hair 5 times a month. If you wanna a haircut, take a next plane and get ur ass here! (: Then we can start to discuss of possible price.
We had fun 'til 530AM. The busses were full of zombies, but happy ones. I was home 6AM and went to sleep with a big smile on my face. Definitely one of the most unforgetable and best moments that I have experienced here. (Tasting a bagel is def number one..) Just kidding! It's taste of air.

For conclusion I can say that in the whole Prom thing, there was about 60 people, and I had one of the funniest nights in my life! (: Funniest one is when I tasted air for a first time.

'til next thingy

Sami Prom_illihuuru

Running + target shooting = this weekend

What a great weekend! It didn't started too well though.. We had an Early Out at our school on Friday, which means that we get home 2 hours earlier than usual. It would be fun, but.. we had to leave to a Track Meet afterwards. We got there and oh... my... gosh; the weather was horrible: raining, windy and freezing (kinda like Finnish summer.. jk!) I had to wait 5 frkn long hours there before my 800 meters run, trying to keep myself warm. Even looking those boys and girls running with their tiny shorts and spandex, made me freeze. Finally came my moment to strip off all my clothes.. well.. I left our Track uniform that nobody would get a heart-attack.

Everything changed when I started running. I forgot that is cold and I looked like a fool with our too small uniform. As I said I ran 800 meters. Our coach had a same opinion that I would be better in 800 than in 1 mile. So thank God, I'm practising and competing only a half of the distance I used to. :--)) Back to that running race.. I started to run hard but didn't try to keep up with fastest guys, who should btw go to the Olympics and go away from Track meets.. Then second lap I started to improve my position, and with a last 100 meter sprint, I ended up being 9th! There was almost like 20 guys in our heat, so I'm pretty proud of myself! And or more.. I improved my time from last week by 13 seconds! Alright, that's enough.. maybe I should go to those Olympics too or at least go to some hidden place and be quiet haha. This all made my day on Friday. :)

Saturday was my host dad's birthday. He asked me to go to do gun target shooting with him, and I though "Why not?" At first I thought it would be loud guns, which break ur ears and break ur bones by doing a kick while shooting. But It was real fun! I'm really fun and I had a blast with him for sure. I got some bull's eyes too and got our whole target thing fall.. just saying! After that I went to the town with my Mom and picked up a suit for our Prom. Idk if I have said but I'm going to the Prom with an exchange student from Estonia called Erle. :) Our own school is so tiny as I've said and Erle is a really cool girl (to make sure u didn't think Erle is a boy..) ! I hanged out with her in the Mal after I chose the suit and we had so much fun. (: In the evening we celebrated my host dad's birthday by eating stake, cake n givinh him presents. I bought chocolate. Here's some pics from our shooting trip. No worries, there's target, not human beings outside the pictures.




Today, Sunday, was just chilling and trying to make my Mom's (in Finland) special "curry chiken and rice" meal. I got the curry taste down, but other than that it wasn't anything compared to my Mom's haha. Now I'm ready for next week.. buuuusy week. Two Track Meets n a choir festival.

'til next time

Sami

Running like a horse, my lungs and heart sore

Run, faster, stronger and higher. That has been pretty much my life after Miami; track practices and one Meet (=yleisurheilukisat). So, I chose long distance. I'm just slower than other guys in sprinting for sure. Others have run over the finish while I start to set my starting blocks.

This week, we had SPRING BREAK, from Wednesday to Friday. It was again time to just be, doing nothing. Things I did are not even worth of telling. Boring Xbox, movies and guitar stuff you know. Fell asleep already there..? Hopefully not.

Track practices have been nice, just as nice as running circles can be.. We (me and one other guy) distance guys run 1600 meters, rest, 3200 meters, rest, 1600 meters. Then we have usually time to do some weight lifting. This is usuallu schedule for every week from Monday to Wednesday. On Thursdays we do all the events which we will have in a Meet, which is usually on Friday. In practices I started to feel pretty good about my stamina and running. Running is so relaxing, I think. Even though relaxing on couch is not bad either, with some beer.. But I have to stop dreaming! I'm athletic.. My feelings about that everything's fine kinda crushed. Let me tell about that.

It was a beautiful Friday afternoon. Our team left to the Track Meet by our school bus. Thank God it was indoor meet.. It's not that cold here than in Finland. Not snow haha. :)) But still too cold in Sami's opinion to run outside. We did our warm-up with our team and were ready to start. Our coach, who is a really nice guy and talented coach (he's a cop..), decided that I'll run 1 mile and 800 meters after that. I was SO nervous before a man did the starting shot. I've been running for fun in my free time for a long time (not during the winter when I was sitting on a bench in basketball). But I realized that running and competing with others and running one circle is a WAY different thing. At start I made the most stupid mistake.. I started way too fast, and tried to keep up with fastest guys. By doing that I wasted all, my lungs and heart... and started jogging. I tried to catch other guys but that was just a dream. I ended up by being the last one in my heat (=juoksuerä) and didn't feel my lungs or heart at all. Don't laugh guys.. that was a TERRIBLE feeling. I had few hours to recover from that before my next race: 800 meters. Breathing still hurt when I started to run.. I run the whole race with one guy called Kyle (same name as my bro has), and it was kinda funny when they said: "Go Kyle, catch him!" In the end he didn't catch me 'cause I did a HUGE sprint with Finnish sisu the last 150 meters. So, I wasn't last one in that race. You guys should be proud of me. :--)) I still think I would've done better in 800 meters without running that 1 mile first.

To be honest.. I don't wanna go on like this. I have decided that I ask my coach that "Could I change my distances from 1 mile and 800 meters to 800 and 400 meters. I really hope that would be possible. I don't wanna suffer anymore in meets in future.. And we have like 16 of them coming.. Meets are not so nice because you have to compete with blood in ur mouth.. just not my thing, and they usually take 5 hours.. because there's so many events and both men's and women's. After tomorrow I'll know am I able to switch my distances to more comfy ones. Let's hope the best.

Sorry.. this was kinda "complaining whole the time"-blog. I'll promise I will dry u tears and make ur sad faces (because of my sad blog) to smiles in my next blog. I totally promise I'll write more often in future that I've been doing before. Maybe just that promise makes u smile (or "I wouldn't care less").

'til next time

Sami, the runner

MIAMI, FL

It's kinda funny that my blog seems to have turned to a traveling blog. Hawaii last time and now Miami. I'm so sorry guys there hasn't been anything between those two blogs. There hasn't happened anything special to write... except.. TRACK (yleisurheilu in Finnish). We have had practices now two weeks, and I have enjoyed so far. I'm doing the long distances 1 mile (1600 meters) and 2 miles (3000 meters). I'm not so fast in sprint and I ran the whole las summer, so I got a pretty good stamina. Our practices are always different. At the start everybody did 2 mile-run, sit-ups etc, and then technic practice. Right now everybody are doing their own thing depending on what you are doing for track. So, I'm running, running and running in practices and I like it.

Oh man, I know you don't give a s*it about track. Everybody started to read this because you saw the word "Miami". So here you go guys!

So we stayed one week in Miami with Leo's (the French exchange-student in my host family two years ago) family. They have lived almost one year now in Miami. Lucky.. Their house was really cool with a swimming pool and I felt I was like in a hotel or something. The only thing which took that imagination away was that I didn't have to use my credit card to sleep. In their family, there's Leo, his mom, bro and dad. One of his friends from France, Max, was also visiting him. I got along great with everybody, expect Kyle (just kidding).

We arrived to Miami in Sunday evening. Leo and his mom took us.. with a hummer btw.. to their house. We chilled and talked a while and then we ate supper. We were all so tired because of traveling and went straight to bed. So, nothing excited happened yet. But something "little" is coming so don't stop reading for God's sake.

On Monday we slept long. I went to a run and then chilled on the pool with my mom and Kyle. We took so much sun that we looked like Spanish people after few hours, or almost.. After that we went to a smaller town, just next to Miami and walked around. Here's the photo of that.


At the same night, Monday night. We went to MIAMI HEAT NBA BASKETBALL GAME. It was so awesome experience, even though Miami lost (if I had been on their bench they have won. We saw Lebron James, the best player right now in NBA. I don't have any words to describe the game. So here are photos fellows.






Tuesday. That's what I called a holiday! We went to a beach and just enjoyed our time there (5 hours) and we were ready to look like North African people. Swimming on the ocean was great! Even though my brother (like in that photo) came swimming too and started to fight with me. I love it even with bruises. It's so lovely to have a brother to fight with because I don't have any real one in Finland. After the beach it was time for beaches.. or not. We went to Miami beach and streets next to it, and had supper there with all the people (Leo's family and us). Miami beach and Miami was dark (because it was night) but the night life with gay bars and stuff.. oh my gosh! Super.



After Tuesday comes Wednesday. We spent the whole day in a ZOO in Miami. It was really interesting in my opinion. :)) I think I should have left my brother there with other monkeys. It was the only crappy-weather day, so it was good to spend with camels and my other friends. Here are some photographs from the Zoo.






On Thursday was finally time to bitches, I mean to Miami Beach! Here's the photo from there. We checked out the beach and went shopping. I really enjoyed to see Miami in a daylight. If you don't believe it's one of the coolest photos, check these photos out!



Alligators + Friday = Alligator Friday. We went to a Alligator place. The tiny river and a boat trip among it and we saw few wild alligators. And as you can see they didn't eat me even though Finnish meat is delicious.



On Saturday, we went to a trip by our rental car to Miami Keys and Key West. Those are all famoues places and I don't anymore wonder why! It was really beautiful. While we stopped (stayed 49898 hours) my mom and brother took new tattoos. It was cool to watch when they made those. I, myself, didn't take any. Even though, I seriously though about taking one: Finnish lion and American eagle together with initials of all my family members here and in Finland. But I p*ssy and didn't want to do that in the end. It's so life time lasting thing that you don't make those kind of decisions in one week or so.


Sunday. We left back to cold Iowa and our vacation was over. That was my "own vacation" from school and missed one week at school, oh yeah! Right now I'm feeling greater than after a long time. I love track and everything's just so nice. I have, for change, great plans for this weekend. :) Night Storm-dance party and hanging out with friends.

'til next time

SaMi(ami)

HAWAI'I - the paradise of paradises

I love to see ur guys' heads turning green because of jealous! Yes, I was there and for one week.. ;--) Now it's time to make ur heads deep green by telling about my trip and bitches... I mean.. beaches. :)

Saturday. After a long, only 12 hours flying I arrived to Hawaii. My first expressions were: "Where the fuck is the snow?", "I totally don't need any sauna here!". It was so hot that I felt more comfy to wait others for two hours inside the airport. (I had to...) It was such a moment of joy when I saw our hotel; right next to beach!! (: Here's a photo from our balcony.


We just hanged out the evening and waited that more and more people came, and ended up with only 90 exchange-students who were from Germany, Germany, Germany, Germany and lots of different countries! About 7 Finnish though, GO FINLAND perkele! After almost everybody had came (somebody missed their flights) we went to have a supper, buffee, in one hotel next door. I fed my stomach and talked that whole evening with one Danish girl who was as small school as I am! So, there's also other lucky ones.. ;) After that I went to my room, two little beds, and I thought I'll have a room alone. But suddenly my eyes saw shoes which wasn't mine, and thought I gosh, now I got some asshole room mate. NO WAY! He was a German (what a suprise) boy called Yanic and he was really nice guy and we ended up during the trip to become really good friends! ((:


Sunday. Waking up and heading to breakfast (free) which was awesome; three different options: beacon n eggs or french toasts of fruit bowl of pancakes. I tried and loved all of them. Food is good for you, you know. After breakfast we notices that one guy, Malte (German, do I need even tell u that without u guys knowing that already?) and we had to sleep all the rest of the nights, 3 guys on 2 beds together, together. Nothing gay.. We didn't want to pay lots of money of an extra bed n the floor was too hard. After breakfast we started hiking to a high view place called Diamond Head. The hiking sucked a little bit but it was worth it though! As you can see of these photos. :-)



Then it was time for having some free time. I hanged out with Yanic on the beach, and afterwards we all 90 starving students went to a supper some pizza place ! (--: I kinda eat typical American junk food; burgers n pizzas every day for lunch, come on.. we were in Hawaii! :)


Monday. Too bad... it was cloudy morning, cloudy afternoon, evening and middle of the night frkn sunny. So no burned skin during that day for sure! We rode by busses a little city tour and after that it started to rain, we went to a little village and did some shopping. We alsorode by busses to a pineapple farm and ate lots of pineapple ice cream which was really good and fresh. (: More fresh than burgers... When we were done (wet) on our wau to the hotel we stopped in a beach which has 20 feet high waves and it's a famous surfing place. I'm really good with names as u can see. :-----) In the evening we went to the Polynesian Culture Center which had people from different cultures of Paficic Ocean to show their culture things. It was really funny and interesting even though everybody almost fell asleep during the last show which lasted really late. The best and funniest part was a man doing coconut milk from a coconut and acting like he would have masturbated. :--D We ate supper there. Coconuts and pineapples for sure !

Pineapple-farm

Magic-fire-man


Tuesday. Because everybody was so dissapointed 'cause of Monday's crappy weather; Tuesday was a really hot and sunny day! We went to do kajak rowing to the different little islands. Got some suntan and it was really cool! (--: I rowed with one girl who was from "you-know-which-country". There's a pic below this. In the evening it was time for HARD ROCK CAFE. Again, burgers, yam. :p During "I Gotta Feeling" we all got wild. Here's a photo to proof that.



Hard Rock Cafe table, Before... we got wild:


Wednesday. It was partly sunny day. We did catamaran (going by boat in the ocean and jumping to the sea with turtles n taking both sun and photos!) and surfing! :) Surfing wasn't so hard that I thought it would be.. maybe the reason was 8080808084545 cm wide boards. I stood up once, other times I kinda forgot everything which the men said on the beach and just wanted to stand up with wrong movements. In general it was a great day. After those we went to the Mal and I bought Vans shoes for 10 bucks. Ridiculous.. And then we ate in Bubba Gump Shrimp Co which had so small portions that my baby boy (I don't have any) wouldn't be full after that. Again, some pics: ((((: !



Thursday. We spent an interesting day at Pearl Harbor and in Missouri ship. The museum was really interesting and made me sad. I also noticed how proud some Americans are of their country: "That bomb can fly that fast, destroy that much etc.." We did some volunteer cleaning up in Missouri but I didn't see any difference after that. Our prize was a free guided tour in that ship. Sweet day though, for supper the worst buffee ever which ran out of food. But it was all good though. :)



Friday. Oh my gosh. The last full day in Hawaii. Time flies.. After another amazing breakfast we went to do snorkling! It was top 5 place in the whole wide world. Some guys saw turtles, I only gold (cold) fish. It was amazing anyways! :--) And I survived! After snorking it was time for a very last Hawaii's party. There were music performances, dance shows and really good traditional supper. It was sad to go to the bed that evening.

Snorkling place (top 5..)

Saturday. Some of the guys left as early as in the morning. I myself, and Yanic, and some other kids left in the evening, and we had taht whole day to enjoy the sun and hanging out at the pool and buying souvenirs. Here's a photo of that day. Me and Yanic. :---)


In gerenal, it was an awesome trip with awesome people! ((((: Totally a paradise.. I have to wait 3 long weeks and I'm going to Miami guys! ;))

'til next time

Hawaii's citizen Sambola

The Days Of Our Lives

At first I would like to tell you guys about a day that every human being has only once in their lives. It's the day that you've been waiting for 18 years. After that you just wanna be younger. Alright, my 18-year birthday !

It was kinda funny, because of the time difference between Finland an USA, I became an adult in the evening of USA time. That didn't feel any special, and it doesn't feel now either. Maybe I will get that feeling when I'm driving my own car to some store to get a beer in Finland. Before that I'm just gonna enjoy being 18 here ! I have my time to get drunk in a nursing home when I'm old. (: I had school that day, 27th of January, on Thurday. It was amazing how many guys wished me happy birthday, I think the whole school remember that (reasons might be Facebook and me giving Finnish chocolate to people...) I'm 18. I felt like a celebrity, and of course I am, because of this world wide blog.

After school it was basketball practice as usual. Then all players in our team were forced to clean up a basketball stadium, but I skipped that by saying to coach "I'm gonna eat with my family a birthday dinner." Then somebody shouted "He's going to the strip club!" And I responded: "I didn't say that!" The result was coach laughing and saying: "So, Sami said he hasn't said that but didn't say that he won't go." So, I bet I spend more fun time with my family than my team mates cleaning up like Cinderellas.

I got to choose the place, and I decided: "BUFFALO WILD WINGS". It's one of my favorite food places here. Its speciality is boneless chicken wings. I ate 15 of them as did my bro. Here's some photos for evidence.



After that we ate my birthday cake at home, and I got to open my presents! First I opened Finnish ones. I got Hawaii-trip from my parents so that wasn't in any packet... I got Finnish chocolate (yum), a scarf and photos from my parents. A Finnish flag-bag from my aunt's family, and from my best friend, Kari, I got an AWESOME bottle opener, which was guitar-form. (What was he thinking...? Bottles..) :--D After that it was time to open my family's presents for me. I got: Green Day-sweatshirt from my gay-brother, Mickey Mouse-boxers, paper to remind about our trip to Miami, Hard Rock Cafe-t-shirt (straight from NY) and our school own Springville leather jacket!! (--: I think you guys believe that I was more than happy man that evening. 160 "happy birthday"-wishes on Facebook made my day also, it was toooooooo much. Even though I'm that celebrity.



I have been happy in recent days also! Because... we have had two SNOW DAYS! ((: And one early out this week. I have had so much free time now that I got even little bored today ! And that's new guys I can tell. We had so much snow that we have to shovel our way out to road. And the sad news: our brand new van got stucked in the snow :(( ! Here are photos. They are better story tellers than me.






Right now I'm ready for my last basketball game tomorrow and HAWAII on Saturday. Let's hope I'm still alive when I come back. Anyways I'm sure I will, so

'til then guys who still have motivation to read this s*it ! (:

Sami