hello sweethearts!

I guess it's time for the first blog text in English!
Aaaand don't mind about the mistakes I write. :D haha!

So... Now my life's first Thanksgiving is officially over. The Thanksgiving day was on Thursday, and I went my friend Katelyn's grandma's place for a dinner. We ate too much, like you all can imagine... Mashed potatoes, stuffing (some kind of meat and something with it, i have no idea what), green vegetables, gravy (sauce made of the "juice" of the turkey), amazing sweetly cooked carrots, and of course, turkey. Turkey is the main thing that everybody has on Thanksgiving. I don't really like meat like that, but I tasted, like good girls do! And actually I found it pretty good and tasty.
And like usually on special days, you stuff yourself as much food as you can - not forgetting the dessert. So I ate some strawberry-blueberry-cake thing and piece of brownies (and for finns, brownies here are like our mokkapalat, but just smaller and with more chocolate and sometimes with peanut butter). We also had pumpkin pie, but I had enough pumpking during Halloween.

I liked Katelyn's grandma's house a lot. It had two floors, and it was decorated really nicely. And her grandma is so damn cute and beautiful! At age 70 or something, and she looks like she's 60-something. Though she had the whitest hair I've ever seen, but it was beautiful with biiiig B.

During Thursday and Friday night there were this grazy shopping time called Black Friday. I don't know why it's called black, but people go grazy. They open their stores during the night and they have really big sales. I didn't go there, even though I wanted a little, just to see the people, not really to buy anything because I knew the lines were going to be so long. But the reason I didn't go was that my host dad didn't want me to be a zombie the next day when his son and his wife were coming over, and some other people. So I decided to stay home and clean up my room and sleep at least a little bit.

On Friday my host parent's son John and his wife Liz came over at noon. They live in Chicago, so it took few hours for them to get here, and there were one hour time change also. My host parents have another son, Nick, who lives in LA, and we didn't expect him to come here at all, and he told them he couldn't make it. Soooo, because we are in America... he just suddenly came in when nobody expected him to come! My host parents were so suprised and almost started crying, and so did I! It was so touching!!
Well, we found out that John, Liz and Nick planned all this together and faked that Nick was not coming. John and Liz picked him from the airport and dropped him on the driveway before they came in our house, and after few minutes John texted to Nick's cell phone that okay, now we are settled in and you can come in. It was such a cute thing what they did, I tell you. I loved to see all the faces of happiness to have the loved son at home after a long time!

We all had dinner together (plus my host mom's cousin, his wife and their two kids came over) and I had one of my friends come over to the dinner also. This dinner was a little bit different. We blessed the food like we usually do (that didn't happen at Katelyn's grandma's) and we had some different foods, for example pretty normal salad, different kind of stuffing, turkey, gravy, sweet potatoes... I don't remember. But it was okay, though I liked the Thursday meal more.

I spent the whole weekend with these lovely Markel's. John, Liz (plus their dog Ariel, haha) and Nick stayed here until Sunday. We were playing card games, such as poker (my first time playing it ever!) and game called spoon (speed game, I liked it a lot) and I taught some games that I remebered. I'm not a card game fan, but I had lots of fun. And I had so interesting conversations with Nick! He was so funny. We also watched their baby videos, and it was so fun! Nick was, as he said, a big ball of baby when he was little. And that is so true! :D it was really cool to see the life-, hair- and clothing style from the years -78 and -79.

We also bought a real christmas tree (many people have fake nowadays) and decorated it. It's right there in front of me with those cute lights and angels and birds (yeah, they are my favorite!) and balls and stuff. hehee! It's really pretty.

We still don't have any snow. It was raining and snowing a little today, though, but it's not staying on the ground. We went down to Holland today to a biking race to see Liz and John biking like grazy, in the freezing wind and rain. Grazy people, I say! So we cheered at them and I took pics of their muddy legs after the race. Americans.... Then we went to a dinner together and after that Liz, John and Nick left and we will see them again on Christmas, which I'm waiting a lot. I had a lot fun with those dudes.

I went home with Steve, my host dad. We stopped by a store called Best Buy, and I went to look at the delicious Canon cameras. I'm probably going to buy that kind of big, black, amazing Canon. For now I've been looking for Canon Rebell T3 or Canon Rebell T3i. Rebell T3i is more expensive, $799,99 in that store, but it's better. Ofcourse I should buy other crap with it, like memory card, second lens and a little bag for it. But once I buy a camera, why not to buy really good one? And actually I even found out that I can change the language to Finnish! I'm so excited. I have wanted to buy a camera like this for a looong time. I enjoy taking pictures, and it's relaxing, interesting, and while I'm here, I want to save he moment with camera, so I can actually see it later when I'm not here anymore (which is so sad thought that I don't even write more about it!).

And now it's time for a little thing, hehe. Nick, my "host brother" (not really, because I don't see him that often), have been working to Steven Spielberg who made the Star Wars movies and other stuff too. So Nick is working at the movie business nowadays. Which is REALLY COOL!!!! Imagine, I'm almost a celebrity for knowing a person who "knows" a celebrity!!! haha :D and now he is having a project with Spielberg again, and this project includes Tom Cruise also. And that is so FREAKING COOL TOO! :D
Nick suggested that I could go to visit him and his girlfriend to California, during my year here. That. Would. Be. Awesome. IMAGINE!

okay I guess it's time for bed. I'm hungry! I'm always hungry at midnight. I should sleep more.

SWEET DREAMS PEOPLE! ooor good morning :D
<3 with lots of love, Silja <3