quand ca nous chante

What an awesome weekend full of music with an awesome bunch of people! I have literally lived on music the four days. Emma and I are watching all the videos and pictures right now and I am already getting shivers. Thursday after school we drove to Timmins to spend a weekend at a music festival called: "Quand ca nous chante". Bands or just groups of people from French schools all over Ontario were there to perform and so I spent hours and hours watching all kind of performances this weekend. There was rap, pop, heavy metal, rock, country, rock opera, you name it! 

I am not sure how many people there were in total, but if I had to guess I'd say over 300, and that is not counting the teachers that were with the students. The festival was organized at a school in Timmins and so I ended up sleeping on the floor of a gym for the first time. It actually wasn't too bad since we got to borrow a pretty comfortable air mattress, that really in the end turned out to be a double even though it looked like a single when it was empty. When we got to the gym with the girls from our school all the sides were filled with mattresses and bags so we decided to right in the middle of the gym. 

On Thursday we just had supper at the cafeteria and then we watched the opening concert of the festival. All three nights we had concerts with many different French Canadian artists and bands and they were all actually really good. I love the fact that we are getting to know French Canadian music, because I really knew none when I first got here. 

In the morning we had an early wake up call, 6.30 AM to be exact, to get ready for our show. We were the second school to perform out of many, many schools and that made me a little nervous. But afterwards I realized that it was the best time to perform, because after it all the stress was gone and we didn't have to worry about anything for the rest of the time. We performed five songs in total, all of them were French of course since the event was fully French. I sang "L'amour existe encore" by Celine Dion with one of my classmates. She had already sang this song before, so it was easy for her to teach me the lyrics and everything. The morning of the show I was literally all over the place. I couldn't focus on what people were saying, I was a little snappy and I really could not eat breakfast. And right before our turn to go on stage, while Riley was singing his song I was almost hyperventilating. It's strange though how it is easier to sing in front of 300 strangers than for example 30 people you know. It was amazing to sing together with such an amazing singer. I hope Sara gets discovered, because she really has a beautiful voice. The song went well and I felt so happy after it. Even though I made a small screw-up, it was still good.

On Saturday and Sunday we watched other schools perform and had an "Atelier". I don't know what to call it in English really, an activity I guess? It was called: "Théatre Musical" and we made a small scene using the song "In the jungle". For some reason we didn't feel like going to the activity at first and we almost ditched it, but I am glad we went because it ended up being lots of fun. We sang lots of "Awimbawes", danced waltz and acted a little bit too. It was cool to see that you can really build up a whole scene just around a simple song like that.

In the evening we went out to eat at East Side Mario's with our group and after the evenings concert we went into boys side of the gym to just jam for a while. One of my favorite things about the festival was the atmosphere at the school. Where ever you went in the school you were sure to see someone sing or play something. You would walk around the school and just see groups of people around someone playing the guitar just casually jamming and you could literally just go join a group and sing with them. The atmosphere was just generally so carefree. Saturday night we actually did that. Our group just joined another, and we just sang and played together. I have heard the saying that music brings people together and now I really got to experience it and it really is true. 

I had so much fun this weekend. We sang, we laughed (I cannot remember the last time I would have laughed so much and so hard) and we danced. This weekend was truly and unforgettable one. 

Tonight is the big night for many actors and actresses. Its the Oscars! I remember last years Oscar night.. We stayed up with Kat, Ville and Ad to watch the whole show, which was a lot of fun, but going to school after no sleep at all was torture. This time I don't have to stay up all night to watch them, but I also don't have the same people here with me to stay up with me. 

I am really not excited to go to school tomorrow and I have been procrastinating with my homework. I should really go do it now. Bye dear readers.

Sometimes watching all those performances can be a little tiring.

Backstage before the show.

Backstage after the show!

Casual pj performance.

Our "camp" spot.

I don't really know?

This is what I looked like most of the weekend. Laughing till it hurts.

Jam session.

winter carnival

So I really don't know how to start writing about a week full of cool stuff, so I am pretty much going to go day by day starting from the Friday two weeks ago.


Friday the 3rd: 
Last weeks Winter Carnival was kicked off by choosing a new Miss Chimo for our town. I had never been to a beauty pageant before in my life, and I have always been quite skeptic about them, because honestly I find them very superficial. This pageant was different though. The sixteen beautiful girls had to take an exam before the pageant that affected the final result, they had to put in loads of work for the past 4 months and they were judged on creativity too. What also made me so happy was the fact that when I looked up on that stage I did not see perfectly skinny girls who all looked the same, but I saw girls of all shapes and sizes, but all equally confident. Out of the eight finalists was picked our new princess and the ladies in waiting. The new Miss Chimo was the one who we wanted to win! Dominique was our favorite and also a classmate of ours, so we were ecstatic when she was pronounced to be the new princess.

The new Miss Chimo! Oh and this exact picture was also found on the front page of the local  newspaper ;) !

On the Sunday we went skidooing to Iroquois Falls with a couple of friends. We had a fun time and I almost got lost in the waist high snow.




Monday the 6th:
The Carnival officially started with an ultimate red neck activity that we went to watch with my host mother and sister. After dinner we went by Tim Horton's to grab some hot chocolate and then we went to watch the wingathon, a.k.a : a chicken wing eating contest. When I heard of this contest all I could do was burst out in laughter, but of course we had to go watch it. I mean hey, I don't think I would ever get the chance to see something like that in my life anywhere else. So, we watched the contestants stuff their faces with greasy, deep fried chicken wings for 15 minutes. I was surprised to see that a really cute young cop actually won the contest. Our Miss Chimo also had to participate and she actually did an excellent job, eating 11 wings in total.

Tuesday was a relaxing day. I stayed home, did homework and watched a movie with the family and Riley. The pageant princesses went sledging with the kids of the town, and apparently it was a blast, especially for the kids I assume.


Wednesday the 8th:
We went to see another annual Carnival event : the hockey game between the policemen and firefighters of Cochrane. The policemen won by just one point, and I had some eye candy too since the wingathon champ was playing too! I didn't bring my camera with me, so unfortunately I don't have any pictures.


Thursday the 9th:
I loved the Carnival event on Thursday. A little before six o'clock we went out to a meeting place for our side of the town, where fire fighters had a truck full of torches. We got our torches and lit them up from other peoples torches. When everyone was lit up, we started walking to the lake, which was our meeting point. On our way there, you could see the the people from the other side of the town walking with their torches towards the lake. All you could see was the hundreds of small lights of their torches descending down the hill to the lake, like fireflies flying in the dark. It looked beautiful. After arriving to the lake, you handed your torch to a firefighter and they threw it into the bonfire (which obviously was on land, not on the ice). They served hot chocolate and hot dogs on the lake too. I love the small town feeling you have at events like that, because pretty much the whole town is there.

Before lighting the torches up.

I couldn't take pictures with my camera because it was snowing too much.

During the day on Thursday we had a volleyball tournament, which was our last one. We were supposed to go to one more tournament next week, but we are missing three players, including myself so this means no more volleyball for me. Oh well it was fun while it lasted!

Afterwards we went to watch the hockey game of our local team with some friends. 


Friday:
On Friday we didn't have normal school, but instead we went to watch hockey (that's right hockey three days in a row, I am becoming truly Canadian). After watching the little boys play hockey we went out to the lake with our school. That day was a beautiful sunny day, but cold. The temperature was around -25 degrees Celsius, but I am kind of used to temperatures like that by now. We, once again, watched people play hockey on the outdoor rink, went sledging and I found my inner child again and played in the snow like crazy. 


After "school", we went for a skidoo ride and I almost peed my pants laughing after falling off. I was sitting on the back of Riley's snowmobile and he slowed down to get over this huge snow bank and the machine tipped so much I couldn't hold on, and ended up falling off. I rolled down the back onto the side walk and I couldn't get up on my own because I was all cramped up laughing. 

The weekend:
Saturday morning, another event that I could never be a part of; a pancake eating contest. I really don't know what the beauty in the eating contests are, I am really not a fan of them, but we wanted to attend all the events. So again we watched people stuff their faces, Miss Chimo as well, and the winner ate 12 in total. He ate twelve thick pancakes with maple syrup. I had two for breakfast and that was enough for me.

After the pancake eating contest, we hurried home to change into warm clothes and then we went out to watch the parade. All the enterprises of the town had a truck with platforms in the back of them that were all decorated. One truck was for the pageant princesses. They drove by waving to the people, wearing their tiaras. 

Finnish name?

Familiar faces.

I am pretty sure the temperature was close to -30 C and after taking a bunch of pictures there was a layer of ice on my camera lens and when we went inside to have lunch at aunt Jo's I literally had to thaw out my camera. Hopefully the moisture didn't damage my baby. The chili and clam chowder that we had really hit the spot, and I could have literally fallen asleep on the couch.


I was excited to get back out on the lake though because we got to go for helicopter rides. Neither Emma nor I had ever been on a helicopter before so we both wanted to sit in front next to the pilot so we decided to go on separate copters. It was such a cool experience! The take off and landing was so smooth. I wore headphones that let me hear everything the pilot was saying and I could talk to him too. First we had to go gas up and then he made a couple loops above the the town. Cochrane is a small town, but never had it ever seemed so small than when you saw it from the air. 

My awesome pilot!

Badasses in our new hats.

Saturday evening we were pretty pooched so we decided to go out for dinner and afterwards we all just layed on the couches watching TV. We all went to sleep pretty early since the next morning we had yet another event to go to. Now after the smash up derby I can say I really have witnessed the ultimate red neck thing! It was something you can imagine seeing in Texas during the Summer, at least in my mind.


The whole town was there to see the old painted cars crash into each other, and everyone was cheering for their favorite car. The whole point was basically to see which car lasts the longest in the rink. All you could see was cars ramming into each other in clouds of smoke and people cheering them on. I picked my favorite car judging by the paint job they had done and I cheered him on. My favorite actually won the first out of two rounds!

Pretty much the whole town was watching,

My favorite car, and also the winner.

Got a little bored.

I was literally jumping up and down of excitFor the ones ement all morning because the next event was the "Polar Bear Dip". For those who understand Finnish the "Polar Bear Dip" was an a bit like an avantouinti except that there really wasn't any space to swim, so it was just a short dip. That was good enough for me. I was the crazy Finnish girl who forced her Danish sister, Canadian boyfriend and Canadian friend to do the dip. After the first time, we all had the urge to do it again. It gives you like a rush and you feel great afterwards. They even had a sauna on the lake and I was surprised to see that it was actually a pretty decent sauna, except that it was missing a bucket of water! I mean what sauna doesn't have a bucket of to throw on the rocks? It really didn't seem to bother anyone else as much as me. I noticed once again exactly how Finnish I am.

Emma getting ready to dive.

No comment...

I look like I have to pee?

Women first?

After that week I was really not looking forward to going school on Monday, and this week seemed to go by very slowly. Today was a snow day though so no school, but it wasn't very comforting this morning when my host mother, Emma and I all felt very nauseous. I really hope we don't get sick, because next week we are going to a music festival with a group of people from our school to Timmins. I am really looking forward to that.


I was glad to find that some people have already have time to post pictures of the Vanhojen Tanssit on facebook. Everyone lookes so gorgeous and I loved looking at the pictures. It made me a little sad though, since almost all my closest friends did it this year. It will be strange without them next year, but then I again I knew this was coming. Nevertheless, I am dying to see more pictures of my friends having the time of their lives. Right now most of them are at the after party and I truly hope they are having a blast. You guys have to tell me all about it then, okay?


Oh yeah Valentines day passed, I forgot to mention anything about that! I don't really "believe" in Valentines day, if you can say that. Here it is even more of a commercial holiday than in Finland. I personally didn't want to get presents for Valentines day, but I still wanted to do something for Riley. So a couple weeks ago I was laying in bed falling asleep and all of a sudden it hit me. Riley often gives me little notes with messages on them and I love them, so I thought it was finally my turn to tell him how I feel about him on post-it notes! So the evening before Valentines day I wrote messages on close to 80 sticky notes and in the morning I went to school early and I put them on the door of his locker and also the inside of it. I didn't want Riley to see me before he went to his locker, so I kind of hid from him. When finally my friends told me he was at his locker I went to see him. He looked at me coming and gave me a big hug. I could tell that he was completely speechless, which really does not happen often, so the surprise was a total success. Everyone was talking about it at school and I was happy because I was scared it would be lame. During lunch I got a letter from him and a bouquet of flowers. Emma got a flower from him too.

I didn't have my camera with me, but you get the picture, I hope.

"I love you" in 24 different languages. (even Chinese)

I don't think you need to buy a present or something to show someone you love them, of course I am not saying that is bad and that I am against it, but I just think that there are other ways to show someone you love them. 

The flowers we got for our host mother.

The flowers I got.

I love the fact that people still buy flowers! 

Dear readers, this post was way too long. I know that, but sometimes you really don't have time or energy to write. But this post is too long, so I think next time I will really avoid trying to write about many weeks in one post.

PS. Remember to spread the love even when it is not Valentines day!

Love you xoxo