June 28, 2016

Me getting as close to the ocean as I'll get for a while.

Exchanges in Oulu! This week was a lot of traveling! We went up to Oulu on Wednesday except on the way there our train didn't show up....and we had to get on a later train. We didn't even have seats and I was kind of stressed out until the sweetest Finnish woman came up to us and gave us her and her husbands seat. It was so nice and it really made my day. Later our train ended up getting delayed a couple of hours so we got to Oulu around 1 in the morning instead of 9 PM. Needless to say we were pretty tired the next day but the Oulu sisters are amazing and so much fun. I had been to Oulu before but it was my first time really getting to see the city and without a doubt Oulu is the prettiest place I've seen in Finland. We woke up at 4:20 AM on Friday morning to head back to Vaasa but we accidentally went to the wrong bus station and missed our bus. We had to try and get on the next bus at 8 AM but when we got there none of our credit cards worked....the trip was supposed to be around 88 euros for the both of us and we were really stressed out. Then the bus driver told us to get on and I was way confused. I asked him to repeat himself like 3 times because it was in Finnish and I was sure I had misunderstood. But he let us on for free! Apparently that never happens here but the Lord was definitely helping us out. The bus ride to Seinäjoki is about 5 hours but we ended up sitting next to an LDS family from Oulu and we talked to them almost the whole way ( when we weren't sleeping). Turns out the couple's son had served in Australia with my MTC companion Sister Carter's brother. Hopefully that made sense but I had heard a little about them before which was just a crazy coincidence. We were stranded in Seinäjoki for about two hours waiting for our train back to Vaasa so we got kebab! It was a really fun trip but I'm glad to be back. 

Kebab taas!!! (Kebab again!!!!)