Chapter 2

Life In St. Louis
Chapter 2
(photos in the end)

Blog Update

It has been four months since I arrived here in St. Louis. The second chapter of my blog will be different because in the first one I focused on explaining the basics of living here and my first impressions. Now that I have settled down and life has become normal as everything isn’t new, I can talk about different things and go into more detail in subjects like school, sports, family, and friends.

American People

First I want to talk about American people in general. For me there are many differences with interacting with people here compared to Finland. I say hi to many people, people that I don’t even talk to a lot. That wouldn’t happen in Finland as often because people are much more shy in general, and I like saying hi to people, it’s at least easier than trying to guess whether you should say hi or not, which I find myself doing much more in Finland than in here.

Small talk is something that barely exists in Finnish culture. Finnish people don’t really talk that much in general, we are silent people. Here in America it’s polite to ask a thing like ”how’s soccer going?” or ”How’s school going?”, I feel like most people don’t really care and it’s just a way to not have those awkward silent moments. But of course it’s also a way to just catch up with a friend you don’t talk to so often and to be honest small talk is kinda fun.

American people are more polite but that’s just part of their culture. And don’t get me wrong, of course Finnish people are polite and friendly but Americans just take it to another level which could be looked as weird in Finland. There are so many cultural differences and I feel like I experience a new one every week. Some people look at other cultures like they're weird, but that’s just because something that a person isn’t used to seeing or doing is naturally weird for them. Being here and experiencing those cultural differences is one thing I like about exchange year, it also makes me understand Americans more and appreciate the Finnish culture more. There are so many Finnish culture things my friends in here think are weird. For example going to a sauna. They don’t understand why we go into a hot dark room with other people.

High School Soccer Season

I came to the States not expecting much from high school soccer, but it ended up being an amazing experience and achievement with amazing people.

We won the State Championship of Missouri.

At the start of school we were telling people how we would win state but nobody believed in us. We started off the season with three straight losses. People lost all hope for us. They didn’t think we would win anything all season. After the third loss we turned everything around. The atmosphere in practices changed, we started working harder than before. After a few games we went on for 10 games unbeaten, including a couple overtime wins. Those wins helped us to win our conference (league). Conference win was an achievement but it wasn’t as big as you would think. In American high school soccer the regular season doesn’t really matter, and the winner of the conference doesn’t make that big of a difference. Everyone is focused on the off-season, on the playoffs. If you lose you’re out. Your regular season games and placing in your conference doesn’t matter, it’s basically just getting ready for playoffs.

First you play in a four team knockout tournament with three other selected schools (schools near you). It’s called districts, and winning that is a big achievement. We won the first game 2-0 against Westminster, a pretty easy game. The next one was the district championship game and it was against our biggest rival Parkway West. We absolutely hate them, and we were close to having a fight in our regular season game against them when we beat them 3-1. Both schools brought a lot of students to cheer for their school and the atmosphere was amazing as the fan sections battled out on who cheered louder. The regular time ended 1-1 and we played a scoreless overtime so we went on to penalty kicks. The penalty kicks were tied after 5 shooters. Our sixth shooter scored and they sent their next player to shoot. If he missed would win. He ended up hitting the crossbar and we won. All our fans sprinted onto the field and the whole team went crazy. After our horrible start to the season people didn’t even think we would win districts. Another reason why it was big was because we hadn’t won districts in four years, and because it was against our biggest rival Parkway West.

Then was the time for the state tournament where all the district champions battle for the title of the best team in Missouri. We won our first game which was a top 16 game against Ladue, they are our big rivals too and they were second in our conference so everybody was expecting a difficult and close game but we beat them 3-0. The game was at our school and even more students came to fill out the student section. We then went on to the top 8 game against Fort Zumwalt South who had been in the final four 2 times in the last three years so we came into the game as underdogs. The regular time ended 1-1 and we went on to a golden goal overtime with two 15 minute halves just like in the district championship game. We scored a 2-1 game winner in the second overtime.

It was time for top 4 in a St. Louis soccer complex called soccer park. We had dreamed of playing there for the whole season. The game was right after school and our school let all students out of school an hour and half early so they could come watch our game, they even arranged buses to the game from school. We had the biggest student section so far and we wanted to play well in front of our fans. We won our semi-final game easily 3-0 against a team from the other side of Missouri called Republic Tigers. It was now time for the biggest game of the season, the championship final. Our school has had a soccer team for over 50 years but has never won a state championship, so this was huge. We had the chance to make history. The first half was scoreless despite many good scoring opportunities. We scored a goal in the second half and that was all we needed. We just focused on defending the last 25 minutes and the last 10 minutes felt so long. There was 10 seconds left in the game and you could hear our fans counting down the last seconds and the game was finally over.

We had dreamed of winning the state championship since the start of the season and we were the only ones that actually believed that we could do it. It was the perfect ending for the season with an amazing team. We already have apparel for the state championship and we are going to order championship rings that are both great ways to remember the championship.

I quit playing soccer in here because I couldn’t find a club team that would fit me and I might try golf or tennis in high school. I will most likely continue my soccer career in Finland but I’m not sure in what team yet.

I wrote this in my first blog at the start of the season after the three losses: I’m playing the right and left wing on the team right now and our goal is to win the state championship.

Life In America

Winning the state championship has been the best experience so far, but a lot of other stuff has happened too and it’s hard to remember everything that I’ve done so writing this blog is a good way to keep track.

We had the first school dance of the year called Homecoming at the beginning of October. The boy has to ask the girl and make a poster when they ask. In Finland it’s the girl’s responsibility to ask and you don’t make a poster so this was a new and fun experience for me. My poster said “Would you like to Finnish your last Homecoming with me?”, I wanted to do something with Finland and I came up with that because it was my date's last year in Parkway Central so it was her last Homecoming. The dance itself was on a Saturday and seniors and juniors went to a nice park to take pictures first. We then went to eat dinner to a nice place and then was the actual dance. It was in our school and you had to buy tickets to get inside. The dance was like a party with instead of dancing old traditional dances to old music which we do in Finland. I was happily surprised by that and it ended up being a lot of fun. All in all i really liked Homecoming and I’m excited for prom.

The high school soccer season is a lot of fun for many reasons. We had a teacher appreciation game where we invited our favorite teachers to watch our game and get free t-shirts. We also had a senior night, which is basically our last home game before playoffs where the team says goodbye to the seniors of the team. I’m a senior and it was a great experience. They introduced all the seniors before the game and played a video of each of senior with pictures and their history. We also gave flowers to our parents and got a few other gifts. We also had a few four team tournaments during the season with one being an hour and half drive away. I have also been coaching a middle school team were one of my brothers plays.

We had a pep rally in school gym where the school presents all the teams from football to girls volleyball. We had annual Special Olympics where the school gets together for a day to organize soccer games for special kids. Our school’s football team got to state semi-finals and a lot of people came to watch. I’ll miss watching high school football and cheering for our team.

I went to see a Milky Chance concert here with my good friend Charlie and it was my first concert ever and I really enjoyed it. We also went to huge local amusement park called Six Flags, I’m not a big fan of roller coasters but this one was a lot of fun. Now that high school soccer season is over I have a lot more time to spend with my friends and life is going to be a little different. This week was thanksgiving and we went out to eat a nice thanksgiving lunch, went to walk around a lake, and played a lot of Monopoly, so I enjoyed my first thanksgiving.

All in all I’ve really enjoyed the last couple months here and can’t wait for the future. This year is going by so fast and I don’t want it to end.

Photos

First here’s an article about our state championship:

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/high-school/boys-soccer/parkway-central-turns-corner-by-blanking-washington-to-win-first/article_92da14fe-c733-11e7-8e37-07020f005398.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=dlvr

A Youtube video about our state championship made by Madison Poplawski:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVmmV8kJBGM

A group picture in Homecoming