First 5 days in Dells

General stuff:

–   superhot, I love this weather, it’s like 60-80 fahrenheit (like 15-35 celcius) everyday. Day time is hotter.

–   I love the way how Americans do customer service: everybody is so helpful, smiley and polite. So awesome. Even if it might be just because of the culture – not something like everybody really likes you, it’s still superb. In Finland we’re used to say “hymy tarttuu” that means that if someone smiles others start to smile too. And smiling makes happy. 🙂

–   Bureaucracy and papers after papers isn’t yet over but I think that if you need to do some paper work to have awesome summer it’s ok. If you absolutely don’t want to do any, then just work in your home country. It’s that easy. I think that almost always when working abroad there is some papers and official stuff. I agree, it’s some times frustrating to use hours with doing something that seems unnecessary but still US and all that versus Finland without it? Well, you know my answer. 😉

Some pics of our apartment, Harbor Point

 

Day1 (21th of May)

–   Starting morning by taking a walk around Damen area, Chicago. How cute can the houses be and how warm could the weather be when it’s 6am.

–   Megabus 12USD – if you’re early it’s cheap (starting from 1USD) and the price increases everytime someone buys tickets

–   Visiting Tommy Bartlett’s office and receiving the keys of the apartment. I’m living in the Harbor Point with some other Finnish girls (Anniina, Noora, Siiri and Janni live here with me at the moment but we think that somebody is missing because of one empty bedroom)

–   Walmart: food shopping

–   Cleaning, eating, etc

Moosejaw and it’s car

The place where we bought our bikes

 

Day2 (22th of May)

–   Visiting Noah’s Ark about 3hours for some information about working, social security numbers (SSNs), housing, etc

–   Crazy Walmart shopping: one hour and Tommy Dielh that dropped us to Walmart and back by car. In US everything greed is a lot more expensive than in Finland, for example the cheapest apples here are like 1.5USD/lbs that is about 2.5EUR/kg – in Finland cheapest apples are like 0.79EUR/kg, it’s about 1USD/lbs. Meat, lemonades and alcohol is a lot cheaper here than Finland. For example we found frozen chicken breasts that were 5USD/kg – 3EUR/kg for good quality chicken breasts? That superb! One thing I do not understand here is that there is sugar, sweeteners and salt in everything. Who puts sugar and sucralose to pepper mix? Americans. 😛

–   At evening we were hanging outdoors under the sun

–   We walked to Tanger Outlet, an outlet mall that is about 30 minutes walking from our apartments. I bought some Nike, some Adidas and shoes and OMG there was Marc’O Polo and Hilfiger and sooo many super cool outlet shops. And how cheap everything is! I bought brand new pink Nike running shoes with 40USD (about 30EUR) and perfect Nike sport bra with 25USD (18EUR) including taxes. That’s just nuts! I mean in Finland they would be like 130 and 40EUR (180 and 55USD). So 65 vs 235USD, just crazy but I love it already!

–   Visiting other Finns apartments and hanging out.

 

Finnish Lifeguards in super cool uniforms, thanks to Otto for amazing photo

 

Day3 (23th of May)

–   Running to Tanger and back with 9 coworkers, 40mins running, 15 mins circuit (we have a goal to run Tanger and back in 25 minutes until summer ends)

–   Visiting Walmart (again) to found phones. We all bought 13USD’s burner phones. They are like prepaid phones. So, now I have American phone number!

–   We bough used bicycles (I’m not sure was this good or bad idea)

–   Sending cards to home. It’s 1.15USD/stamp to Europe.

–   Cutting coworkers hair

–   Visiting Noah’s and Tommy bartlett office to get some kitchen equipments

–   Eating at local restaurant called Moosejaw, I felt in love with their pizzas! At least the veggie one is super good!

–   House parties with some American guys who had rented a house (almost) next to US (someone’s bachelor party at our neighbour’s house)

 

Day4 (24^th of May)

–   Running an hour with a coworker

–   Visiting work

–   Swimming at Noah’s about 4 hours, it was crazy cool! Black Anaconda, Time Warp and Dark Voyage were my favorite slides

–   Eating flatizzas at subway, I take mine with tomatoes, peppers and spinach. It quite good but I think that even in America the subs are the best thing that Subway does.

–   Let’s have a partyyy (with about 30 quite good looking American men) at their rented home (again the same guys, yeah) and after that at the Wisconsin Dells downtown with them. Lots of dancing and fun we just loved it (why can’t those men live in Wisconsin Dells?)

Hanging outside some bar with friends and American men

 

Day5 (25^th of May)

–   Visiting Noah’s

–   Walmart, food shopping

–   Super quick visit to Tanger Outlet (note to self: if it’s Sunday it closes 7pm, not 9pm!).