Finland+Group+9

Hi Josh! We are Margarita and Eeva from Finland. We are both 15 years old, but Eeva will soon turn 16. Marge likes to dance and her other hobby is kickboxing. Eeva plays floorball and piano. We both like music and movies. We have here a lot of snow right now, what about you?

__Something about Finlands sports__ Here in Finland we have our own game called "pesäpallo", it is very much like baseball, but still a different sport. By the way do you play baseball in Canada or is it just an U.S.A sport? Our national sport is Icehockey, and finnish people love it. We have our national league called "SM-league", and our national team is quite good as well. Other popular sports here are skiing, ski jumping, football (in here it means only soccer), and floorball. Maybe you don´t know what it is, because it is a very young sport. It is a little bit like Icehockey indoors, with a round ball and a special stick. Floorball is very popular game in Finland, as well as in Sweden, Switzerland, Estonia, Czech rebublic and so on. We think they are trying to bring it to Canada too. Have you ever heard about floorball? :) What are your hobbies?

floorball pesäpallo

__FINLAND__

Finland is a rebublic. We have a president, prime minister, government and a parlament. Our current president is Tarja Halonen. She is the first woman president in our history. She has been president since year 2000. She is now 66 years old, but before she became a president, she was a minister, a member of our parlament and a lawyer. Tarja Halonen

In Finnish parlament there is 200 members. We vote them always to work in four years periods. Every finnish citizen over 18 years old is able to vote. The prime minister is the leader of the biggest party in parlament.

our current prime minister Matti Vanhanen the parlament house -^^

Finland has been an independent rebublic since 1917. Before that it was part of Russia.

word list:

Parlament = eduskunta a president = presidentti a prime minister = pääministeri a citizen = kansalainen