hyvää joulua!

that's a merry christmas to all of you.

right now my floor is shaking with the bass of Michael Jackson's greatest hits. my host family is obviously wayy past the whole Christmas thing, been there, done Michael Bublé and consumerist extravagance yesterday. in finland, the 24th is the real Christmas and the 25th is leftovers day. so here i am. 


Christmas Eve Eve is the official decoration day, so we woke up early to tinsel the banisters and light the tree. finns love candles almost as much as they love complaining about how dark it is outside, and my host mum set them up on all the flat surfaces she could find. after a lazy afternoon of watching the Grinch with Finnish subtitles in our fuzziest socks, we met up with some other families for a glögi evening (a traditional hot christmas drink, mixed with wine for the adults, with raisins and almond slices sinking to the bottom). late that night, my host parents slipped a Santa sack into my room, which I filled with my horribly-wrapped presents - when the kids opened them the next day my host brother hollered to my host sister "I think Santa got a little tired with these ones!". 


the next morning I dipped the ladle into the white-rice porridge, hoping - but my host dad got the lucky almond in his bowl. the cemetery might have contained more breathing people than gravestones when we arrived there midmorning...the Finnish tradition of tending the ancestors' graves on holidays is alive and well. candles at the foot of each grave lit the faces of the stone angels and the little kids bundled in their winter jumpsuits. the air was grey and the grass was dead, but it was beautiful.


on the way home, my host parents remarked "if by any chance Santa had told us when he was going to show up, we would probably remember it as around 4.45". Santa-ing actually turns quite a profit: the single men buy red robes and false beards and hire themselves out for 100 euros per 20 minute visit. the kids obviously didn't know this, so we played Harry Potter trivia games that couldn't distract us enough. they fidgeted through two christmas specials and half of a lame Sting concert. My littlest brother dashed to the door every half-hour or so, insisting he'd heard bells. And then finally, finally, boots stomped on our doorstep and in he walked, wooden staff jingling with little silver bells. My host dad towed sacks of gifts to the livingroom like a balding reindeer as Santa made himself comfortable in the leather armchair. Then the joyous ripping and tearing began.

post-present-opening stupor.

there were about 6 different kinds of pâté at Christmas dinner, as well as some interesting carrot-oatmeal casserole and cold turkey and colder ham and little kaurelian pastries. kaapo kept leaping up from his seat to blind us with his new camera. my host mum kept swiping at tuomo, who was putting all his old numbers into his iPhone under the table. we finished off with pipari, gingerbread with a little extra cardamom, and then everyone retired to the floor of the living room to play with all their new toys. since the most toy-like present i received was a bathrobe, i spent the rest of my night quite happily with alan rickman in Love, Actually.yes michael, i've been hit by a smoooooooooooooth criminal. i mean, look at this guy.

to those of you on the other side of the world who are still lazing about in pajamas and suffering from your post-stocking chocolate binge: try to enjoy it while it lasts. i have to go finish all this leftover joulukinkkua (christmas ham).

lappi

that's Lapland.

the 2 to 1 ratio of reindeer to inhabitants in the north-most part of Finland creates the "lapland silence"... travelling there with 150 other exchange students meant that I didn't experience any such silence. the whole trip was loud.

sixteen hours on a bus that smelled like tuna fish and lack of sleep...the australians got on the bus at 1 am and held a two-hour singalong to celebrate how awake they were. when the buses finally arrived in muonio, the excitement and noise were at a fever-pitch.

then we went sledding/skiing, which was loud with the sound of breaking bones. people who have never seen snow before have difficulties balancing on it, and six exchange students ended up at the hospital.

sauna time involved a lot of shrieking and swearing. my friends and i threw snowballs back into the sauna to drive the other girls out of the best bench spots. this worked well until we became the new targets.

the next morning's reindeer-farm presentation was loud with snores. we only woke from our stupor when the translator told us that until recently, reindeer herders castrated reindeer with their teeth.

our "cultural presentation" night naturally involved a booming stereo system. all the kids from the spanish-speaking countries danced like professionals, then the canadians presented a choreographed version of "Baby" that involved pretending to throw a baby. based on applause, the cultural lesson here is that hip gyration beats wordplay.

the husky farm was understandably loud in more than one way - even the frozenness of the ground couldn't lessen the odor of dog-piss, 300 strong, and the dogs only stopped howling when they were pulling the sledges. the puppies were ridiculously cute though.

ice sculpting = roaring chain saws. we were stuck with regular saws for "safety reasons"... they sure didn't look all that safe, and hardly made dents in the ice. the chainsaw man ended up having to stomp up and down the row of ice blocks carving whatever we demanded (my group fancied a giant ice cube, which is more difficult than you'd think when you start with a cylinder).

the santa claus village in Rovaniemi jingled with silver bells and profiteering. despite being a blatant tourist trap (santaland is basically an expensive post office, a santa-greeting platform and then dozens of overpriced shops), it was sort of magical. the snow was falling lightly and christmas carols were being piped from every lamppost and everyone was running around with shopping bags, grinning.

then the bus motors rumbled once again for a boisterous ride home.

 i did not end up sitting on santa's lap and telling him what I wanted for christmas.
that's alright. i already have all i need. :)