kylmä

that means cold.

 i'm not the new kid anymore.

my american mittens, a christmas present
from the lovely Sonja

in a literal sense, there are two new exchange students who arrived at school after the holiday... novelties! even more fun to stare at! but also because i sort of know what's going on, after a few months of smiling and nodding and being confused. i can understand most of my philosophy classes. sing the refrains of several finnish rap songs. know that the solution to frosted eyelashes is waterproof mascara. knit (lumpy) mittens. remember the steps of the finnish tango. i'm actually getting a handle on things -

- even though the handle's frozen and slippery. it's bloody cold. when i go out for coffee with my friends i sip as slowly as possible, because leaving the empty mug means a wrestling match with my iced-over bike lock. back in mid-october, i started training for the neighboring town's "midnight sun" marathon. this was an easy decision when i could still venture outside comfortably in just one pair of pants. the snow came down hard after christmas, so i've become accustomed to frozen ears and the crunch of the snow punctuating my breath. the kids sledding on the hill by the track always stare as i jog by - "crazy girl". the yellow markings of passing dogs are bright on the snow at every corner. it's a strange feeling, when your muscles burn under skin numb with cold.

everyone assures me that the weather is only going to get worse, that "this is nothing compared to last year". it's hard enough for me to leave the house right now, i can't and don't really want to imagine how it's going to be when we hit -30°c (-22°f).

getting past the thermometer, winter in finland is wonderful. there are public ice rinks all over the place. if you look far enough down any sidewalk, there is always a person taking their hockey stick for a stroll. even hot chocolate from the machine is delicious here. the snow is packing snow, which means snowballs hurt and the trees look like this. on the rare occasion when the sun comes out, the whole world glitters.

in a way, all this whining about the cold is another sign that i'm adapting to life here: finns love to bitch about the weather. although any finn reading this is thinking "it's not even cold! just you wait...."

bring on the sweaters.

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. :)

muutos

that means change.

i arrived at the mäki house in august with two large suitcases, a violin case and a heavy rotary blazer. i left it today with two large suitcases, the blazer, two backpacks, five shopping bags, a sack of shoes, a violin case and a bicycle. and i haven't even been here four months yet.

i already miss my first host family. the cooking was incredible. they didn't mind that my room was always messy. they brought me back little presents from their business trips and helped me read finnish news articles, even though three columns took half an hour. they made me feel at home, in their house, in finland.

the organization of this picture took five minutes of
 adjusting light fixtures and  windows. perfectionism has become almost endearing.

my new room's kickin' clock.

but my new family is lovely, they didn't even laugh at me when i staggered up their steps with all my luggage. not to my face anyways. my little brother kaapo moved in with my little sister jenni so that i could stay in his room for the next three months. they are eight and eleven and thick as thieves. thus far neither of them have spoken a word to me...whenever i come unexpectedly around a corner they jump and run out of the room giggling. tuomo, my other host brother, is a very tall fourteen. his main interests are soccer, looking sullen and texting his girlfriend.

my life on a bookshelf. this
kind of organization is not going to last long...

the house is a lot more american-style than my last...the basement is vast (most finns don't have basements, much too expensive to heat)*** and the dishes don't drip-dry over the sink. the decor isn't geometric in shades of white like most of the finnish homes i've seen. it's also much louder: my host dad is a stereo-system junkie and the pool table outside my bedroom door is always clacking. i sort of like the feeling of activity, you can feel everyone's vital signs.

tomorrow i bike two minutes to school - a great improvement on the thirteen-minute commute from the last house. i will then start my third jakso (school semester) out of five. my time here is already feeling too short.

***all my finnish friends would like you to know that most of them do have basements. apparently only the new houses don't have them.

juhlat ja jäätynyt

that means parties and frozen-ness.

all the puddles froze on Monday and haven't thawed yet. the sun is gone by 3.30 PM, so to banish the darkness my host mother has gone on a decorating spree. candles and wreaths light every window and most flat surfaces. my social life has lit up as well.

i became a cat for a Halloween party hosted by one of my exchange friends. unoriginal, yes... but the tail was only four euros and looked desperately hairy, like no one else would buy it from the costume shop if I didn't. halloween isn't a holiday in finland...the college kids didn't even party on october 31st until about five years back, i'm told. we carved white pumpkins - the first pumpkins most of the guests had ever stuck a knife into - and ate salmiakki spider cupcakes. then the other exchange students and I danced wildly to bad pop music, black icing at the corners of our mouths. the Finns sat around the perimeter of the living room and watched us quietly.

a week later, i became the hostess. improvised s'mores with "original Amerikkan marshmallows", gourmet Finnish chocolate and digestive cookies. none of my friends had ever heard of such a thing, but novelty made them even more delicious. it was a lucky warm night, so our coats padded the benches around the firepit. we took turns threatening to throw each other into the moon's reflection in the middle of the lake. and ate our way through the whole bag of marshmallows.

the next weekend i went to a Finnish dance party, strobe lights and all. i finally saw Finns dance (no doubt their shyness was helped by the cloak of fog-machine fog). the music was American and very loud. i guess J.Lo bypasses all cultural differences. making finnish conversation is extremely easy at parties, because the bass levels are enough to drown out my mistakes....my friends were suitably impressed.

the ground is freezing but these days i'm feeling pretty warm.

syysloma

that means autumn holiday.

at the start of the break, I escorted my host counselor's twelve-year-old daughter to a concert in Helsinki. over the course of the evening, the only complete sentence we spoke to each other was an exchanged "What's your favorite food?" (she said cookies, I said strawberry pancakes) It was a good show, though our nosebleed seats didn't allow for our bones to rattle with the bass. I had forgotten how much twelve-year-olds roll their eyes.

on the monday, my host mother, her sister and i took the bus to Helsinki's harbour, where we boarded a massive cruise ship. there were hundreds of people on that boat and we were all unleashed upon the tax free shop at 5 PM. mobs hungry for discount perfume and chocolates...terrifying. eighteen hours and a magnificent buffet later, we were in Stockholm. tuesday became progressively rainier through our exploration of Stockholm's old town, the tour of the royal apartments and a below-average romantic comedy. walking back to the hotel that night, all three of our umbrellas were snapped by the wind and joined the other umbrella carcasses on the wet sidewalks.

yeehaw, or something.

despite being waterlogged, stockholm was a beautiful city - all cobblestoned streets and lakes between the different neighborhoods. they call it "the venice of the north". the shopping could only be called beautiful as well....swedish high street stuff is great. i also stumbled upon a "western store" full of leather saddles and confederate flags, and a shop entirely dedicated to peikot. yes, trolls. when we boarded the boat back to helsinki the following day, each of us was several shopping bags heavier. no trolls though.

and there were more, too.

wednesday i learned that Finns don't need excessive amounts of alcohol and peer pressure to sing in front of strangers - they love karaoke. they practice their favorite numbers at home. other than the one girl who butchered avril lavigne.

on thursday I had a dream that I was able to roll my rr's in the Finnish way. i woke up excited...but i still can't.

on friday i serenaded my host sister and her boyfriend on their romantic date on the castle hill, overlooking the lake. it would have been made more romantic by a space heater...the temperature definitely dipped below freezing and joonas was shivering in his white suit as he lit the candles. my violin rendition of "my heart must go on" was a bit less schmaltzy than it should have been, probably because i contracted minor frostbite in one of my fingers. it's okay, it's on my bow-hand.

sparkly.

on saturday i spent two hours translating my friend's baby sister's disney magazines. Sinäkin voit olla prinsessa! (you too can be a princess!) they promise. false advertising. i learned that i have an ariel personality type.

sunday i went to an "american diner" with some friends. they were disgusted by my sweet-potato fries ("orange like oompa-loompas!"). the hamburger is a great american contribution to finnish society, though, so they forgave me for my order.


i've been neglecting my google-translate tab, but our love affair rekindles tomorrow when school starts up again.

lista

believe it or not, that means list.

Eight things the guidebooks didn't tell me about Finland:

1. Mocking Canada and Morgan Freeman jokes are universal sources of amusement. (thanks, South Park)

2. The word kebab does not mean "delicious skewers of meat" here. Dinner at a kebab place means handing over 7 euros and watching in horrified fascination as they shave the meat-on-a-spit into long strips with what definitely looks like a beard trimmer. and serve it on top of french fries. Delicious, as long as you know where to go (some of these places have been caught putting catfood into their meat...)

3. The Finnish musical scale goes A H C D E F G.

4. The bathrooms at home have heated floors. If I could live in my bathroom I completely would, but I think my host brother wouldn't dig that so much.

5. Their ice-cream comes in blocks, so you can fold away the cardboard wrapping and slice it with a knife. Much more efficient than scooping. If you want icecream at McDonalds, well, Oreos don't exist here. But salmiakki McFlurries are SO GOOD.

6. The language is very blunt - extraneous please's and thank you's just don't happen. They see no use for euphemisms, either. You wouldn't say "I'm afraid this wasn't your best test grade...". It would be "This was lousy." Taking offense seems to be an unnecessary American invention.

7. Wearing dresses over jeans isn't a nightmarish tween fashion choice that will haunt you until your early twenties, it's completely acceptable.

8. Spitting in public is constant. Little girls, teenagers, business-people, elderly men. No matter who they are, Finns spit whenever and wherever they feel like it. My theory is that all the 200,000 Finnish lakes are just good-old-fashioned Viking spittle. By the looks of it, the college kids in my neighborhood are trying to create a minor pond by the bus stop.