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.

tasapaino

that means balance.

In the last few weeks, I have:

--gained a working knowledge of underwater rugby. in short summary, it's basketball on the bottom of a 4-metre diving pool, augmented with bruises and incredibly dorky helmets. the team is fourteen mismatched boys and girls, ranging from age ten to age twenty. i don't understand a word of the coaches' instructions, so i thrash about and adjust my snorkel a lot.

--lost my breath. just thinking about slipping into that pool makes my lungs contract a bit, but you bet i'm going back next week.

This is the gist of it. Most players don't stare so lovingly into each others' eyes though.

--obtained a black leather jacket, so i am three and a half steps closer to being a european teenager.

--misplaced my only hoodie, which means i am rained on at least twice a day. on the rare afternoon that I come out of class and it isn't drizzling, i swing my legs over my bike to go home and suddenly the clouds condense. finnish autumn is lovely.

--found a dance partner for the vanhojen tanssit, or old dance. in February, the 2nd year students kick the third years off school grounds after their matriculation exams, and celebrate their ascension to senior royalty by holding a traditional waltz-and-tux ball... with the entire town watching on bleachers around the dance floor. traditionally the girls ask the boys, so i walked up to him by the paper cutter in our art class. he accepted, didn't even cut my finger off.  

--parted with far too many euros for a dress for said dance. if you were wondering, it's blue.

--gained an appreciation for reindeer meat. it's excellent with black-currant jam.

--lost all respect for Finnish candy manufacturers. anything remotely spherical is labelled "balls". these aren't innocent cinnamon fireballs or jawbreakers. We're talking "Donkey Balls -- super sweet, double trouble!" or, for a touch of the exotic, Camel Balls. 

"Extra Sour and Liquid Filled". Appetizing.

--broadened my Finnish repertoire of greetings and swear words to include grammar points. did you know the verb "to have" doesn't exist in their language: you simply modify "to be"? No, really though, my Finnish is getting better every day. 

--wasted three hours every week in Finnish for Foreigners lessons. at the speed of two pages per 1.5 hour session, we have just made it through the letters and numbers. Once we get past words I learned in March the class will be fascinating...but until then, I read the posters of Justin Bieber facts on our classroom walls (Finnish for Foreigners is held in a middle-school English room) and try to make my Canadian friend giggle disruptively.

She holds it in, mostly.

I really think my gains outweigh my losses.

kolmekymmenta

that means thirty.

it's been a whole month since I got here.

every time the sun comes out, the Finns shake their heads slowly and say "This will probably be the last time you see sunlight until the day you leave this godforsaken country." Inevitably, the sun rises the next day, just to spite them. This sort of sums up the Finnish view of the world...

the leaves are already crunchy. on the days that the school food is truly horrible, my friends and I go out to the grocery around the corner. we walk back eating cream cakes and sit by the bike racks and watch the boys by the smoking shed. i try to speak Finnish. the chilly air makes the sugar taste even better.

i get fewer questions about my name and why the hell I would ever choose to come to Finland, but more about things like chocolate pizza and prom dresses. "tell me the finnish words you know" is a common request, too. whenever this happens I can only come up with French. when I've awkwardly ducked the language questions and small talk about being an exchange student comes to a close, Finns often gesture back in the direction of their house and tell me their sauna is waiting, like it's an impatient toddler.

the language now sounds like words, but I can't string any of them together. I have learned many other things though: old navy flag tshirts and crocs have definitely arrived in Finland, but ranch dressing hasn't. at all times here you should carry an umbrella and possibly a towel. Jean Sibelius borders on an obsession for these people (understandably). political correctness is neither required nor particularly respected. public noise, however, is unforgivable. the most important thing i've come to realize, though?

my head is too large for the average moped helmet.

if i am unable to get this off and come home still wearing it, I hope everyone will understand.

lammas

that means sheep.

There's a chicken-wire pen at the edge of the development. Lovely view of the lake. A little lean-to for the lambs to huddle under when it rains. All summer, the people in the neighborhood bring the lambs stale bread and the little kids learn all about how wonderful (stinky) farmyards are and the precise sound that a sheep makes. Finnish sheep do not have any noticeable accent in comparison with American ones.

I was told that we would have a lamb party. Here I was, naively thinking that this was just a strange celebration of sheep. Perhaps we would make a circle around their pen and sing them Finnish lullabies, or see how the Mäkinen family down the street taught the black one how to tap dance. I mean, the Finns are a bit funny about animals and nature and all that, it wasn't all too implausible.

Then on Thursday I was invited to the lamb party preparations. I peeled a mountain of cabbage leaves and chopped onions til I cried, along with six other middle-aged women who seemed impervious to the onions. And then I said something really stupid - "The lambs don't like loud music, though, do they?"

They all turned to look at me. "It doesn't matter much, since we're eating them..."

Oh.

Note the ski goggles.

cute, hey?

What followed was a massive block party. They buried the meat and let the fire on top of it burn for a day or so, then the whole neighborhood got together and they lifted it out with great ceremony. There were approximately fifty small blonde children milling about (they had been told that the lambs had gone away for the winter and would come back next year). Fresh blueberry pies and little pine-cone-lamb table decorations and heaps of rye bread. Trays and trays of lamb. Boxes and boxes of wine. It was a veritable ancestral Viking feast. 

Somehow I doubt the Vikings had karaoke though. As the evening wore on, kids on the microphone were replaced by teenagers on the microphone were replaced by rather drunk adults all over the microphone. This was pretty entertaining, but also sort of shameful - because even inebriated people and five-year-olds can sing in Finnish. I cannot. Yet.

The party hadn't ended when my family and I sloped home at 12.30 am. Who says Finnish people are closed off? They sure know how to have a good time.