Finnish Winter

Recipe for a great Winter season:

 

 

Preheat with wool.

 

 

Continue bundling up.

 

 

 Use one large stroller.

 

Add in generous amounts of snow.

Roll in a few snow "big sisters."



Climb as many snow mountains as you can find.

Make sure to have one happy baby.

For best results, use a greased ice slick.

Toss in some cross-country skis,



and a handful of ice skates.

 

Go outside and enjoy!

(Hopefully it doesn´t melt too fast!)

Our Kids Today

Watch out!  He bites!

Conversation with any given friendly adult about 3 times a week:

Adult: What’s your name?

Jane: Janie Reita

Adult: How old are you Jane?

Jane: *silence*

Me:  She’s two.

Jane:  I’m two AND A HALF.

Cognate! … Not so fast.

-So a month or so ago I heard someone use the phrase, “It is like comparing apples and pears.”

-“OK,” I thought. “They got the exact wording wrong. It should be can’t compares apples to oranges. But the idea is the same that one should be careful not to compare two things which
are dissimilar.

-I smiled and moved on.

-In hindsight, perhaps my smile was a bit smug, almost like I was saying, “Silly people. You have so much to learn, unlike me, who knows how to correctly say such a simple and common phrase. Oh, you little, silly people of Finland.”

-It turns out there may be more to the pear and apple analogy than meets the eye. For those learning languages out there, one of the sweetest words is that of 'Cognate.' A Cognate is a word that is very similar in form and meaning. For example, in Spanish artista means artist in English. “Finally,” thinks the overburdened and stressed language student, “A word I can understand and use. Look! I am speaking a foreign language!”

-This brings us to Finnish. Here’s a cognate for you: appelsiini. Your initial, gut reaction is to reach out and take that cognate and keep it as your very own. Much like Chewbacca in Return of the Jedi, finding the temptation of an easy meal looking inocent and inviting. The prospector buying a claim at the first glint of yellow. Or like the trepid explorer taking a confident stride into a muddy clearing. Like cooking with mushrooms that looked almost like the one in the picture book.

-A trap. Fool’s gold. Quick sand. Poison.

-By now the astute reader has sensed a problem. As you have undoubtedly guessed, appelsiini is not Finnish for apple. And yes, many of you saw this coming. Appelsiini is Finnish for orange. Not the color. The fruit. No. The color orange is oranssi. See. That one is a cognate.

-This makes clearer contrasting the differences between apples and pears. Because in Finland, you CAN compare apples and oranges. Or as it were, compare apples to appelsiinis.

-Stupid quasi-cognates get me every time.


Don't skip Jessica's older post on riding the Metro, below. (Started in November, published now for your reading pleasure.)

The Coat: A Story of Charity

This is one of Jane's new favorite videos. Ok, so at 2, how many 'favorites' can you have? But it is still a nice video with a good message.

Metro

Okay, I confess....

It's dirty. It's crowded. It's dirty. BUT...

I love the Metro!

There, I said it.

So does Jane, actually. It is STILL exciting for Jane to go somewhere on the Metro (after 3 months!). She loves to watch it pull up outside our living room window (yes it is that close). She loves going on errands with me if it includes a ride on, "Our choo choo train Metro." She loves finding that big orange M sign, riding the escalators or elevators, choosing a seat, and smiling at anyone around us. I surprised a Finnish friend this weekend when I told them people were usually friendly and talked to us on the public transportation. He had never heard of that before. Usually they are admiring my beautiful children. Who can help it?

I was so worried about not having a car in Helsinki, but I LOVE not having a car. We just pack the kids up in the carriage, all snug and warm, and hit the road. No scraping windows on cold mornings. No cold car seats. By-the-way, it's TOTALLY free for people with a baby carriage. It's pretty cheap if you are not pushing a carriage. No finding or paying for parking. No gas and pollution. We live SO close, it's only a few more meters than walking out to the parking lot anyway. Even though we live so close, we almost cannot hear it in our apartment, it's so quiet. It comes every 5-10 minutes. I have read that you cannot go anywhere in the Helsinki metropolitan area and be further than 30 meters from a public transit stop. Really, I think it's true... except in the forests, maybe.

Jane speaks more Finnish than I do...

Ignore the rumors.  Do not believe it.  Just in case you have heard differently, everyone in Finland does NOT speak English.   Especially the food at the grocery store.  We have had mystery meat a few times for dinner.

I told my friend Kaija, affectionately known as Mummo (Grandma) Kaija, today that I cannot hear Finnish, I need to see it written down to hear the sounds.  Later, in the same conversation, we had a mixup between tutti=pacifier and Tytti=girl's name (means little girl, y makes an "ew" sound).  I also cannot keep names straight.  Seija, Soile, Sinka, Sinikka, Sini... and I think I am spelling those incorrectly.  Most of our time here has been spent figuring out life in our new country, but I have started in earnest to look for real Finnish classes for me to attend instead of my shoddy attempt to study at home.

Everyone keeps telling me that we are so lucky we moved here when we did. Our kids are at the language acquisition age and will have an easier time learning the language than Luke and I will. 

All the women just love to hold and cuddle Patrick, and he gets a lot of Finnish lovey words from them.  So far so good. They all tell me he will be a Finnish boy.

Jane seems to go with the flow on the new language.  Her new playmate, Vilja, only speaks Finnish to her.  Nursury, or "lastenhuome," at church is only in Finnish.  The kids at the playground play with her in Finnish.  After our first week at church she started telling me, "Ei, Mama," instead of, "No, Mama," and she started using, "kiitos," and  "thank you," interchangeably.  She was playing by herself and she counted her hops in Finnish without prompting.  She now counts to ten in Finnish, knows many of her animals, and some colors.  She has begun to try to put words together; "Nelja koira," to say "four dogs."

I should give some credit:  An AMAZING amount of people here do speak English with some level of fluency.  Many can communicate and most are willing to try.  I think all Finns speak better English than I speak Finnish.  Before we got here, I was excited to learn what it was like to be the language minority.  It is something I have studied.  I have worked with so many English Language Learner students as a  teacher.  I am learning a deeper appreciation for my past students and what they and their families were adjusting to.  It takes courage to just go out and do everyday errands in another language and culture and system, let alone going to work or school.  We knew Finland was a possibility for a few months, but we did not know until July that we were moving in August.  Even if we had known and studied Finnish for a year, it would not be sufficient to learn a language.  I continue to be grateful for a hand up and helpful hints about how things work here from kind people around us who have made themselves open to our questions.

A day in Helsinki- Home Sweet Home

Welcome!  I just thought I'd give you a look around, now that we are more settled in:

Entryway:

Our place was just renovated (still working...), so it is all new and nice.

The "only way to offend a Finn:" wear shoes in their house. 

 

Lots of bundling up occurs around here (these are her outside clothes in September).

Two doors.  For keeping the cold out?

Jane loves peeking through the mail slot, "I'm just looking, Mom," or retrieving "her mail" when it comes. 

Both bathroom doors (right next to each other). Notice the little switch on the wall between them? "Poissa," out. "Kotona," at home. Switch that bad boy and off go all the lights.

Nice.

The "bathroom."  If you ask for a bathroom I have been given a funny look and told where the shower is...

 The "toilet" or WC.  What you really want when you ask for a bathroom.

The kitchen:

Keep in mind that pretty much everything you see here was donated (furniture, curtains, rugs, dishes, toys). We are so grateful.

We have a back door that goes out to a little patio in back.  It is all under construction out there now, so we'll see how it ends up when they finish.

The best Finnish design in the kitchen.   Dish drain in the cupboard over the sink.  Genius.

Okay, not everything was donated...  This dancin' queen we brought with us.

Bedrooms:  

Our room, with a huge closet cupboard.

 

What are you smiling at?  This little man shares a room with us for now. 

Jane's room, same sweet closet.

Living Room:

Living room/ office/ library/ playroom/ storage... anything else? Still working on this room.

Luke affectionately calls that blue couch, "The Tardis."  Any guesses of why?  (If you know, you might be a scifi geek.)  It folds out into a bed, so if you want to stop by...

 
The main activity in here: blocks. Anytime, all the time.