Nature, Nature and more Nature

Last weekend I had plenty of time and that's why I though I should discover the area a bit. So, my first trip lead me into the forest behind the house. Part of it is owned by the family, but it goes on for about 30 km. And since the chance of getting lost was so big, Tommi (my host dad) gave me his old GPS. However, I was still too scared to go really far away and that's why it was fairly easy to find back to the red house. Since I have a fairly fancy camera for my means, I took a bunch of pictures just to try it out.

In the afternoon I went to the closest lake by bike. Honestly, I haven't cycled for about a year and the tiny Finnish hills gave me a very hard time. Of course, now the lakes are still too cold for swimming. Just a few weeks ago the ice on them had melted. And 3 minutes after I had arrived at the lake, it began raining and hailing. So, I hid under a roof of one of the houses and had a break which was very appreciated! :-P
By the way, in both places I was listening to music by Rosebud. Well, it actually was Edmund Lowman live in Kassel! :-P

The Silence and the Water

Standing in the bathroom, brushing my teeth and looking into mirror reminded me of a few advantages of Finland:
Before I came to Finland I was totally stressed out because of my final exams and I often had heartburn, slept like shit or I was quite grumpy. But here in Finland the food seems to agree with me very well, I sleep like a baby and although I had a cold for the past week, I laughed a lot and enjoyed myself here. If I don't set my alarm, I manage to sleep 10 hours straight although the boys are running around in the house or are playing playstation in front of my room. But otherwise it's totally quiet. There is no noise of cars around and the only sounds from the outside come from various birds. I'm sure that in a couple of weeks you'll see an entry here where I'm complaining about the country side and how boring it can be, but right now I really appreciate how relaxed my life is!
And then there is the water that comes out of the tap. First of all, it's very delicious! It comes from a spring under the house and is therefore void of any chemicals like chloride. My facial skin hasn't been so smooth and pretty for a long time and I'm sure that also my hair will now have the opportunity to recover from its last adventure with white blonde dye!
By the way, my host parents have actually set up a few meetings with Finnish people my age who have been to Germany themselves and would like to get to know me to practice their German. I'm all up for it because I don't know many people here yet. Let's see how it goes!

Grocery shopping in Finnish!

So, this Friday Sari (my host mom) gave me a task: get some food at the store. Well, that sounds easy enough, but it was not! First of all, the next grocery store is in Veikkola (about 6 km away), so I had to take the car. And although the Beetle is kinda cool, it is really hard to drive and I still don't feel very safe with it. Driving it makes me blood pressure go up high! :-P And then there is the language: most words in Finnish are so different that you can't even guess what it might be (unlike in English or Spanish). So, my shopping list was in two languages: English and Finnish (e.g. cucumber = kurkku). That one is actually easy because in German it's "Gurke". But how about that one: beef = nauta? No guessing there. Well, I got into the car. The engine was really grumpy and when the sign said 80 km/h, I barely made it up to 65 km/h. (But going 80 km/h in the Beetle makes you feel like you are going 180 km/h and you have the feeling that it will fall apart any minute.) I made it to the store in one piece and fortunately, there were a lot of free parking spaces. If there hadn't been, I would have returned at once! *lol* Then I went into the store: The vegetables could be found easy enough. But then there was the meat. I know that Sari hates pork. But when I was in front of the shelf for minced meat, it didn't say "nauta" on it anywhere. The inscriptions on the packages had lots of variations, but just "nauta" could not be found. After considering my options for 5 minutes, I decided to go with "naudan jauheliha" and prayed that it wasn't a mix of pork and beef. The last stop was at the juice aisle: Fortunately, the packages had nice pictures on it and I didn't have to guess. Here is what I think: minced beef should have a picture of a cow on it, so that the poor au pairs in Finland who don't speak any Finnish can find the food easier. And I know I'm not the only au pair here that doesn't speak the language. But there is one advantage to not speaking the language: When the boys argue I just yell "Stop!" at both of them and most of the time it even works and I don't have to listen to their weird explanations why Valtteri was unfair to Arttu or vice versa! :-P But the disadvantage is that I can't hear their funny stories kids usually make up in their mind! :-/

PS. Naudan jauheliha was exactly the right kind of meat to get. It only means minced beef! :-)

Sun, Sun and even more Sun

No, I'm not an au pair in Spain or Italy. I'm in Finland, the country where it doesn't get dark at night during summer, where every house has a sauna, where you are never far away from a lake, where the cheapest bottle of wine costs 6€ (I'd sooo stop drinking of my host parents wouldn't offer me a beer or glass of wine every evening! :-)), and where its not unusual that the next grocery store is 10 or 20 km away from your house.
So far I can't complain about the family I'm living with. The boys are fairly independent and can even fix their dinner themselves when they are having spinach pancakes with strawberry marmelade (not recommandable if you ask me!). But they are also very active: They make me jump on the trampoline with them, make me go for little rides on their bicylcles which are way to small for me, of course, and make me watch one of their 100 animated movies they have on DVD. But right now it's fairly calm because during the day they are at school and I do some housework around the house, but I'm definitely not overworking myself! :-)
Arttu is 9. He's the cuddlier one (at least with me) and he always manages to trick me into letting him playing some kind of computer game although he is not allowed to (during the week).

Valtterri is 7 and likes to play with water, can't get enough of jumping on the trampoline and is a bit cheeky.

The house I'm living on is one a gravel road, is fairly huge and a bit chaotic. It has a nice garden around it and pine woods behind it. And for German standards it's in the middle of nowhere. However, I like it here; it's peaceful and I can always find a book to read! :-)

To get around here, one needs the car. The car I get to drive is a VW Beetle from the year 1973: a real Oldtimer! However, I'm only used to driving new cars with fancy technologies and super good brakes. So, my first two driving lessons were a bit choatic. I'm having problems gettng the car into the second gear and actually all the gears are a bit lose. I just wanted to go for another test drive, but this time it wouldn't start and I have no idea why. But although this car is so old and has so many diadvantages, it's also kinda cool to drive it. And if there is a car behind you and you are not quite going 100 km/h because it's not fast enough, then the driver of the other car won't even complain because he simply assumes that an oldtimer can't go faster and overtakes you with a smile! I think I should give the Beetle a name. It actually already has one: the Finish word for "flee" because when my hostmom bought it a long time ago, she couldn't handle the cluch so well and that made the car jump!

My friends and family know that I'm very picky with food, but here in Finland I can always find something to eat. I've never heard that the Finnish kitchen is especially delicious, but I really like all the variations of bread they have here. Usually when I go abroad the only type of bread I can find is white fluffy bread which I hate. But here they have dark, half-dark, lighter... bread. One is especially funny. It comes in circles and then you rip apart to eat it. And Finns always have bread with their dinner, even when they have pasta, steaks, or any other type of a full meal.

What else? Oh yeah, let's talk about one of the major stereotypes:
Finns are cold-hearted. Not at all!!! The family I'm living with has lots of humour, treats me like another family member, and I felt at home after only one day.
Well, but although the weather has been so good here, I caught a cold. It's my welcome-you-are-in-another-country-cold; I get it every time when I intend to stay at a place longer than 2 weeks.