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.