I haven't posted since Christmas: and with good reason. Finnish Christmas was so exhausting, I'm still recovering. On Christmas Eve, we opened presents, visited family, ate ham and other traditional Finnish Christmas foods... and then toured graveyards until 3AM! It was nice, but I was so tired. Anyway, Christmas Day involved a lot more family visiting... until 3AM again. Same with boxing day. And each day we ate the same food and lots of it. So 3 days with terrible sleep patterns, lots of the same food and constantly hosting/visiting family = exhausted!
Tonight was New Years and the Finns really celebrate! Everyone buys fireworks to set off around midnight. Since we live in the middle of a forest with houses scattered along the road, we could see fireworks all over in the true darkness provided by the trees. And when I say everyone buys fireworks, I mean everyone! They are sold almost everywhere, quite cheap, and the launching the fireworks is always a great family event... except the Dad is busy trying not to blow his face off :)
Another unique Finnish tradition involves placing a horseshoe-shaped piece of tin in a frying pan and letting the horseshoe heat up in the fireplace. After a while, you dump the heated tin in a bucket of cold water. The result looks like this:
It's sort of hard to see here, but it's a basically a frail tin sculpture. By examining this chemistry experiment, you can learn something about what the new year holds for you. At least, that's the tradition.
Now we are in 2009 and my resolution is to stop speaking English all the time and speak/write only in Finnish with my family and friends here. I'm determined to learn Finnish and my progress is too slow. I'm almost halfway through my year, and while I can read pretty well, my spoken language is still fractured and lacking in proper grammar. It's time to change that. I've made it clear to everyone that they must be patient and help me out, although I have already been using Finnish on and off with my family and Rotarians.
That's it for now! Well... here's one picture of our dog: Jokeri. He's huge but quite friendly.
Happy New Year! 2009 is the year I'll be returning to Canada... but I still have so much to do before then!
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