My Fall Break: Finnish style!

A few weeks ago I had a much needed week off school for fall break. I decided to take advantage of this time to see some more of Finland, since Kokkola and the Helsinki airport are the only 2 places I have seen! I went to visit Linn (my 21 year old host sister) with Leena (my host mom) for the first part of the week in Turku (about a 6 hour drive south along the coast of Finland). Linn studies International Law in Swedish at a university there; I have to add that she also plays on an American Football team too- so cool! We stayed at her apartment and toured the city for 4 days. Currently, Turku is the Cultural Capital of Europe so the city is full of things to do and special exhibits. It was really beautiful to walk along the river and see the city that is the old capital of Finland. We went shopping, to the Handicrafts Museum, saw the Turku Cathedral, visited the Art Museum to see a special Carl Larsson exhibit, toured the Castle and walked around the whole city. It was lovely and a nice change of scenery for me! Then, Leena went back to Kokkola and I went on to Helsinki (just 2 more hours southeast on train) with Linn. We visited and stayed with some of her friends, which was so nice! We stayed 2 nights/3 days and surprisingly accomplished everything I had on my "Helsinki Itinerary" haha! We walked the city, found the Marimekko outlet, took the ferry to Suomenlinna Isalnd (a beautiful UNESCO Wold Heritage Site), ate Finnish pastries, toured the Ateneum Art Museum (fun fact: it was the 1st museum in the world to have a Van Gogh painting), and visited 3 churches! After everything, it was back to Kokkola and back to school! Here are some photos from my trip:

~TURKU~

The river at night

The Cathedral

The Fortress- finished in the 14th century and the largest

surviving medieval building in Finland

Turku Art Museum with the Carl Larsson exhibit

Yummy pastries similar to a blueberry filled doughnut

~HELSINKI~

Temppeliaukio Church- it is quarried out of the natural bedrock

A view of the inside... I thought it was so cool and unique!

Uspenski Orthodox Church

The Cathedral

Suomenlinna Island

Linn and I freezing at the King's Gate

My Finnish Life: School and Food... because it is getting to be too cold and dark to do anything else!

So, I wanted to share a little bit about my experience here at the school, because... well, it is the reason I am here! I spend my Mondays and Tuesday with 5e and 6e (the e stands for English because every grade also r-Swedish and s-Finnish classes) and my Wednesdays and Thursdays with 1e and my Fridays with 2e! I really love all the classes and mostly enjoy getting to know the kids over lunch, playtime, and of course lessons! A few weeks ago I went on a field trip with 6e to attend a day where we learned all about Medieval Kokkola and what life was like; it was completely in Finnish so I didn't learn very much haha, but enjoyed the experience! We made some type of bread, listened to stories, and made candles by carving out rutabagas. Here are a few pics:

Another important aspect of school is the food, since school lunch is free for the students everyone eats it and I don't think bringing your lunch is even allowed. I learned that it costs the schools less than 50 euro cents per child for lunch; that is pretty amazing! But, being a girl who has never eaten a proper school lunch in her life, I was skeptical of the quality of food.

However, it hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be and for the most part, it is pretty healthy. Sadly, there is never any pizza or hamburgers. It is a self-service system so all the kids dish up their own bowls of food (even the 1st graders!), but are supposed to take a little of everything. Drink options include milk and water and there are always these rye crackers available (everyone eats these with tons of butter lathered on top because they don't really have much of a flavor). A lot of the meals include potatoes because they grow well

here and are very inexpensive and then some sort of meat or fish dish. These all sound decent, but sometimes the cooks like to make meals with LIVER! For example, today's lunch was some type of mixed liver and rice... gross! Let's just say I stuck to a glass of milk and crackers and butter! I don't have any pictures of school food yet, but here are a few other gems I have found in the grocery store or food that I have tried at my host family's house:

Some type of canned fish... complete with eyeballs!

A typical Finnish meal: Sausages (in America we call these giant hot dogs), smoked fish, and these rice cakes that are supposed to be topped with eggs and butter.

AND

Some wild chanterelle mushrooms Leena got from the forest- yum!

Berrylicious and a few other important things about Finland!

New experiences for me:

1. Cloudberry ice cream and homemade citrus-apple crumble is a delicious combo!! I haven't actually seen or eaten a fresh cloudberry yet (they mostly grow in the northern regions of Finland), but recently tried this flavor of ice cream- it tastes a little bit like a raspberry.

2. Buckhorn berries grow here in Kokkola and are a very tart. My host mom Leena told me each berry has as much vitamin C as an orange, so people eat them like vitamins here- a few every morning will keep you healthy! The flavor is a very intense and sour/tang... after you get over the initial pop of flavor in your mouth, it is actually quite yummy!

(I don't have any photos, so go google "buckhorn berry")

3. Since I now live on a farm, in the middle of the forrest, I spend a lot of time taking walks there and looking atall the surrounding nature. I have discovered a new appreciation for fungus; it can be so beautiful!

4. I went sailing for the first time last weekend with Daniel and Leena and loved it. Luckily we had a nice sunny day and just the right amount of wind! We went to an island and had a picnic grill lunch while looking out at the amazing scenery. This island was especially nice because it had a bathroom/latrine and of course, a big sauna (I quickly learned the Finnish people can't live without them)! They aren't for the public, but if you pay a small annual fee to this boating committee then you get a key and can use all these facilities on all these different islands.

5. Yesterday was potato harvest day on the farm, so we all helped with collecting the potatoes; it brought back so many memories from when my family used to have a small garden in Seattle; we would harvest our potatoes and gather them in our plastic kiddy pool... basically the same as what I was doing on the farm haha!!

Land o' lakes, berries and shrooms!

I have almost completed my first week here in Finland and learned so many new things already! Here a few that I thought were worth mentioning on my first blog post because they are things that I wondered about before coming...

1) Finland isn't freezing... well at least not yet! I didn't really know what to expect when I stepped off my first plane in Helsinki, but it was perfect! The day I arrived it was about 65-70 degrees and I actually had to take layers off. I know it isn't really winter yet, so it will be getting colder but right now it is lovely! My host mom Leena asked me today if I liked long underwear (and if you know me well, the answer is obviously no haha!), so I know the real cold is probably coming soon.

2) People EAT jam- not on bread or toast... they just eat it plain!! Being a normal American, when I saw jam as part of the school lunch I put it on my buttered cracker (there was no bread) and every student at my table just kind of looked at me strangely haha! I don't really understand why they just eat lingonberry jam, but I will admit it is delicious!

3) Coffee and/or tea is consumed about 4-6 times a day. I don't know if it because it is usually always so cold here, but I love this, especially because it is usually accompanied with cookies, apple cake, sweet rolls, etc!!

4) Most people know English- I haven't encountered a single person who doesn't speak enough English to communicate with me. However, everything I hear on the street and in shops is either Swedish or Finnish. This is good for me because I haven't quite mastered Swedish or Finnish in my first week here haha!

5) I read before I came that Finland has the most lakes in a single country... and I believe it now. I went "trekking" (more like walking because it is so incredibly flat here) with my host parents Daniel and Leena this weekend and walked by about 4 bodies of water/marshes/lakes in just a 3 mile trek! The hike was so beautiful; everywhere I looked was forrest filled with moss, mushrooms and lingonberries. Here are a few photos to visually explain the elegance that is basically in my backyard! I can't believe how lucky I am to be in such a beautiful place, and if anyone has been on the fence about Kokkola or Finland these should make you bump it up on your list of places to visit. Here's a look: