We have been in Finland for over a week now. The weather is much like Wisconsin, except for the darkness. It was getting to me yesterday. We are in our place and made the trek to the University to meet with our contact. Everyone, except bus drivers it seems, speaks English and speaks it well. It is a great place to be a tourist because you can get by without learning the language. It means that we will need to work hard to actually learn it ourselves! Apparently there are classes at the University that we can take.
On Christmas Eve we went to the Cemetery and watched as the soldiers took their turn standing by a large monument. Many people go to the cemetery and leave a lit candle by the grave of a loved one. There were many there when we went. Helps to dispel the darkness.
We lit Channuka candles in our homemade Channukia Menorah. We carve out a new hole each night and add one more candle--in a potato (thanks Lali!) I am looking for candlesticks to use for Shabbat, didn't want to bring any.
Our sleeping and eating schedules are normalizing. For the fist week, I would wake up in the middle of the night and, being wide awake, would get a ton of things done! Now we are closer to a Finnish schedule. It is still odd to wake up before the sun, hours before the sun actually. Sunrise is around 9:45 a.m. and sunset around 2:30. We arrived before the shortest day, now we are on our way to the longest day!
The food is very tasty and the veggies are all marked as to country of origin. Stuff from Israel, Africa, Finland, Spain and South America. Oddly nothing from California! The apples actually have flavor and we usually get bananas that are marked fair trade, they are tasty as well (at home I eat organic bananas as they actually have flavor and color.) Meat is not as expensive as I feared, but soap is very expensive. Would you believe that they have Best Foods (aka Hellman's) Mayonnaise?! I am planning to make my own here, since I understand that the eggs do not contain salmonella, nice.
Saw the sun today, it is a big deal and we got ready and went out. The sun moves across the sky very low to the horizon. Was snowing this morning when I got up, then it cleared. They don't salt here, but use a lot of gravel. So the sidewalks can be a river of ice. I walk very carefully. Walking on ice, with a tremendous gust of wind pushing you, and then throwing sand in your face can be challenging. Thankfully I brought my "crampons" for walking in the winter!
Great! Your description of living with essentially no daylight was enlightening (bad pun, I know.) I can't imagine.
ReplyDeleteWe are in Texas where, despite recent rain, they're in the midst of an incredible drought. Last night we lit candles with Mort S., who's also here. Tomorrow night we three will cheer for the UW-EC women's basketball team. Yesterday we toured the campus of Southwestern University, a small private college on a lovely campus--much smaller than UW-EC. And today we'll visit some friends and some relatives who live in TX.
Great blog, Becky! Very interesting-- I didn't realize the days were so short there this time of year. That would be hard; I struggle with the length of Wisconsin's comparatively longer winter days. Bought a full spectrum bulb for my reading light; haven't decided if it's helping me or not.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, keep up the interesting blog! What is your apartment like? What other differences do you observe between our two cultures or in day to day living?