Trees

There are lots of trees in Finland

There are lots of trees up in the mountains in Colorado, but down where we live, the trees are limited by water needs to riparian areas. It’s nice to be here, where trees grow everywhere. The forest is not quite the same as the ones I grew up with in Indian, but it’s dense and cool, and there’s quite a variety of different trees, not just boxelders, aspens, and evergreens. I like it.

The Mountain

This is the mountain that gave our street its name.

In Colorado, we spend a lot of time in the mountains (notice the plural form). We look at the mountains each day when we drive home from town. We watch the mountains for our weather, and just for the sheer beauty of the Colorado skyline. We have a mountain in Helsinki. In fact, we live close enough to it that our street is called Mountain Man Street (Vuorimiehenkatu). This is the mountain. Yes, it’s about three stories high. The only time it feels like a mountain to me is when I have to walk over it to get home from the grocery store carrying 300 pounds of groceries.

Bomb Shelters

Most buildings in Helsinki have a bomb shelter. Seriously.

When we toured the bicycle storage options at our flat back in October, Matt & I joked to each other that it looked like a bomb shelter. Our wonderful relocation assistant informed us that that was exactly what it was. I guess if you lived a few hours’ train ride from Russia during the Cold War, you built bomb shelters all over the place. This one is the bomb shelter for a very posh building right on the park by our house. I wonder what they store in there, and if we could have a tour of bomb shelters like the tour of chicken coops we used to do each year in Lyons.

Moomins

Moomintroll - Is he a troll or a hippo??? Neither, he is a philosopher!

Most Finnish children grew up with Muumis instead of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I’m both jealous and determined that my children (and my nieces!) will know Tove Johansson’s charming tales of Moomintroll and his adventures as they grow up. A cross between a troll and a hippo, a moomin is a philosopher at heart and seems down-right Hobbit-like in habit if not in appearance. Yes, I’m obsessed.

Houses with Names

I love houses with names instead of addresses. We should all have them!

Since long before I registered what has now become our perfect house-name, Chez Artz, I dreamed of having a house with a name instead of an address. There seem to be plenty of these types of places in every European city I’ve ever visited, and Helsinki is no exception. This one, Villa Ulrika, is right around the corner from us. I doubt I’ll ever get to live in Chez Artz, but I would settle for one with someone else’s name.

The Tram System

The 3T tram that we take almost daily leaves from the top of our street.

Above-ground trains are fun. Yes, they sometimes get hit by taxis. Yes, they sometimes get blocked by people who don’t know how to parallel park next to a snowbank on Helsinki’s narrow streets, but there’s nothing that beats watching the city slip by from the relative warmth & comfort of one of Helsinki’s trams. For your convenience, you can also read the news and watch the weather forecast from one of the LCD panels on the tram. Bonus!

Bulbs

Bulbs blooming on a random patch of ground in the park by our house

A few weeks ago, when mysterious concrete urns of forced daffodils started appearing all over Helsinki, I was annoyed that we lived in a place that, in the absence of a real spring, simply imported one from Holland. Now that it’s actually warmed up, I’m pleased to announce that there is a real spring in Helsinki and that it involves loads and loads of bulbs. They’re planted everywhere, and they’re layered nicely, meaning that I can expect a show for at least the next month. Did I mention that I love wood hyacinth and have them planted all over at home in Colorado? Seeing them here provides a warm memory of home.

K-City Market

Only at K-City Market: Scooters for sale!

K-City Market is the big grocery store by Gabriel’s school. It’s more like a department store plus grocery store, but nowhere near as high-end as Stockmann (which I also love dearly!). At K-City Market, you can get all of your groceries, buy rubber boots, art supplies, and yarn, and yes, you can also buy a scooter for 1000 Euros if you’re so inclined!

Holiday-Specific Buns

A bun for all seasons?

I mentioned in my post on Easter in Finland that there’s a special bun, pictured above, for Easter. I’m finding that there is, in fact, a special sweet pastry for just about every holiday in Finland. When it comes to expressing cultural events through food, I’m all in. These holiday-specific pastries show up a week or so before the special day and disappear the day after the holiday. You can either buy them prepackaged from one of the major manufacturers (Fazer being the most popular and largest), or from one of many local bakers who sell them at the market or from their bakeries.

The Market!

The market hall, with the Senate Hall in the background.

This photo actually captures two things I love about Helsinki. The first is the beautiful pastel buildings with their white trim, which remind me of Wedgwood and add some color to an otherwise gray winter landscape here in Helsinki. The second is the orange tents of the Vanha Kauppatori or Old Outdoor Market. It and it’s corresponding market hall, Vanha Kauppahalle, are a few blocks up the street from our house. Here, we can buy fruits & veggies, cheeses, meats, fish, and premade goods like hummus, sushi rolls, and bread/baked goods. Although the winter pickings are definitely more slim than what’s on offer during the season, it’s a great thing to have right in the neighborhood. It makes up a bit for missing the Boulder Farmer’s Market this season!

The Kids

The kids on our recent trip to Paris

Although this picture is from Paris and not Helsinki, it does really capture one of the biggest things I love about being here. It’s not just being in Europe again, with all that has to offer in terms of culture, amazing (and amazingly close-by) vacation destinations, and learning opportunities. It’s also being able, for the first time since my 9 months of maternity leave after Lily was born, to stay home with the kids. I won’t pretend that it’s been a flawless transition, but I’ve been off work now for almost ten months and with each day that goes by, I become more and more sure that returning to a desk job is not in the plan for me.

1. There are tons of lactose-intolerant people here, so their lactose-free milk and other dairy products are really superb. I’ve even had ice-cream from time to time in the past six months.
2. The kids are picking up British accents because the English-speakers here (which is everyone) learned in Europe, so they learned English with a British accent. It’s totally cute.
3. Native Finns have very thin, fine hair. The lady who cut my hair here over the winter mentioned that she didn’t think I needed to wear a hat due to my huge thick mop of curly hair. She also had no idea how to cut it, so I’m still in the market for a hairdresser!
4. The traditional candy here is salty licorice flavored. It’s as yummy as it sounds.
5. They have cottage cheese here (rae juusto), but it’s unsalted and a bit more rubbery than the American version. Yes, I salt it.
6. They lay gravel over the snow all winter long, and have to send in crews to sweep up huge piles of it once the snow has melted.
7. Everyone smokes here and the consider it perfectly OK to pitch a cigarette butt into the nearest snow bank. Ewww.
8. A close corollary to the above is that many people have tiny dogs and consider it perfectly acceptable to let them shit as they please. And if you don’t pick it up, it lingers, frozen, until the next snow storm buries it. Then it reappears as turd slushy in April. Whee!
9. The big department store here is called Stockmann and twice a year they have “Crazy Days.” During Crazy Days, there are different sales each day and people get a catalog in advance with all the deals in it, so they come stake out the store days before the sale begins. Helsinki is overrun with people carrying yellow Crazy Days bags during these sales. It’s really a community-wide event.
10. Finnish children dress up and trick or treat on Palm Sunday instead of at Halloween. They typically dress up as witches and say a Finnish blessing/spell to you in exchange for a treat to go in their basket.

Oh, and the local newspaper has an even funnier list along the lines of “you know you’ve been in Finland too long if…” Definitely worth reading for a humorous look at what we have to look forward to.

Scooters for sale at the local grocery store. Seriously.

When I was back in America last week, my niece asked me what life was like in Helsinki and I realized I hadn’t ever really answered that question. Part of the hang-up is that I’m pretty sure half of the things that are different for us here would be different had we moved to any city, in America or otherwise.

Let’s face it: Lyons is a small mountain town. At 2,000 people, it allows for an amazing sense of community and people are open and friendly in a way that I think is fairly unique to small-town America. There’s amazing support for local businesses and artists. But it’s also quite a drive to any of the conveniences of the city.

So let’s talk about a day in the life of Julie…First, I don’t drive here in Helsinki. That means I have to harangue the kids out the door every single morning or risk missing the 8:11 tram that gets Gabriel to school a bit early but allows me to deliver Lily to her school on time at 9am. Yes, that’s a 50 minute commute. A lot of that is walking to Gabriel’s school from the Metro stop and then walking to the bus stop where Lily & I catch the bus to her school, but it’s still a lot longer commute than the 3 blocks to Gabriel’s bus stop and 2 blocks to Lily’s school that we enjoyed in Colorado. Oh how I can’t wait until next year when both kids are at the same school!

After schlepping the kids to school, I usually stop by the grocery. No car means everything I buy either comes from our once-weekly co-op delivery or gets hand-carried home. At this time of year, that’s a lot less daunting than it was in January when it was hovering around zero Fahrenheit and was dark most of the day.

I don’t want to complain too much about the no car situation, because we certainly could have one (or two) if we chose. But we decided when we moved here that if we were going to live in the city, we wanted to do it right, and for us that meant living in city center and taking advantage of the excellent system of buses, Metro, and trams that can get us just about anywhere cheaply and efficiently. And have I mentioned that parking in (any) town is a nightmare? Yeah, very happy to leave the parking, and the driving on the snow, and the watching out for crazy taxi drivers to someone else.

We all know I’m a bit of a fanatic about food, and in Colorado I had spent literally years seeking out all the best in local, organic produce, dry goods, and meats. Starting over again here in Helsinki has been a challenge. There have been more than a few South American/South African fruits and veggies in the fridge this winter. But I’m making progress. The Vahna Kauppahalle (Old Market Hall) is just a few blocks from our house and although aside from fresh-caught fish it’s a little sparse in the winter, spring already looks promising. We have local, wild-harvested mushrooms and berries to look forward to, and have already enjoyed fresh pheasant, local chicken, and fish from both the rivers and the seas around Helsinki. There’s even a fair bit of greenhouse-grown produce, although in the winter that’s mainly salads and herbs.

So we’re eating in much the same way that we did in Colorado, but I think less food ends up in the compost because I’m only buying a few days’ worth at a time. Unlike at home, someone else deals with the compost too, which is so nice! As much as I loved making my own dirt in Colorado, it’s nice to take a break from dealing with flies, varmints, and dogs who like to dig in the compost and just drop my compostables off with my other trash and recyclables in the bins in our courtyard.

Living in an apartment instead of large free-standing house is probably the biggest difference in our day-to-day life and there’s good and bad in it. Being in a 100+ year old flat is really interesting. The place has gorgeous high ceilings, a fun and beautiful wide stairwell leading up to our door, and looks out on one of the more beautiful historic neighborhoods in Helsinki. The kids have an awesome toy loft that makes up for some of the space they’ve lost and keeps things like Legos up off the floors.

The wood floors are so much easier to keep clean than carpeting and the place is, overall, less dusty as a result. The radiator heating is a bit touchy and not quite warm enough when it hits those really bitter temperatures I mentioned above, but it’s very energy efficient–we’re using less energy even when considered proportionately due to the smaller space we’re heating here in Helsinki. But I have to admit that I miss being able to bundle the kids up and shove them out the door when they’re getting stir crazy. And I miss my garden. My little window box and window herb garden are just not really cutting it for me now that the sun has returned–I long to have my hands in the dirt and am not sure how I’m going to get my fix!

Another interesting adjustment has been Matt’s work schedule. Even though he’s no stranger to long hours, in Colorado he worked from home most days. Here, he is working the long hours and working them 40 minutes away in Nokia’s main office in Espoo. We’re definitely still adjusting to having less time with him, but our generous European vacation benefits are going to be making up for a pretty big day-to-day Daddy deficit.

There are so many other subtle differences that I’m sure I’m forgetting. People don’t make eye contact here and they are certainly more soft-spoken than myself or my rowdy very-American kids. But everyone I have encountered thus far has been friendly, generous, and helpful, which is a life-saver when you’re trying to stay afloat in a new place. And I think we are staying afloat these days, not just treading water and trying to survive like we were in the darkest days of the winter. We’re making friends and getting out to explore our new surroundings. The kids are meeting people and having play dates and LOVE the International School. It’s a different world for a lot of reasons, but it’s a good one so far.

In short, no. The temps have been hovering at or below 0F (-17C) for the past several weeks and although it’s supposed to “warm up” tomorrow, we’ve probably got another solid month before I can even start to wish for melting snow, let alone something green to break up the blinding sheet of white (ah yes, when it’s this cold, it’s brilliantly sunny, which does in fact make the snow blinding). It feels idiotic to complain about the cold and the snow since we live in Finland, which is not exactly known for its tropical temperatures. However, I console myself with the fact that even the Finns are complaining about this bitter weather.

One of the things people often ask is what we miss from home. The answer is, other than family and friends, precious little. We’ve found most of the comforts we crave although anyone who comes to visit would be welcomed to bring us some of our favorite guacamole seasoning, refried beans, boxed mac-n-cheese, and ice-cube trays. Yes, I said ice-cube trays. Yes, I am smiling at the great irony that in the land of freaking ice and snow, the ice-cube trays are…unsatisfactory. Our flat came with one tiny dorm-room fridge-sized tray that has been inadequate in many ways. I recently embarked on a shopping trip to Stockmann, the great (if over-priced) Mecca of all you could need in this world. And I purchased a new, big, fancy silicon ice-cube tray for 13 Euros (~$20). It is with great sadness that I report that it, too, is a piece of shit. Are there no good ice-cube trays in Finland? WTF?

Adjustment to our new home continues. Matt & I have both started taking Finnish lessons with a private tutor, and both have agreed that our brains feel scrambled at the end of each session. I can now count to ten, exchange all the usual hello/goodbye/how are you pleasantries, say the days of the week, and have even started to conjugate verbs and put together very basic sentences in Finnish. I’m adding to my food vocabulary on an almost daily basis, and haven’t ordered anything too awful from the organic food coop we’ve found (which only has parts of its site translated to English). Words that I actually understand are popping up with increasing rapidity as I eaves-drop my way through town. But I have a long way to go, and traveling to Paris, where I understood almost everything, was a welcomed relief.

We’re still anxiously awaiting news with regards to Lily’s spot at the International School next year. Although I tried to be zen about her not getting in this year since we moved in mid-year and since Nokia wouldn’t pay for a 4 year old to go anyway, I will be less so if she doesn’t get in for Kindergarten. Cross your fingers for us. Gabriel has really been thriving at ISH and I am really hoping Lily will be able to do so as well next year. While she enjoys her current play school, it’s definitely more of a structured play time than a school and she’s anxious to work on her letters and her reading, so we’ve been doing that at home since they don’t really work much on that at school.

The picture at the beginning of this post was taken this month at the International Party they do each year at ISH. This is the kids’ interpretation of what “dressing American” is like, which I thought was pretty funny. My investigation of my own cultural identity crisis continues even as we teach the children about different cultures and what it means to be American.

This week marked the fifteen year anniversary of the day Matt & I met. We were lucky enough to spend that day in Paris, just as we had fifteen years ago. A milestone like that makes me take stock and appreciate all that we’ve done together over the years–it’s been quite a ride so far and the next fifteen years look to be just as interesting. Although I had one of those gut feelings that told me he was the one for me soon after we met, I never could have anticipated what the bit after the “happily ever after” looked like. There’s surprisingly little that I would change, and certainly nothing of consequence.

It was interesting to watch Gabriel relax and calm down bit by bit over the two weeks. Although he’s doing great at school and making friends, he’s an angry little boy at the moment. It makes perfect sense–we uprooted him & moved him to a strange land far away from everything that’s familiar and comfortable to him. What’s interesting is that he seems as surprised by his angry outbursts as we are. He can’t really describe what it is that sets him off, and he’s always quite repentent after the fact. Whenever we talk to him about how he’s feeling, he says he loves Finland–his school, the snow, riding the train, getting to go sledding so much–and he’s completely enamored of our new flat (as are we), but there’s definitely some sort of resistance or fear lurking there that we’ll have to work through.

It’s not really doing anything for my residual guilt about putting the kids into such turmoil, but it is teaching me yet another lesson in both patience and unconditional love. So he unwound bit by bit over the two weeks and I’ll be interested to see if he winds back up again next week when school starts, or if we’re through the worst of the adjustment period (considering that I was expecting 6 months of adjustment, I’m guessing we’re not out of the woods yet).

Although the kids have another week off, Matt is back to work, and I’m feeling like the honeymoon is over and it’s time to get to work. Yeah, whatever that means. I’ve unpacked the house, mostly furnished it (although there are still curtains & rugs to be purchased), gotten the kids settled in school, and figured out the day-to-day necessities like shopping & transport. Now what?

Not exactly a new question in my life, so it’s surprising how often I find that I don’t have an answer. After deciding that running on snow pack in sub-zero temps was not to my liking, I joined the local gym. I’ve been knitting quite a bit. I joined the freaking PTO (go ahead, poke fun, I’m certainly laughing about it). And of course, my Finnish continues to develop at a snail’s pace. But it looks like 2011 may be the year where, once and for all, I have to admit that I am not a career woman (I’ve been dabbling at a career, you see, since roughly 2001, but nothing I’ve done has really inspired me to stick with it) and figure out what, then, I actually am. I’ll let you know when I come up with something worth mentioning.

In the meantime, I thought I’d take a stab at another perpetual question: What is Helsinki like in the winter? Wow. It’s really freaking dark. Seriously. You can read the descriptions, you can look at all the day-length tables that are out there, but you cannot really understand the darkness until you’ve been here. The sun allegedly rose at 9:24 this morning (about 12 minutes ago) and will set at 15:28. That means there’s roughly six hours of daylight at present (although we were about half an hour shy of that at the darkest point two weeks ago).

But that does not, in my opinion, tell the whole story. They sky sort of gets light at 9:24, and it definitely gets fairly dark (streetlights aside) at 15:28. But honestly, I’ve found that the sun doesn’t actually crest the horizon until around 11 and dips back down just after 1. For frame of reference, the picture at the top of this post was taken at about 11:30, at what I would call actual sunrise (i.e. sun rises above the horizon). So even though it’s light on either side of that two hour window, it’s not the Vitamin D-producing, feel the sun on your face, drive away the winter blues sort of light. Twilight is lovely and all, but not when it’s your only light option.

We did buy two Philips Wake-Up Lights to help us get up 2.5 hours before the sun. And they do help. I’m also considering getting a sun lamp. I thought I could just power through the darkness, but I think my boy child needs it too, so I’m relenting and will probably go pick one up next week. They’re expensive, but I’ve probably got 2 more winters here and I think it will be worth it in the long run.

The lack of light is a lot more daunting than the snow and cold. I have figured out that -10C (14F) is about my limit in terms of being able to enjoy being outdoors. Thankfully, it does not regularly get colder than that, although we’ve seen temps down to -19C for brief periods, and the wind-chill has dropped well below that as well. We have close to three feet of snow at this point and, surprisingly, Helsinki actually has more than the rest of Finland (yes, even more than Lapland) at present, which is very unusual.

We’ve been out snowshoeing and skiing several times and it’s wild to do so in such deep, dry snow. Even with my snowshoes on, I need gaiters and am still sinking in up to my knees. The kids are having a bit better luck because they’re lighter, and I also think their bear-claw shoes have more surface area for their weight than our adult ones do. It’s still fun (and an awesome workout), but I’m looking forward to getting out on the skis without the kids now that others have blazed some nice ski trails through Kaivopuisto–there’s a loop that’s about a mile from what I can tell, so I can probably get some sun and a good workout in by doing a few laps! A mile is still a little too far for Lily and although I think G could do it, I want to build his mileage slowly so that he doesn’t get frustrated or discouraged, especially in his current state of mind.

Boxes, boxes everywhere, and more than a drop to drink!

On the one hand, the glacial pace at which I’m learning Finnish makes me feel like I’m just off the plane. On the other, I’m feeling comfortable enough with city center to get around without a map these days and have figured out most of the public transport connections I need to get through my daily routine.

The International School has turned out to be a wonderful place to meet people and although I’m being uncharacteristically reserved as I enter this new environment, it’s nice to have a network of people who have all been through what we’ve just been through. This was especially true last week and the week before as we were playing follow the bouncing ball with the date of our goods delivery. First terrible weather on the northern seas delayed our shipment, then customs delayed it, then the truck got stuck in a snow bank (Seriously. In Finland. Where truck drivers spend half their working lives driving in bad weather.). Ultimately, our stuff arrived at the new place on Wednesday and we’ve been slowly unpacking ever since.

I’m quite good at deceiving myself, so I suddenly got hugely ambitious about Christmas & housewares shopping right about the time that I felt totally overwhelmed by the unpacking. After three days of complete unpacking inertia, Matt came up with the brilliant plan of moving all the unpacked boxes into the guest bedroom and closing the door. That allows me to pull one box out, deal with it in its entirety, and move on without feeling so scattered.

We’re having a little trouble with the wiring in this very old but beautiful building as well. First, light fixtures do not come with the house the way they do in the US, so other than the ubiquitous Habitat paper globe light in the kids’ room and some fixtures in the bathroom & kitchen, we had no lights when we moved in. This is a problem during this, the darkest week of the year, in a place where it’s getting light around 9 and dark again around 3pm. It’s complicated by the old wiring and the fact that we have dimmer switches in the two main living areas (living room and dining room), which adds another wire to the wiring mess. Suffice it to say that we’re relying on floor lamps until an electrician can come on Monday to install the two lights I have for those rooms. The Internet also required some rework on the part of our ISP and some manipulation on our end as well (the wifi in the router they gave us SUCKS so thank goodness we had our Mac wifi router with us).

In other news, I have way, way, way too much stuff even after decluttering 30% of our stuff. I have declared a moratorium on kitchen gadgets, tea, Christmas decorations, and framed art & pictures until further notice. I have also instituted a one-in, one-out rule for all clothing purchases; if I buy something, something else has to vacate. I have a lot of clothes that I don’t wear, that I’m not going to wear, and that are probably not even fashionable were I to wear them. And I got rid of TONS of clothes before I left. How did this happen? I have empty drawer & closet space, so it’s not a space issue, it’s just that I’ve realized that after one month here, I’m wearing the same favorite jeans & tops.

As soon as I find the Finnish version of Goodwill, I’m making some donations because I’m going to have to do some shopping. First off, I need a warmer coat. I am going to wait until the week after Christmas for the sales, but will likely get a down coat and a second pair of boots. The ski jacket, as much as I love it, is not what fashionable ladies wear in the city here (in Colorado, everyone seems to have a closet full of ski jackets and bright colors are completely acceptable). So I’ve been wearing my wool coat and although it’s warm, down will be warmer.

I will not be investing in the thigh-high legwarmers or tall fur hats that many ladies wear here. But I am drooling over all the boot options and getting really sick of wearing the same (lovely, comfortable, warm) boring old boots every single day. I’m also considering sheepskin mittens because even my ski gloves (which thankfully, unlike my ski jacket, are not hot pink & purple!) are not nearly warm enough when I’m out and about.

And I’m out and about a lot. It’s interesting, because it’s actually been much colder in some parts of the US than it is here. But the difference I’m noticing is that I’m outside a lot more. In Colorado, we’d wait for a nice, sunny, 25-35 degree day to do our snowshoeing/sledding/skiing and stay safely in our warm cars or warm houses the other colder days. That’s just not an option here. Likewise, in Colorado, if we waited a few days, we’d inevitably get days above freezing, which I don’t think we’re going to see here until March. I have a small fridge & no car, which means I’m outside every single day schlepping kids to school, going to the grocery, or running other errands. If it’s really miserable, we might be able to swing staying home one day of the weekend, but usually that’s just not an option.

So seven days a week, I’m waking a couple of kilometers in weather much colder than I’m used to. I am adjusting, and seeing all the poor fools souls out there shoveling their plowed-in cars out of the muck to get out of their on-street parking space has not made me any more keen on driving in Helsinki.

Christmas is a fun time here. There are Christmas markets all over the place and Joulupukki (Santa) is making regular appearances. The lights are really lovely, especially with all the nice snow, and there’s quite a bit of music in the streets, which makes everything quite festive. We’re going to get a tree this weekend and I’ve very nearly finished my shopping (I, who typically avoids any & all brick & mortar shopping in December, have done all of my shopping in the past week or so, egads). The kids are having holiday parties at school and Christmas pageants and the like, and are looking forward to being done with school for three weeks starting tomorrow.

Sorry I don’t have much exciting stuff to relay. I’m looking forward to getting through the unpacking phase and into the settling in phase, and of course longer days will be nice too! More soon.

The Cathedral

In his mind, I think he was preparing me for Helsinki to be unlike other capital cities that I love: Paris, London, Edinburgh, Rome, Brussels. And in that way, he’s correct; Helsinki is unlike the other capital cities I’ve visited in Western Europe. For starters, it’s about the size of Boulder (but with twice the population). There’s only one Metro line and you can walk across the narrowest part of the city in probably 15 minutes. In Paris, that might take days!

But when I walked out the door and headed into the city that first day in October, I was expecting something very different from the beautifully-stuccoed buildings with their crisp white trim, the huge (and hugely gorgeous) cathedral that is nestled in the eastern part of the downtown area, the sea surprising you around every corner. I was pleasantly surprised, and perhaps that was his intent.

Likewise, people I spoke with and books I read warned that the Finns are quiet, austere, and in some cases downright cold and unfriendly. I will certainly admit that eye contact on the bus is definitely a faux pas (although staring, especially when someone has Medusa hair, appears perfectly normal). But I have once again been pleasantly surprised to hear old people speak affectionately to the children in the grocery store, to have multiple people do such helpful things as hold the door, stop the tram when I’m running up to it with the children, give up their place so the children can sit down, and to have actually been invited to my first Finnish ladies’ night out by someone I only met in passing in the building in which we’re currently living.

It's very cold this week. Note multiple layers & raw cheeks.

But I’m adjusting. And getting to talk to other real live human beings who were not my children also really, really helped. I got introduced to several expats living in Europe on Monday by a mutual friend. After a couple of Skype chats, I feel like we’re getting to know each other and have quite a bit in common. They’ve been hugely helpful both emotionally and practically-speaking since they have made the big move themselves and understand the challenges.

I got to talk on the phone to people in the US this week too and got some great emails from friends. I know you people think I’m so busy that I don’t need you to write, but you would be wrong. Your emails are a lifeline, please keep them coming! I had my first coffee date with a new friend in Helsinki and did some shopping with her, which was fabulous. I met the PTO ladies at Gabriel’s school, and got invited to a series of holiday events that will fill up some of the dark evening hours in the next few weeks. The family also got to spend a wonderful Thanksgiving meal out full of wonderful conversation & fun times with friends. Oh, and I met someone at the school who wants to have a garden plot with me this spring. AND she speaks Swedish, which should make the sign-up process about a zillion times easier since the garden plot reservation system does not seem to have any English Language translations.

And of course, the best news of all is that our stuff is going to arrive at our new apartment a week from today, before the long weekend so that Matt & I will have three full days to unpack and get organized. Never mind that I’m also going to be dragging him out to get a Christmas tree that same weekend!

Gabriel & Lily hamming it up in their holiday outfits on Thanksgiving

So if you were on the receiving end of one of my grumpier/whinier/bitter emails, I apologize. Thanks for humoring me and letting me vent, and know that I’m not nuts. At least, not more nuts than I was when I left for Finland. I’m at a point where one bad trip to the grocery store (like Monday, when I couldn’t get the shopping cart to release from its brethren and lost my Euro, then forgot to weigh my leek & cucumber at the produce aisle and had to relinquish them to the checkout girl) is enough to ruin my day–Dr. Jekyll–and one good trip to the grocery store (remembered to weigh the leek & cucumber this time, successfully freed the shopping cart, AND found the granola bars that had been evading me on previous trips) makes me feel like I have figured it all out/conquered Finland/am an international traveling badass–Mr. Hyde.

It’s warmer today, right at zero C after several days in the negatives, so I decided to leave my hair curly this morning and wear my headband instead of my hat when I shuttled the kids off to school. You know, take advantage of the “warm weather” while it lasts. Har har.

It’s been snowing since Thursday, which I’ve been told is an unusually early freeze-up even by Finnish standards. We’ve got about 8 inches now and it’s still coming down. They’ve been keeping up with the plowing for the most part but today, either because the snow was still coming down or because they finally fell behind after near-constant plowing, the roads and sidewalks were not clear for the walk/tram/bus to school this morning and the tram was late, so we dropped G off at school a bit late and headed out again to take Lily to her school.

In addition to the snow, it’s also windy. Very windy. And it’s about a third of a mile walk to the bus from Gabriel’s school, so Lily wasn’t happy and I ended up carrying her part way. By the time I got on the bus, I was frazzled, but also prepared for the usual strange stares I get when we get on the bus. First, my coat is bright pink/purple, which I think is acceptable for teens here, but not so much for adults. Second, aforementioned curly hair is a bit of an anomaly here. Third, Lily often speaks VERY LOUDLY in English as we’re getting on the bus, thus illuminating a giant “ALIEN” sign over our heads.

So I was expecting the looks. But then I caught a look at myself in the rearview mirror of the bus. Holy Arctic Medusa! My hair had been blown up in the wind and then, seriously, frozen there. I wish I had a picture (and those Finns on the bus with me probably do too!). By the time I got to Lily’s school, it had melted and returned to more or less normal, but I think I’ll be wearing a hat this afternoon when I go to collect them from school!

In other news, I’ve bought an English-Finnish dictionary and a Berlitz Finnish CD to get me started while I wait to get signed up for language lessons. Google Translate does not seem to handle the endless prefixes and suffixes that make up Finnish very well, so I needed something a little better for my studies. Wish me luck!

Moomintroll

Her school is on Lauttasaari, an island that is between Helsinki proper & Espoo. Let you worry that that’s a long way away, I can see Lauttasaari out the window of our temporary flat. There’s just a smallish bridge between it and the mainland, so it should, in theory, be a short walk to the bus stop and then a short (<15 minute) bus ride to the top of the street where her school is. I was proactive; I looked up the route on the Journey Planner last night and wrote down all the details I thought I’d need. My only concern was that I don’t have my phone working yet, so I wouldn’t have GPS if I went astray, and my map of Helsinki has a nice advertisement right in the middle of Lauttasaari so that I can’t see Lily’s school on it.

I should have known. We made it to what I thought was the right bus, then tried to ask the bus driver which stop we needed (the street signs are smallish and not on every corner if you’re not on a main road, so it’s hard to tell where you are if you’re unfamiliar with the route). This counts as my first experience where someone spoke no English at all. I had the address written down and showed it to him and he looked as if he’d never heard of the road, which made me nervous since I thought the bus went on that road. I got off, which was not in itself a mistake. My mistake was not looking at the very helpful detailed map that is at nearly every bus stop in Helsinki.

I just started walking, figuring we had to be close. WRONG MOVE! It’s negative six today, and quite icy, so walking more than necessary with a four-year-old was not the best idea I’ve ever had. After walking about 10 minutes, we ended up going back to the bus stop, looking at the map and figuring out that we needed to go two streets over. After 10 more minutes, we were there and only about half an hour later than I was expecting. Lily settled in, and I had the bus ride and walk home to cool off (literally and figuratively) from my misadventure.

This experience didn’t do much for the irritation that I’m already feeling that there’s no spot for Lily at Gabriel’s school this year. At first, I didn’t think it mattered much because I was disinclined to pay the tuition myself (Nokia pays once your child turns 5, so not until next school year for Lily). Now that I see how amazingly convenient it would be to have them on the exact same schedule, I’m wishing there was a spot in K1 (basically pre-kindergarten) for her.

Our week in review

Other than this small frustration, things are really going quite well. We arrived Saturday morning and were so exhausted that we really just laid around all day that day. The shorter flight from New York to Helsinki meant less time for sleeping (and basically no sleep for me), so we were fried by the time we got here. Sunday, we took the children to Kaivopuisto (the Sea Serpent park) that is a block from our permanent apartment. Our hope was that they would be excited to see how close it is to where we’ll be living, but by the time we walked up the hill to where our flat is, they were tired and whiny.

Tired and whiny have been a theme this week. I’ve been reading my copy of Living & Working Abroad with Children, so I was expecting this behavior, but I think it’s been tough on Matt. He was hoping that our reunion would be a joyful one and instead, the kids have been demanding, haven’t wanted to do much besides watch movies and hang out in the apartment, and have been complaining a bit that the food’s different. Things improved on Thursday when we all finally more or less got a sound night of sleep and it started snowing. It was slushy, but I still got the kids out to play in it. Gabriel got to pelt me with snowballs, which seems to have been very satisfying for him He also got to go down the slide at Kaivopuisto, which shoots him like a rocket when it’s icy and he’s in his slick snow gear.

On the way home, I stopped at Stockmann, which is a huge department store in city-center that has a gourmet grocery in the basement. It has lots of good comfort food, so I picked up some pastries for the kids, peanut butter, and a couple of other treats.

Friday, the kids & I decided to lounge around the house all day, which ended up being a good choice. They were fried, and so was I. I fell asleep on the couch and they woke me up 90 minutes later (!!) to tell me that they had prepared a feast for me. Turns out it was herbed cream cheese on crackers and pears, which Gabriel annihilated cut up with a butter knife. It was a fun day and allowed us all to rest and unwind.

Unfortunately, Saturday Matt & I tried to run way too many errands and officially overran the kids’ patience and goodwill. We scouted out a natural grocery store (which had some good stuff, but wasn’t the type of place where I could do all of my shopping), Lidl (which is where we used to shop when Matt was living in Nancy, France, but this one is smaller and has less selection than what we were used to), the mall, and also tried to fit in a trip to the apartment to take some measurements and fill out our move-in survey of the place. That was clearly too much and we were all grumpy by the time we got home.

So Sunday, we played in the snow. I took a solo trip to the grocery store, which was very nice, even if I’m still getting the hang of having to weigh & sticker all the produce in the produce section instead of at the register. We noticed that there were tons of people getting off the tram at our stop (which is the end of the line and usually not very busy at all) and going in to our building complex. Turns out there was an Estonian craft market going on, so Matt & I took it in turns to go down and look. I have to tell you, it was all I could do not to blow the bank.

They had so many hand-knitted goods & yarn that I was in knitter’s heaven. Most of the yarn looked hand-spun and was really inexpensive (3-4 Euros for a good-sized skein of handspun that would have been more than twice that at home). They even had Moomintroll sweaters for the kiddos, and since I am apparently now completely obsessed with the Moomins, they were very tempting. Luckily for my pocketbook, I haven’t quite figured out European sizing for clothes (shoes I have down, however). I managed not to buy anything, and Matt got away with only some dried fruit (which I needed to make my Kugelhopf anyway!) and a little Estonia juniper box that smells really lovely.

Apostilles and other administrative headaches

This week, I need to get the applications for my & the children’s Finnish ID numbers completed and get my mobile phone working. Because in the US notaries are state-specific, they are not recognized internationally. This means that official documents like marriage licenses and birth certificates are pretty much meaningless outside the US. Unfortunately, my marriage license and the kids’ birth certificates are exactly what we need to get our ID numbers since those documents legally tie us to Matt, and Matt is the one who has employment here in Finland. So, had we fully understood this before we left the US, there wouldn’t have been much problem.

Unfortunately, we didn’t find out until Matt was already here (with the original marriage license), so we ended up having to do quite a bit of FedExing and cajoling to get Colorado to affix an apostille (internationally-recognized notarization that comes from the Secretary of State in the state in which the document was originally issued) to each of the children’s birth certificates and Indiana to give an apostille to a certified copy of our marriage license. It was doubly-unfortunate, then, to discover that a certified copy wouldn’t do and that the original was what we were supposed to have apostilled. Allegedly, I can take the original and the certified copy with the apostille to the registration office this week and they’ll accept it, but I am a bit nervous that this won’t be the case and we’ll have to yet again FedEx some more documents to the US for the seal.

The final frustration I’m having is not having a Finnish mobile phone. I have a number, I even have a SIM card, but it can’t be activated until we pay the deposit. I can’t pay the deposit until I receive the bill in the mail. SERIOUSLY???? I couldn’t pay it at the shop where I picked up the SIM card for some completely unknown reason and as of Saturday, it had not turned up in the post. So sometime this week, I will need to go to the permanent apartment (where we’ve got all of our mail going so we don’t have to do address changes in two weeks when our stuff arrives here), hopefully find the letter in the mail slot, and pay to activate my SIM card. I’ve made two calls so far using my old US number, which I’m assuming will each cost a bloody ton. Ah well.

How I’m Feeling
I do miss friends & family quite a bit, and am struggling with the fact that when I’m most lonely (in the mornings) everyone in the US is asleep so Facebook is quiet. I guess I just need to make some Finnish (or at least Finnish-based expat) friends so that Facebook has something to say while I’m awake! My inbox has been a bit emptier than I was expecting as well *HINT* *HINT*. There is definitely a lack of adult conversation, with Matt returning home from endless meetings each day feeling fried instead of talkative. I’ve managed a few Skypes, but the timing is going to be a bit tricky since prime talking time is probably when I ought to be making dinner and when the children are most in need of attention.

I’m finding the Finns to be much more friendly than I was expecting. No, they don’t make eye contact on the street (except, oddly, to stare at you as soon as you do something that outs your foreign-ness), but they do stop to let you cross the street, say friendly–if unintelligible–things to the children in the grocery or on the tram, and are extremely helpful even when you bumble through the two words of Finnish that you actually know and understand (hello & thank you).

I’m very anxious to learn the language not only because I’m tired of having only half a clue what I’m buying at the grocery store but because I’m just not used to spending extended periods of time in places where I can’t be totally self-sufficient. I know the language will come along slowly, and that using Google Translate to figure out the Finnish word for cottage cheese is a far cry from actually being able to hold a conversation, but I am determined, and so are the children.

Well, that’s enough of a book for one week. More soon…

Why Helsinki?

It’s been so long since I’ve posted anything of a personal nature that I feel I should start back in February of 2009 when rumors started flying that IBM was going to buy Sun Microsystems, the company where both Matt & I worked at the time. By April, the rumors had solidified and it was Oracle, not IBM, who was buying Sun. We both started making plans for being laid off because as a contractor, I knew I wouldn’t make it through the buy-out, and as HR, Matt had his doubts as well.

I was laid off in September of 2009 and luckily landed another contract in early November with Qwest. Matt was laid off in February of 2010 and I was able to up my part-time hours to full time. The job market is rough here in Colorado, so the pressure was really on to find a job before the severance, or my contract with Qwest, ran out. Matt started a new job with Rally Software in June, just as I got laid off from Qwest.

Matt had been talking for months with an old colleague from Sun about a position with Nokia, but I was adamant that I didn’t want to leave our home in Lyons. The new job opportunity with Rally almost had us convinced that we should stay put, but a variety of factors led Matt to fly to Finland in August for an interview. By the time he went, I knew that it was more than concerns about job security (real though they were) that was driving him to interview with Nokia.

We’ve missed living in Europe. We almost didn’t come back from England in 2003 and often questioned whether we did the right thing. We love our life here and have found a community in Lyons that is second to none, but something was still missing both professionally and personally for us both. Both the current   political climate and our rather shocking introduction to the public school system and its lack of funding helped us make the decision. A Newsweek report ranking Finland as the best place in the world to live didn’t hurt either!

What’s the Timeline?

I think Matt’s new boss was a little surprised at how anxious I was to get us to Helsinki ASAP, especially considering that my first response to the idea this spring was “Hell no!” And yet, I’ve been using every bit of project-management expertise in my repertoire to keep things humming along at a fast pace. It hasn’t been easy, especially since we have no control over how long it takes consulates or major multi-national corporations to process paperwork, but I’m nothing if not persistent

So that brings us to present. Our residency permit paperwork is at the Consulate. The kids have passports. And Matt leaves Monday (yes, October 4) for his first business trip to Finland. The kids & I will join him on October 15, and we’ll all fly back here October 20, just in time to greet the movers who will pack everything we’re taking to Finland on the 21st & 22nd. Going away party on the 23rd. Flight to Washington to visit Matt’s family on the 24th. Wow.

After a week in Washington, we’re Indianapolis-bound and will hang out there until our residency permits come through in the first few weeks of November. Then we’re off! We plan to stay in Finland 2-3 years and what the future holds after that is reliant on so many variables (how we like Europe, how the kids are doing, how much Matt likes Nokia, how we deal with the weather, how much we miss our family & friends here) that we won’t even conjecture at this point.

So there you have it. What an adventure!