Picture: Meg’s picture of ridge with lake in foreground
Never have we been so hot! Which may sound strange coming from recent residents of Finland. The reason as to why we were so hot was because we were introducing ourselves into the Finnish custom of going into a sauna when we were invited to a small get-together. Since it was a small sauna, the two of us and dad, accompanied by our new friends and their dad, was all we could fit. Halfway through we stepped gingerly outside into the freezing cold night and then lowered ourselves cautiously into the freezing water of an unheated outdoor pool; only to scramble back out again.
The hosts were so generous and knew exactly what people our age wanted to try out in Finland: chocolate. Which is something they are very well known for and also have very high standards for the quality, too. After testing several different flavours, we still can’t make up our minds as to what our favourites were. Not to mention that some of the flavours were completely foreign so it made it ever harder to distinguish between them.
We were so thankful to be able to not only get to know fellow Finns, it was also great to come to understand how different some things they do here. For ex. students don’t have standardized tests or finals. Which as you can imagine is completely different from our norm.
To ‘finnish’ – pun intended… we are still excited to be discovering and doing new things in our new hometown.