My First Day at The Age of 20.

I had such a Wonderful Birthday! That was yeasterday. The first thing in the morning was a smile on my face. How poetic - but so true! I woke up at 6 o'clock cause I had to decorate the cake that was for my workmates. And I got to admit that it became a really good cake after all! Thanks for the Support Person :) Here, take a look.

And they treated me like princess at work :) Like everybody hugged and said and sang Happy Birthday and they wrote me messages on this kind of announcement board in our teachers' office. Big smiles! And all the messages on my wall in Facebook, whoa! Thanks guys :) Even the Facebook Team, you know, the administrators wished me Happy Birthday! I love Birthdays - especially my own, yay! And of course I gotta have few words for gifts too. I got this Beautiful necklace from the Precious Lady I'm living with. It's just perfect, isn't it?


But about this day. I'm on a sick leave. But it's okay, I don't mind to have a couple of extra holidays. Though it'd be nice to be healthy, but I've got that scheduled - later! And because of this illness two Gorgeous friends decided to cheer me up and two movies and concerning supplies were delivered to me yesterday! Thank you.

The loveliest highlight of this day was a call to Crowborough, UK. Since Christmas I've been an owner of a web-cam and a microphone, so we took a call via Skype with one Dear friend of mine. Good times! Love you Miss Aupair <3

So, it's been a good start for the 21st year in my life!

A Sweet White Christmas.

Well, actually it's not that white, but compared to those too many days (WEEKS!) without snow it really is White here. Though you can still see every stick and stone and even the lawn in our cortyard.. But we have some snow here in South Finland, that's the point!

And about the sweetness. Chocolate. We fortunate people have got maybe few KGs that stuff around here! All kind of chocolate. I made a list, take a look.

Caramel covered with milk chocolate
Hzelnut and almond praline covered with milk chocolate
Hazelnut-almond praline with nuts covered with milk chocolate
Praline covered with milk chocolate
Hazelnut paste with Brazilian nuts covered with white chocolate
Unstoned cherry in liquid cherry cream
Hazelnut-almond filling covered with white chocolate
Orange fondant cream covered in dark chocolate
Liquid fondant with pineapple flavour covered with plain chocolate
Ganache with orange liqueur covered with dark chocolate
Plain chocolate cup filled with rum mousse
Marzipan in dark chocolate topped with a walnut
Praline
Liquid strawberry cream filling covered with milk chocolate
Toffee covered with milk chocolate
Orange crunch filling covered with milk chocolate
Vanilla fudge covered with milk chocolate
Coconut toffee filling covered with milk chocolate
Milk chocolate block
Caramel swirlcovered with milk chocolate
Marzipan with croquante covered with milk chocolate
Coffee marzipan overed with milk chocolate
Tripple hazelnut covered with milk chocolate
Marzipan with walnut covered with milk chocolate
Milk chocolate cone
Marzipan with pistachio nut covered with milk chocolate
Nougat
Geisha made by Fazer
And so on

Wow. Isn't that something? And you can't even eat that much! Unfair. Luckily I don't like all the sorts, so it's not that unfair :) In fact I've decided (maybe that's quite strong word in this case.. let's say I've got a steady intention) to take a break (a long one) from eating chocolate and all the candies. And salty liquorice – you can’t call that candy, right?

Okay, that’s about it. Let’s get back to this Christmas. I’m gonna tell few more things of my Christmas.

Hurry. Certain condition before Christmas. Well, I’m always in some kind of hurry. But in December there is so much more to do during few weeks than usually. This year I decided to not panic – success, yay! Why on earth do I always put so much pressure on myself!? And every once in awhile I notice that it doesn’t make any sense to put on all the pressures- But when I go around the next corner, I forget it again.. How stupid can a person be?!

Christmas cards. I think this is one of the main reasons for the great hurry. Sometimes in summer time I've almost been able to get a good grip of the back of my neck and have almost get the card project started. But then this crazy idea jumps into my head: I'll save this till November, just to make sure that I've got some preparations to make for Christmas! Wow, how logical.. But. I was faithful to my 'Don't panic'-program: I developed some photos of me enough early to get them mailed right on time as Christmas cards!

Holiday. Hurry comes to its end. There’s no hurry at all when the Christmas holiday begins. One of the best things in holidays. I’m spending my Christmas holiday at my parents’ and so does one of my brothers too. Spending time together contains for example board games and movies – just hanging together. Somehow it’s hard when you’ve got used to live alone, but on the other hand I value our time together Very much!

Christmas Carols. All the prettiest, of course.

Candles and Christmas lights. Light to the darkness!

Declaration of The Christmas Peace. Declared from Finland’s Turku. We don’t have a TV, so we listen that through our radio at 12 o’clock on the 24th of December.

Tomorrow, God willing,is the graceful celebration of the birth of our Lord and Saviour;
and thus is declared a peaceful Christmas time to all, by advising devotion and to behave otherwise quietly and peacefully,
because he who breaks this peace and violates the peace of Christmas by any illegal or improper behaviour shall under aggravating circumstances be guilty and punished according to what the law and statutes prescribe for each and every offence separately.
Finally, a joyous Christmas feast is wished to all inhabitants of the city.

Church. Christmas Eve Devotional. Usually at 10 pm in our local church, but this year we went to neighbour village cause few friends of ours were singing and playing strings and organ there.

Christmas Evangelium. The story of the first Christmas. Traditionally kids present that story as a play in Christmas Parties in schools. So did our little first-graders. They were soooo cute! Young one Mary holding babydoll Jesus. Coeval Joseph holding her hand. And too little angels with their sparkling wings as a huge angelic choir. Awww.

Food. Lots of food. Traditional Finnish Christmas Menu. We eat Christmas food so much that we get fed up with it for a year and then we start all over again.

Christmas tree. Back in the day when my brothers and I were little, the decoration operation of the Christmas tree took a loooong while. We set the decorations on the tree in turns, one by one. Except those ones we had four pieces, one for all of us. The whole operation has become a lot simpler and shorter, cause only willing to do that in addition to me is my little brother.

Presents. This year I was not supposed to get like any presents at all, but as usual I got quite a lot of them. But that’s allright :) A paper guillotine was one of my favourites! And a web-cam and a microphone, yay! Well, presents are actually part of the famous hurry too. I mean those ones I'm gonna give.. But my program was successful even here! I think I should try this again sometime!

Crib. Every Christmas we set a little Christmas crib with few figures: Joseph, Mary, baby Jesus, one shepherd and lots of lambs.

Jesus. He’s the main reason why we celebrate Christmas. Well, yes I know that Jesus wasn’t actually born on the 25th of December and Christmas used to be a pagan celebration, but still for me Christmas is The Birthday of my Saviour King Jesus!

The coup of the week.

This is what I did on Monday.

About 8 pm: I decided to go to meet two friends of mine at the railway station at midnight. They were coming from a holiday trip - Rodos for a week.

About 9 pm: I started to make a poster. I had this one meter long piece of paper and lots of crayons and markers.

And one and half an hour later: Take a look at my creation.

It says welcome in Finnish. And the idea is that my friends are standing on the island with the palm tree, under the bright shining sun. They took a plane to Sweden and came by boat to Finland, city called Turku. And the last vehicle they used was a train on their journey between Turku and Jyväskylä. And at the destination it's cold, dark and wet. So welcome back!

22.36 pm: I tried to get some sleep before I got to go to the railway station.

22.38 pm: I realized that I was not that tired that I'd be able to fall asleep. So, I started to read a book.

23.10 pm: My eyes didn't stay open anymore, I thought I could sleep for awhile.

23.20 pm: My alarm clock rang. Luckily I remembered to set it ring at the right time..

23.25 pm: I said to myself: "If you were, like seriously, gonna go to the railway station to meet them, you'd better get up now!" And that's what I did.

23.37 pm: I left home and headed to the station. And waited for the train. It was few minutes late. And then ten minutes late. And then twenty minutes late.

23.57 pm: They arrived!! And the athmosphere was cheerful! And the common tiredness made it to be increased further :)

00.10 am: Home again. Surprised about that I really did it! I didn't expect me to have enough determination to wake up at midnight when I had just fallen asleep, to meet my friends at the railway station :) But I'm glad I did have it and I did it!

Fall Photography.

Fall colours are here! I can almost here all the maple trees, chokeberry bushes, birches, willows and Virginia creepers calling out my name. They just gotta get photographed. We had a very nice photographing walk with one friend of mine named Hanna one day. Think we looked quite much like tourists - in our very own hometown, haha! But that was so awesome! The sun was shining and it was a beautiful fall day. Take a look :)

Nice, eh! And that's definitely not gonna be the last one walk like that of ours! We planned some themes for the coming walks. Like all the statues in Jyväskylä, different front doors of houses, cars and night photography. It's great to have a friend who loves photographing as much as I do - we share common visions of it :)

And about the pictures. I've got some sad news. I have an external hard disk for my laptop. Few days ago there was a little accident and because of that the hard disk fell to the floor. And it broke. But the most fortunate thing is that almost all of my pictures (except Canada, Lapland and new ones) were on that hard disk and I lost them. But. There is a tiny possibility to get them back so I'm hanging on to that! Luckily I've got my positive attitude - I can live with that too if I lost them forever :)

So, I've been working as a teacher's aid in our Christian Elementary School for one and half week and I really do enjoy my new job!! I'm feeling myself very welcomed and comfortable. The principal said one day that it feels like I'd have always been there :) Even though I'd rather like to stay in my bed much longer in the morning, it's nice to go to school! And there was already some need for my picture taking skills. I took some pics of kinda paintings children made in arts.

Updates.

Marttakerho. We have established a club with

few friends of mine. And just by accident we all wore white shirts and dark coloured pants at the first meeting :) In Finnish our club's name is Marttakerho. I don't know what'd that be in English. But well, in Finland clubs named like that are usually for middle-aged or even elderly ladies who gather together and do some crafts like tatting, crocheting and knitting and have a nice little talk (A.K.A. gossiping) and a cup of coffee, of course. I can's explain this as hilariously as it is in Finnish, haha! But our Marttakerho is very youthful and so very marvelous! We have had two club meetings and everyone of us has worked toward different projects like knitting socks, scrappbooking, covering a binder with fabric and making a painting. It's really nice to have a club like that with friends, cause I love to do every kind of crafts, especially with friends :) And it's easier to fulfill all the visions and accomplish the undone projects together than alone. We meet each other every Friday, it's a good ending for weeks of studying and working. Waiting our club meeting gives a lot strength and joy what you really need sometimes during the week!

Spinny. I think it was almost the first day in Jyväskylä after my exchange trip when I noticed one commercial on my way to somewhere. It was about a new product of one of Finland's most well-known coffee and bakery shops - Arnold's Donuts. I think I could compare that to Tim Horton's. But about the commercial. It said that The Real American Cinnamon Rolls are gonna arrive in Finland on the 28th August (and its name is Spinny)! I laughed (internally, cause I was walking alone on a street..) and thought about that I was told that many things come from Europe to Canada (or even North America), but I still think that it's conversely, mostly :) Well, I had to go and buy one Finnish "Real American Cinnamon Roll", of course. And I gotta admit that it was not a real one. Real American - or should I say Canadian ones are way much better! No doubt about it! The Finnish one was good, but it was just an ordinary cinnamon bun. Okay, it was a huge one. But I expected more than I got. But. If we'd talk about the donuts what you can get from Arnold's Donuts, they'd be potential competitors for Tim Horton's donuts!

Wedding. Last Saturday (the 13th Sept) I was at the wedding of a couple of my friends. And the bride was the one whose wedding dress was made by me. That was one of the sweeties, loveliest and most touching wedding I've ever been at! Wow! Everything was so beautiful and well-organized and all the people who were giving a speech or some different kind of presentation gave so much out of themselves. You know that kind of day that you just can't do anything else but smile and be sooo happy :) And it was really nice to see the wedding dress I made, cause I gotta say that it's beautiful!

Sunday Supper. We've actually established another club with my friends. Well, actually it's not a club, but kind of. We gather together on Sundays and make supper together. We've shared cooking turns like that on certain Sunday, certain persons make the food. One person cooks the main course and another cooks the dessert. And others are just hanging around, watching and commenting, haha! Yesterday it was my turn to cook the main course and we had tomato-onion soup and croissants on the menu. That was so much fun because I didn't tell what I was gonna make, and the other girls were wondering all kind of possibilities what I might have had on my mind :) And for the dessert we had banana-grape curd, yum!

Lapland.

Oh, that was an amazing week! For those who don't know what I'm talking about I was on a hiking trip with my Dad and the second oldest brother in Lapland (North Finland) for a week. Rationally that doesn't make any sense to go on a trip like that: we drove like over 1000 kilometres to get to Lapland, and at the destination we drove about 35 more kilometres (maybe the worst road ever!) to get in the middle of the woods (= in the middle of nowhere), we took our huge&heavy backpacks (ok, mine was the lightest: only 14 kgs) with us and walked 80 kilometres in 5 days just to get back to our car and drive back home! Haha! But the reasons we got there were not to get something rationally reasonable out of it. You know the reason if you've done something like that. The experience of living in the wilderness for few days is just so different than our busy, ordinary daily life. Only things you gotta do is walk forward or have a break if you feel so, watch the beautiful scenery around you (and in my case: take pictures), eat when you're hungry, talk or be just quiet, find the place to camp in the evening and settle down and reload your batteries for the next day by having some sleep. And in the morning you start all over again. That's just so good to forget all the duties and hurries - you know, even those undone and should-have-been-done-a week-ago ones. And when you haven't got much to be worry about you've got plenty of time to think about things what really matter! Like life in its entirety :) You're able to get some important aha-experiences. Usually you're too busy to get them. That's what I call a real vacation! Well, physically that was quite hard, but mentally sooo refreshing! And I gotta admit that I've got loooot of stuff at home. My new room is so small that I don't have places for all my belongings yet. And during the hike I was carrying all what I need in a backpack (all right, my Dad was carrying our foods and the tent and my brother had a primus cooker in hi backpack, but you know what I mean).. The things what really matter can't be the belongings, I realized it again.

So, we were hiking in Urho Kekkonen National Park (Urho Kekkonen was Finland's president back in the day). That 80 kilometres we walked contained many kind of things and I'm gonna tell you about few of them.

Weather conditions. This was maybe one of the most fascinating things of our trip! The weather was really unstable. There was like every kind of weather within a couple of hours during the first two days. It was raining and sleeting, snowing and hailing - together and separated. And every once in a while the sun was shining. Sunshiny moments were really warm, but the cloudy ones were definitely fall. One day we were climbing up to the top of a tunturi (well, there is no word for our "mountains" in English, compared to Real mountains, they are just hills, but they are bigger than our hills, so I'll use the Finnish word, tunturi) called Ukselmapää (I would like to here you trying to pronounce that, haha!). At the foot of that tunturi it was like something between summer and fall,

Directly translated this place is called Paradise Valley

but at the top there was snow and the weather was like in winter. That was pretty fun :) Imagine a beautiful winter day with bright sunshine.

On the very top.

We took some pictures at the very top and then continued walking. And suddenly it was like a blizzard! I took a picture of that but it doesn't tell the whole truth

The Blizzard

It just came out of nowhere. We had to hurry to get down from there, cause you never know how bad the bad weather would get at the mountains. So, we got down and after 10 mins the sun was shining again and there was no sign of any blizzard.

Wildlife. A loooot of Beautiful scenery - and some great shots of it :)

And some reindeers of course!

I talked to them in English :) I thought they'd understand that better than Finnish, cause a LOT of tourists especially from Germany visit Lapland. I think reindeers hear English more than Finnish. What a pity that I can't speak any German.. Hahaha!!

And mosquitos. And buffalo gnats (we don't even have buffalos here in Finland, so what are their gnats doing here!?). And some tiny little bugs called polttiainen in Finnish. And guess who's a bit allergic to all kind of bugs - I mean their bites.. But those bugs are part of the experience! They belong there. It was weird, cause the first two days we didn't see like any mosquitos at all, cause we were at the tunturis, but then we came down to bog areas and that's were the bugs rule.

Camping. We spent three nights out of four in a tent and the last one in a wilderness hut (those are kind of cabins by hiking trials and they are available to anyone). Usually when I sleep in a tent (I don't do that very often, but when I do) it's summer - warm and hopefully dry weather. Well, this time it was like few degrees below and raining or snowing or hailing every night we spent in the tent. The last night, when we were sleeping in the wilderness hut, was dry and warm :) By the way, if you don't realize how comfy your own bed is, go and sleep in a tent few nights. You'll value your bed so much more!

Oh, and the same thing with a washroom.. The weather was so cold during the hike, that we were not willing to wash up in ice-cold water what comes straight from tunturis. Somehow that's nice cause you don't have to pay so much attention to your appearance. And actually when your hair is enough dirty, you can make every kind of hairstyles without any styling mousse or stuff like that. Like this one for example :D

My hiking hairstyle, haha!

But I still value the feeling called fresh&clean! So, our washroom is definitely fine - I love it!

Nevertheless, I really like camping with a tent - or should I say tenting :) The best part of it is the atmosphere at the campfire. There is something so special in it! I didn't light any of our fires, but the feeling when some wet wood finally catch fire and start to heat you is really nice. And if your socks had got wet during the day, you can hang them near by the fire to dry them. Well, my hiking boots were not really waterproof so I did that a lot :D Oh, and camp pancakes! Yum!

River crossing. This could have been part of wildlife or camping, but I wanted to have a new chapter for this. As I told the water in the rivers and creeks was ice-cold. We did get across many rivers and creeks - most of cases we were able to have our shoes on without getting them wet while crossing but four times we had to take our shoes off and wrap the legs of our pants and wade across the river. Wow, that was COLD! *shivering* Imagine that cold water that it hurts when you stand more than 20 seconds in there. And then some possibly slippery rocks and a huge backpack to your back :) That was awesome! That really does hurt, but when you get to the other side of the river you are so proud of yourself - full of zip and pep! And afterwards your feet feel really good too :)

Lapland. I really love the North part of our country! Somehow it feels like you'd be abroad, because of the loooong ride and different scenery and just because it's so different compared to normal city-life. And at the same time kind of pure patriot love and pride surface: this beautiness is part of my fatherland! I think our patriotism is not so visible, but somewhere down in our hearts we just love our country!

And. Finally I found a place from Finland where people wouldn't laugh at a cowboy hat (if I would have bought one from Canada)! Well Lappish hats are NOT cowboy hats, but they look like kind of same. Take a look.

The Finnish one...

...and the Canadian one :)

And! WLC campers, didn't we tell you that Santa Claus lives here in Finland - in Lapland! Hahahaha!

Direction sign on the highway.

The sign says:
"Welcome.
Santa Claus can be met
at his office every single
day of the year."

Santa Claus Office

So, that was something about my great adventure in Lapland! I've got some more to tell to the coming posterities! "Listen, my children, when your granny was young..." Haha!

Now I'm back from the wilderness, getting used to civilization again :)

The Day of Joy :)

Or maybe I should write about last few days. As I told, I lost my job as a teacher's aid. That was on last Wednesday. On this Monday I called to our employment agency to inform that I lost my job. The lady gave me two phone numbers to principals who are in charge of two jobs like that one I was supposed to get. And on Tuesday I tried to catch up the another one of those principals. He was not available. I decided to call again tomorrow, and that means on Wednesday. But Tuesday evening there happened something really nice. I'm kind of volunteer helper in the ecumenical children's choir in our chruch. I just try to keep those kids quiet when we are not singing and try to make them sing nicely when they are supposed to sing.

This is my choir helper's "uniform" :)

And there is one lady who is actually same kind of helper in the choir, but in working life she is a teacher in Jyväskylä's Christian Elementary School! We talked and I explained my situation to her and she said like "please do come visit our school tomorrow, we are crying for a good one teacher's aid!". And on Wednesday I went there and talked with the principal and after 15 minutes I got hired!! That's so awesome! I knew that God had some plans for me, but this is so much better what I could have even wished!!

Well, I still gotta wait till 15th September, but it's all right cause I know that there is such a great job like that waiting for me! And I'm going to go hiking to Lapland, North Finland, for a week on Sunday with my dad and the second oldest brother, Olli. I'm really exited about that! I'm sure that's gonna be so much fun, great time and plenty of beautiful Finnish scenery. Our "mountains" are actually just hills compared to Rocky Mountains, but still I love them!