Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Issue#1.3 My First Day...kinda

Outside it was cloudy and just beginning to rain. Everything was so green! There were soft rolling hills covered with trees for about as far as the eye could see. I smiled again at the landscape. Mari asked me if I was hungry, and I realized that I couldn’t remember my last decent meal. She then asked in her quiet staling precise way “Is pizza ok?” YES! I had herd Finnish pizza wasn’t that good, but I was past caring.


We came to our car. Now I don’t know much about cars, but I knew that I had never seen a car quite like this before. It was nice and silver, but that’s about the only thing I can tell you about it. (I’ll do some research and let you know more about it later) My Host dad loaded my suitcase into the trunk, and I crawled all too willingly into the back seat. My mind was a daze with all that was happening, so I couldn’t quite concentrate on what was passing by in my window. Like was that just the Arcticum, that one museum I had read about designed by Finland’s most famous architect Alvar Aalto, showcasing life in the arctic? I couldn’t be sure…


As we were driving to the pizza place Mari asked me if I wanted to take Finnish lessons while I was there. I said defiantly, thinking that we could go sign up later that weekend after I had slept. We arrived at the pizza place, I was surprised to see that it was decorated with 50’s Coca Cola ads, and it smelled sooo good! I looked at the menu on the wall and tried to decipher it. There! I found the vegetarian option, but I wasn’t sure if we were ordering slices or a whole pie, so I asked Mari, and she had no idea what I was talking about. Apparently they don’t sell slices in Finland. Its either all or nothing. It turned out that the pizza guy spoke English and I ordered from him. I filled up a large coke at the fountain and went and sat down by the kids play area.

It was odd sitting with my new family waiting for the pizza to come. I Think we talked, I can’t remember. I don’t think anyone said much, but I was perfectly comfortable with that. Once my dad told me something quite sternly in Finnish, but with a joking face, it turns out he told me not to play in the kid’s area. I could tell it would be pretty easy to get along with these people. The pizza came, it was probably the thinnest I’ve ever had, but besides that it was pretty good.
We set off in the car again. I was hoping that we would be going home now so that I could have a nice long nap; couldn’t all the sightseeing and errands wait for the weekend? Apparently it couldn’t. We pulled into a parking lot belonging to an institutional looking building. “Where are we?” I asked. “Rovala, it is a place where you can take Finnish lessons, you can sign up for a class now!”


So we went inside and picked up a form that I needed to fill out, it put my limited Finnish to the test. I had to Answer questions like: Sukunimi? Phillips Etunimi? Janaki. Ok no problem I can do this my tired brain said. Then I looked further down the form. Syntymäpaikka? Äidenkieli?(mother language) Sähköpostiosoite?(e-mail) Lähiosoite? I gave up then and asked my host sister for help. I looked down at the new address she had written down on the form, the street name alone has 19 letters. It takes me about 5 seconds to sound it out, but any old Finn would be able to take one glance at it and crank it out in under a sek! They have an uncanny ability so cram a dozen letters into one syllable, and then say it like it was nothing. Which is a good thing considering that Finnish words can get reeeaaaly long quite regularly!


It took anywhere between two and twenty minutes to give the lady my form and complete the whole transaction. My host dad was having trouble with his 3 of his credit cards, so it took a while to find one that worked. AFS would reimburse him for the lessons. Back in the car I settled in for what I thought would be the ride home. “We don’t know what kinds of foods you eat, so we are going to the big shopping place to get some food now, ok?” Mari told me. “….uuhh sure!” I said.


But before we went to the grocery store (I told Mari that’s what we called the big shopping place) we took a detour through the center of the city (they call it the ‘centre’ the way we would say down town) It was really cool! They have a cobblestone pedestrian only section, like the 16th street mall in Denver, and two big shopping mall kind of things. Buildings over like 5 stories don’t exist. Everything looks really modern, because Rovaniemi was completely destroyed in WWII by the retreating Nazis, and everything had to be rebuilt.


So then we went to the KKKK grocery store, the biggest in Rovaniemi. (The K grocery stores is the supper store chain in Finland. Depending on the size of that particular store they are also called KK or KKK, which I thought was frightening and offensive from my American point of view! I mean “hey, I’m going to KKK-mart for some eggs, ya need anything?”It just sounds wrong! To make it a little better Finns pronounce the letter K as ‘ko’, but still…) Inside was a lot bigger that I thought it would be, but still only about half the size of your average Wall-Mart. They had a clothing section and electronics and all that good stuff, as well as food.
I don’t know how I made it through that shopping trip. I had to THINK of things that I usually eat, and then ask Mari if they had it here. Which was hard because Mari’s vocabulary didn’t extend into foods. So I stumbled around the store pointing to things that I would eat, and mumbling about tofu and tortillas and pesto, things that Mari had never herd of. Well, I made it through, and the shopping cart was nearly full! Just before we went to check out my host dad disappeared for a minute and came back with a large box with an assemble-it-yourself desk for my room! Oh and you have to buy grocery bags here, and bag your stuff yourself, so people but as few bags as possible and fill them to the bursting point, they’re really heavy.


So this time FOR REAL when we got in the car we headed home. We live about 8km SW from the centre (about 5 miles…I think). So to get there we go over one of the three bridges over the Kemijoki river, then take a long winding road through the forest and along the river. It took about 10 minutes before we made an abrupt turn on a dirt road headed right into the forest. It was our drive way! It opened up quickly in to a large clearing. I looked out for the first time at my new house! It is a big light blue log cabin!! Our yard was littered with cars (at least 6) in various stated of repair, my dad like to fix them and race them.


I stepped out into the cool damp air with my luggage and one of the 2 ton grocery bags. I looked down at the mossy ground and saw several mushrooms and, what was that? Yes a little frog was staring up at me, I took a step forwards and it hopped, my sister screamed...she hates frogs. Our house is surrounded on all sides by the always present anorexic Finnish trees (Finnish trees are very skinny half of them are pine trees, like loge pole pines and the other half are Burch) I felt like I was in an enchanted Nordic fairy tale, like Gandalf and a whole bunch elves were suddenly going to appear and sweep me up on some sort of quest. I get that feeling a lot here…


Inside felt warm. The floors, walls, and ceiling are all made of golden wood logs, beams, and boards. The first room you come into is the living/ dining/ computer room. It has doors to the bathroom and Mari’s room and a doorway at the back leading to the kitchen and beyond the kitchen is the rest of the house. In the corner of the dining room area, behind the refrigerator, there is a ladder that goes up to the loft, my new room! I can look over the balcony rail from my room and see everything in the living room, or not. I can close my red velveteen triangular curtains for some privacy. I lugged my blue behemoth into my room (not easy up a ladder). Then I came back down to try and socialize with my new family.


I received a tour of the house then settled down on the couch (that smells faintly of cat pee). It was then that I noticed the two cats perched at the other end of the loft looking down on me. (That explains the smell) Tipsu is a cuddly black and white cat and Miska is brown and white and is full of himself. Mari went to the backyard and brought in Sirru, my new dog! I haven’t had pets in years, and I’m glad to have some here.


So then, it was only about 1:00 in the afternoon, and the thought of staying up until my family went to bed made me shudder. So I stayed up maybe another hour, just talking to Mari, and watching my host dad assemble my new desk. Then I gave up, I told her that I was ready for bed. She got me some pillows and a blanket and helped me take them up the ladder. In my room I don’t have a real bed, not enough room. I have a nice little pullout couch. She showed me how it works and helped me set it up. Then I lay down, it was a lot more comfortable then I expected, and was asleep before I could fully contemplate my surroundings.


When I woke up I was completely disoriented. When I realized where I was I realized that I had absolutely no clue what time it was. I just stayed there for a minute, it was darker then it was when I went to sleep, and I could hear the TV on downstairs. (OH MY GOD I have a TV now!!) So I climbed slowly down. Mari was sprawled out on the couch watching MTV. I asked her what time it was. It was 9:00 that same night (no wonder I was still tired)


Mari told me that my host dad was spending the night at his girlfriend Tarja’s place, but he would be back the next morning. I was starting to be able to tell that my new family was pretty laid back and casual, if you know what I mean. I don’t mind, its just different.
I didn’t feel like going back to sleep so I decided to take a shower. Mari hooked me up with a towel and escorted me to the shower room. You have to go through my host dad’s bedroom to get there. Their bathrooms are different then what I’m used to. There is pretty much no such thing as bath tubs in Finland, I mean there are but no one uses them, so no one has one. Instead everyone who has a house has a sauna. (Sauna is the only word of Finnish origin in the English language, Finns invented the Sauna)


So the ‘shower room’ is basically a big open room completely covered in tile. In one corner there is a small washing machine, no drier and a toilet, no sink, and in the middle of the wall there is a shower head, and a drain in the floor. Tah Dah! No shower curtain, no separator of any kind, your just alone in this big wide open room standing there naked and wet. It was really weird at first, but I think I’m getting used to it. Along the opposite wall there is a sliding glass door to our very own sauna!


After the disconcerting shower experience I sat with Mari on the couch and watched TV for a while. Its weird half the commercials are in Finnish and the other half are in English or Swedish with Finnish subtitles. Most of the TV programs are also in a foreign language (by foreign I mean not Finnish) with subtitles. There are shows from all over the world: America, the UK, Australia, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, and more. Mostly Its in English, which I'm grateful for.
I went to bed around midnight. Like the last time when I woke up I was dazed and disoriented. Once again I had absolutely no clue what time it was. I stumbled down my ladder to discover that it was 4:00 Saturday evening.

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