Musings on a normal week

Comfort Food: Salsa is terrible in Finland, whether it be from the grocery store or a restaurant. It just tastes funky. One 'Texas Salsa' we tried turned out to be the best barbeque sauce we've found here, but nothing remotely close to salsa. Then one weekend a friend made this lovely concoction-

Emily's fresh chunky salsa

Oh. My. Delicious. Now I make it at least once a week, sometimes twice. The garlic and cilantro are my fave ingredients. (Cilantro in Finnish is 'korianteri'. I think it's a fun word.) I told Dan this salsa is my new comfort food. He said it was a lot better than donuts or ice cream, which may or may not have been my comfort food in the past.

Church at 2: With the new year, our ward gets the 2:00 time slot.
(Background-LDS buildings usually have at least two congregations assigned to meet there. One congregation gets the 9:00 am slot, the other 1:00 pm. They switch every year. In Finland, it's 10:00 and 2:00. I have a theory why the times are later. Many people rely on public transportation and on Sundays they run on a reduced schedule, thus the later church times. Don't quote me on that.)

ANYWAY! I have never been a fan of 1:00 church so 2:00 is torturous. It's dark when we get out at 5:00 and it feels like the whole day is gone. Well, because it is.

Blue Moment: A positive to this late church time is my Finnish church friends introduced me to the 'blue moment'. It's the time after the sun sets and just before it gets dark. The whole sky looks blue, even if the day has been nothing but gray and cloudy. I haven't been able to get a picture myself so here's a link to someone else's cool blue moment pic.

Introducing the flat iron: Lauren has been growing her bangs out. When we were in the US, the person who cut her hair straightened just the bangs and Lauren loved it. She's been asking for a flat iron since we got back. I was a little reluctant to get her one because 1) I didn't want her to get burned and 2) I didn't want to straighten her bangs every morning. I got over the first concern when I realized she regularly uses a Bunsen burner in Science class. Open flame, baby. She can handle a flat iron. And her hair looks super cute!

Waiting: Friday I was meeting someone and was waiting in the entry way of an apartment building. I spent my time looking at this-

I tried to pick out Finnish names. Pretty sure 31 and 26 weren't. Along with 25. (They were who I was going to see and they're Filipino.) Double 'k's are definitely Finnish, as are ones that have 'ai' or 'oi' together somewhere in the name. All the others, not sure. They could be Swedish. Or not. Yeah, I waited a little bit longer than expected.

What we see is different: Any time Dan and I see this sign we think it says 'Algebra' not Alberga.

I also start singing 'Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole' even though I don't think that's how you pronounce Bembole.

Ice skating: My poor kids. Neither knows how to skate. Lauren is the only one in her class who can't. Derek is one of four who can't. They have a hard time when the class plays games on the ice. Like British Bulldog, which from what I can tell is a tag-like game similiar to Sharks and Minnows. Oh well. I guess that two month skating class Lauren took when she was four wasn't enough.

Getting out of the driveway is fun to do: Here's what I see when I get to the end of our driveway/lane.

Left

Right

Don't ya love how you can see the street? Not. You have to edge out and hope not to get hit before you can see to turn. What makes it even more fun is the end of the driveway is where everyone gets stuck. If I could see, I'd probably gun it through that part, but instead I have to creep through and hope I don't get stuck. I've toyed with the idea of taking a shovel to the mounds, but there's no other place to put the snow and the next time the plows came through it'd be back to it's view-blocking height.

Cross country skiing: Dan went cross country skiing with people from work Thursday night. He enjoyed it and according to the others did well for a first timer. They told him that Finns put their kids on skis starting at 1. So compared to a 1 year old, he did well? Derek asked him how many times he fell. Dan,"More than three and less than a hundred."

And finally: My new desk from IKEA.

Kiitos for putting it together, Dan!