Once again, I apologize for not having written in a while. I will try to catch you up to date without writing a long novel. I think I last wrote about the ice hole, so that was two Saturdays ago. Not much really happened the week after. That Monday I ate with a couple Belgiums who made homemade pancakes (crepes) that were amazing! Apparently for the French it was some pancake holiday... I am not sure except to say that I did celebrate by eating a lot of pancakes. It's amazing how anything tastes good on them! I had one with lemon juice and sugar, another with jam (not jelly... that's important to everyone else but the Americans), and then a third with ice cream and caramel... all three amazing in their own way.
The first Wednesday of every month a couple museums have free admission after 5 pm. Asha, my Australian friend, and I went to the modern art museum. I cannot say that I am an artist, or even that I am a fan of modern art, but I can say that I had fun. I think Asha and I laughed throughout the whole thing. Our judgement of the art became whether we could recreate it or not. If we could do the same thing the artist had done, we considered it less than worthy. Our favorite piece of art was by far the American who had a piece of art entitled "Teaching a Plant the Alphabet". Yep, that's right, the "art" consisted of someone holding a flashcard to a plant and repeating the letter several times, all shown on an old television. It was awfully boring but very funny. At least it was free.
Friday was a very exciting day. Abbie, Asha, Emily, Joanna, and I all attended a sit sit. It is a traditional Finnish dinner I can only describe as a banquet, well kind of. It a formal dinner that consists of singing, games, a little bit of eating, and a lot of laughing. Everyone sat in the place assigned to him or her. We actually ate really good food, when we had time to eat. Our first course was tomato soup, the main course was mashed potatoes and reindeer topped with a cranberry sauce, and desert was called a reindeer pooped in the snow, in other words, ice cream with chocolate covered raisins on top. It was all very good. Eating Rudolph was a little hard I will have to admit. I mean Tripp tried to get me to eat deer for so long. In my opinion, reindeer is much worse to eat than deer! I tried to explain to the Finns and Estonians sitting around me. I think they got it when I finally described it as eating my childhood.
Although the food was amazing, we never ate it hot. About every 5 to 10 minutes the song master would start a song. Since this was an international sit sit (also meaning all announcements were in English), the songs were in Finnish, Swedish, Russian, and even English. I think one of the best parts of the night was singing "Yellow Submarine" and "Let It Be". For some reason, our song book liked the Beatles. So the structure of our night included a little but of talking to our neighbors, a little bit of eating, a lot of singing and interruptions, and a skit game that involved killing reindeer and an evil witch or something.... it was improv.
Last Saturday was the laziest Saturday I have had in a while. Saturdays seem to be our adventurous day where we explore... although the sit sit took a lot out of us. We actually just walked around and found this amazing park with an ice rink and a lot of snow. We built a beautiful snowwoman, named Esmeralda (Esmie for short). She is actually very environmentally friendly because we used our old veggies (re-using) for her body parts. Obviously a carrot for her nose, rotten leaves for her eyes, an old banana for her mouth and another one for her hair, and rotten apples for her buttons. She was very pretty. I also felt more complete considering I had been around so much snow for a month and had yet to build a proper snowman.
The last event I have to tell you about is actually very tragic and upsetting for me... my computer crashed on Monday. I have no idea what I did! It wants some recovery disk, but mom can't find it in my pile of junk back home. I don't think it would be that bad if it weren't my ONLY form of communication with everyone. My sweet friends are all letting me use their computers, and mom and I are working on it. It is just annoying that it happened so far away from home, where it's not that easy to fix.
Other than that, we have had two sunny days this past week! I actually saw the sunset for the first time in a very long time. That is exciting! I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to see the blue sky, a round sun, and an actual moon at night. Right now it is actually snowing and really cold here, but perhaps the sun will come out this weekend.
Above are pictures of us girls at the sit sit acting very classy, a picture of Esmie, the beautiful sunset, and a picture of me at the museum trying to be artistic with the plants that learn.
The first Wednesday of every month a couple museums have free admission after 5 pm. Asha, my Australian friend, and I went to the modern art museum. I cannot say that I am an artist, or even that I am a fan of modern art, but I can say that I had fun. I think Asha and I laughed throughout the whole thing. Our judgement of the art became whether we could recreate it or not. If we could do the same thing the artist had done, we considered it less than worthy. Our favorite piece of art was by far the American who had a piece of art entitled "Teaching a Plant the Alphabet". Yep, that's right, the "art" consisted of someone holding a flashcard to a plant and repeating the letter several times, all shown on an old television. It was awfully boring but very funny. At least it was free.
Friday was a very exciting day. Abbie, Asha, Emily, Joanna, and I all attended a sit sit. It is a traditional Finnish dinner I can only describe as a banquet, well kind of. It a formal dinner that consists of singing, games, a little bit of eating, and a lot of laughing. Everyone sat in the place assigned to him or her. We actually ate really good food, when we had time to eat. Our first course was tomato soup, the main course was mashed potatoes and reindeer topped with a cranberry sauce, and desert was called a reindeer pooped in the snow, in other words, ice cream with chocolate covered raisins on top. It was all very good. Eating Rudolph was a little hard I will have to admit. I mean Tripp tried to get me to eat deer for so long. In my opinion, reindeer is much worse to eat than deer! I tried to explain to the Finns and Estonians sitting around me. I think they got it when I finally described it as eating my childhood.
Although the food was amazing, we never ate it hot. About every 5 to 10 minutes the song master would start a song. Since this was an international sit sit (also meaning all announcements were in English), the songs were in Finnish, Swedish, Russian, and even English. I think one of the best parts of the night was singing "Yellow Submarine" and "Let It Be". For some reason, our song book liked the Beatles. So the structure of our night included a little but of talking to our neighbors, a little bit of eating, a lot of singing and interruptions, and a skit game that involved killing reindeer and an evil witch or something.... it was improv.
Last Saturday was the laziest Saturday I have had in a while. Saturdays seem to be our adventurous day where we explore... although the sit sit took a lot out of us. We actually just walked around and found this amazing park with an ice rink and a lot of snow. We built a beautiful snowwoman, named Esmeralda (Esmie for short). She is actually very environmentally friendly because we used our old veggies (re-using) for her body parts. Obviously a carrot for her nose, rotten leaves for her eyes, an old banana for her mouth and another one for her hair, and rotten apples for her buttons. She was very pretty. I also felt more complete considering I had been around so much snow for a month and had yet to build a proper snowman.
The last event I have to tell you about is actually very tragic and upsetting for me... my computer crashed on Monday. I have no idea what I did! It wants some recovery disk, but mom can't find it in my pile of junk back home. I don't think it would be that bad if it weren't my ONLY form of communication with everyone. My sweet friends are all letting me use their computers, and mom and I are working on it. It is just annoying that it happened so far away from home, where it's not that easy to fix.
Other than that, we have had two sunny days this past week! I actually saw the sunset for the first time in a very long time. That is exciting! I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to see the blue sky, a round sun, and an actual moon at night. Right now it is actually snowing and really cold here, but perhaps the sun will come out this weekend.
Above are pictures of us girls at the sit sit acting very classy, a picture of Esmie, the beautiful sunset, and a picture of me at the museum trying to be artistic with the plants that learn.
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