It's been just about a week since we took off from New York and landed far away in Finland. It feels like we've been here much longer as we now are very familiar with the city center and have settled in very well here. We have been to the central library almost every day, the girls started school on Tuesday and I started work today so we now feel like we are getting into a regular routine.
Above is a picture of the girls in the pedestrian area of the city of Jyvaskyla. There's several blocks of the city center where cars and buses are not allowed and people can just walk. This was taken at about 3:00 in the afternoon so already the sun was beginning to set. In fact, it's never really very bright here at this time of year.
We wait for the bus every morning and have our bus passes now. This picture was taken when the girls were on their way to school at 9:00AM. It's still not very bright out; the street lights don't go off until about 9:10 AM. The bus ride isn't very long and the girls are now starting to recognize our stop for home, the city center and school. The other day they were really city kids and had to ride standing up. The buses only come every 20 minutes so if we miss one bus we could be waiting for a long time in the cold so we have been trying to time our departures from home so that we get to the bus stop with just a few minutes to spare.
We found the central library on our first trip into the city and have now been there almost every day. It's much bigger than Kent so I'm not sure the librarians will become as familiar to my girls as Miss Sarah and Miss Ellen. The library space is very big and open. It's also very warm and right near our bus stop so we are happy to wait there when a bus won't be by for a few minutes. I enrolled in a Beginner Finnish class for 12 weeks that takes place at the library and it only cost 36 Euros! Three of my Fulbright colleagues are in the class so we are hoping to pick up at least a little bit of the language while we are here. The library has several big auditorium spaces and a large space for art installations so there are a lot of activities that take place at the library for the citizens and students in Jyvaskyla.
The library has plenty of quiet spaces to study or read and it also has a huge music session. There are thousands of CDs and several playing stations on the top floor and hundreds of music scores that can be borrowed if you want to learn to play a piece of music. There's about three shelves of English language fiction. I was able to borrow A Little Life, a recent release that I've been waiting for at my home library. There's also plenty of classic literature in English. The Children's Room has a few shelves of books in English but I am concerned we may read through all the children's picture books by the end of March. We will simply have to start making our way through the Finnish children's literature. The girls know that when you get to the Children's Room if you follow the path of the little bird footprints you will arrive at the English books so they have been able to pick out a nice selection; many of the books are British so we are reading many books we've never read. The library also has a huge selection of DVDs, but as we've discovered over the last few days, most of the children's shows are dubbed into Finnish. We also found that our Netflix is different in Finland so many of their favorite shows are now in Finnish! So far we've found enough to entertain them since they only watch one show a day but soon they may have to watch Finnish TV. It's another great way to learn the language, I suppose!
As we hoped, Adam brought wood inside to light a fire for the sauna. We didn't let it get too hot and the girls didn't stay in for very long, but it was nice to warm up and try it out. We'll do that again soon, but it's a lot of work to get it going.
Adam and I made it down to the large lake yesterday while the girls were in school. Obviously the lake is quite frozen and just recently the city cleared a 1km track on the ice where people can skate. About a third of the way up on the picture above is the track and you can see a very small dot, which is a person skating around the track. It was well below zero degrees Fahrenheit yesterday so there weren't many people out. I bet it will be a bit more crowded on the weekend and when the weather gets just a bit warmer.
And finally, the girls started school yesterday. Finnish preschool will get a post of its own, but right now it's enough to say that the girls are happy and love it. They didn't want to leave when we got there to pick them up yesterday so that is a great sign. Tea also started dance class last night. She did ballet with the beginners and even though the teacher spoke in only Finnish she followed right along and did an amazing job. I guess music is truly a universal language. She goes back tomorrow night for her first jazz class. Talia will have her 4 year old class on Saturday morning.
We are all doing well. Tea's JIA pain is at the lowest its been since July and she was a rockstar with her injection this past week. She amazes me every day. Talia loves to point out the Finnish words she understands and I think she will pick up a lot more in the next six months. I started "work" today and met with my faculty advisor, Olli, at the Niilo Maki Institute. I can't wait to get into schools! Adam is taking great care of us; he's made delicious dinners every night and braves the cold to walk to the store most afternoons. We will open up a bank account tomorrow so he can join a local gym and he took the girls swimming with my faculty advisor and his little girls earlier this week. He's still looking for a way to play basketball while we are in Finland. He's the best for going along with my crazy idea to move the family to Finland for six months. We miss our friends and family in the USA but for now everything is still new and exciting so we are still in the honeymoon phase! More to come soon!