This past Saturday the absolutely arctic cold snap finally broke and we hit temperatures above zero degrees Fahrenheit! In fact, it felt positively balmy on Sunday with temps around 25. Today, for the first time since we've been here I only had to wear one pair of pants! I saw an article in the Helsinki Times that indicated that our warm weather is somewhat related to the blizzard that the mid-Atlantic states had this past weekend, so thanks for that East Coast friends. I know that my parents and in-laws got hit with well over a foot of snow, but Marvelwood was just out of range of the snowfall and saw nothing but a dusting. We see snow falling most days here for at least a few minutes, but there is already a lot of snow on the ground so it is hard to notice any new accumulations. The sidewalks are starting to melt although our street remains covered with a solid sheet of packed snow. Melting ice is very slippery and the Finns don't use salt to melt the ice because it is bad for the environment (imagine that!) so it is necessary to walk very carefully!
Tea is going swimming today with her school and she is really excited to do that. Yesterday she and Adam trekked out onto the pond right across the street from our home and she skated for over an hour. I asked if she fell down and she said, "Yes, but I always got right back up!" Oh sweet girl, please keep that attitude about everything you do in life forever! Neither girl seems to mind walking through the snow to get to the bus and now that it is a little warmer out they can stay and play in large drifts and make snow angels. I got to take Talia to her dance class this past weekend. The entire class was in Finnish but you would have never known she was not a native speaker. She followed right along with all the other little girls and had a huge smile on her face the whole time. Body language and music are both pretty powerful. And words like "point," "flex," and "pirouette" are the same. In fact, her teacher asked if Talia would like her to speak in English sometimes and Talia said, "No, Finnish!" Tea is also very happy in both of her dance classes and keeps up with everyone and her teachers are happy with her ability to follow along and move to the music. I continue to be amazed by how well the girls have adjusted to life in Finland. They happily go into their classrooms at school, are willing to try new foods at lunch (well, at least Tea is), they find ways to play even though their playmates don't all speak English very well, and they just roll with whatever comes their way.
This past Saturday all of the Jyvaskyla Fulbright teachers got together with our families for "kahvi ja pulla" (coffee and a traditional Finnish bun) at Patrick's. It was the first time all of our families have met and as we walked away Adam commented, "That's a really great group of people." Yup. I couldn't agree more and I'm honored to be a part of this group. There are six children in our group, from six months to eighth grade and everyone is just so nice. We are all traveling to Helsinki for our Fulbright Orientation for the rest of this week (even though we've been in Finland for almost 3 weeks). This will allow us to see our two other Fulbright teacher colleagues and meet the other Fulbrighters that are here on different branches of this major grant provider. It will be fun to all be together for a few days.
I have been taking a Finnish for Beginners class at the Jyvaskyla library with several other Fulbrighters and just added an additional Beginner Finnish class for University faculty to my schedule. I have always loved languages and majored in Spanish and French in college so learning a new language is totally my cup of tea. But Finnish is HARD!! It's nothing like English, Spanish or French! Cognates rarely help. Double letters are all over the place - and they are very significant. In Finnish "tapan" is "I kill" and tapaan is "I meet." One dropped "a" could be fatal to a friend! So far I have mastered the days of the week and can confidently count from one to ten. I can also pretty much construct any number to over a million, but I need my fingers and have to start at one each time to get to the correct word to make these constructions (or to figure out a number someone else has said). It's all very logical; I just need more practice. Now that I attend Finnish class for an hour and a half three days a week I hope that I will have some basic skills by the time I leave.
And finally, working at Niilo Maki has been great. Above you can see my very sparse workspace. I need some pictures to spruce it up! I'll work on that this weekend. I love working here. First, they truly have the world's best hot chocolate maker in the world. I consider myself a connoisseur of two things: hot chocolate and chicken fingers. I've tried them all over the world and I confidently declare that the Niilo Maki hot chocolate is the best ever. I thought it might be that anything warm after walking to work in sub-zero temperatures would taste good, but now that it is up in the 20's or 30's (Fahrenheit) every day and is still delicious proves that it is the best. Annie, my American colleague, would concur. Besides the amazing hot chocolate, I also have great co-workers and a great environment to ask questions about education. I have plenty of time to read, explore and discover. It is a little strange to go to an office where there aren't teenagers roaming around all the time but for now it is a change I am embracing. Everyone is curious about my project, gives me an email address to someone that will be willing to help me, and offers support in a variety of ways. I now have a full schedule of school visits, classes and meetings for the month of February. I will start auditing two education classes at the University of Jyvaskyla this week in addition to the school visits I have planned. It's going to be busy, but in a totally different way than Marvelwood is busy. We will keep you posted!
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