Recently in daily life Category

Approximately 5-25 times per day, I'm in a situation where I have to say the following, "Moi!  Do you speak English?"  And I'll get one of the following responses:

1. 80% - "Yes, of course." - And they speak perfect English.
2. 15% - "Only a little." - And they speak perfect English.
3. 4.9% - "Only little." - And they speak decent English, we might have a tiny bit of trouble understanding each other or they might not know a word like "deductible", but overall we can communicate.
4. 0.1% - "No." - And we invent an improvised sign language, or they go find someone who can speak English who can help me.

Today was one of those rare days where someone answered "no".  I was taking a taxi to a client meeting, and I had to stop by our office first to pick up my colleague.  With lots of gesturing, I managed to communicate that we were making two stops, and I was happy I pronounced the street name of our office well enough that I didn't have to write it for him.  But I could tell that that two stop thing was confusing him a little bit, so I wanted to explain that we were stopping to pick up another passenger.

I know some basic words, and for a moment I thought I might be able to say, "I need to pick up my friend." But I didn't know how to say "pick up".  And I forgot the "my".  It came out:

"Tarvitsen ystävää."

Which means, "I need a friend."

Sigh...   Finnish 3,389,462, Halee 0.

I haven't formally started taking Finnish classes again, but I have been brushing up on my vocabulary.  I know lots of words for food and sports and colors and animals and numbers and dog commands, but you really need more words than that if you want to talk to anyone over the age of 2.  (Who is not a dog.)  This weekend Sinttu was teaching me the words for body parts, and even though I had never learned those, it was funny how many I recognized as pieces of other words, and therefore sorta already knew.  Hooray for learning by osmosis!

• käsi = hand - I accidentally already knew this from "käsivoide".  Hand lotion!
  
  
• käsivarsi = arm - I didn't already know this one, but I will never ever forget it because "käsi" as you know is "hand", and "varsi" is stem / stick / handle.  Hand handle!
  
  
• jalka = leg - I accidentally already knew this from "jalkapallo".  Football!  (Legball?)
  
  
• jalkaterä = foot - I didn't already know this one, and it's another funny little compound word that will be hard to forget.  We know "jalka" is leg, but I did not know "terä", which is "blade".  Your foot is a "leg blade"!?  (These people ice skate too much if they're naming their own body parts after skating equipment.)
  
  
• varvas/varpaat = toe/toes - Let's ignore for a moment the fact that the word stem changes so completely when you make it plural.  Let's also ignore that when I was struggling to remember the word for "leg", I came up with "varpaatvarsi", which is "toe handle".  Which is wrong.
  
  
• polvi = knee - I didn't know this word.  But my secret trick for remembering it deals with a brand of beer called Olvi.  Remember when I puked on my knee?  Well, "polvi" in my mind is a contraction of "puke" and "Olvi", or "p'olvi".
  
  
• korva = ear - I accidentally already knew this from "korvapuustit".  Cinnamon buns, which are apparently cinnamon ears!
  
  
• hullet = lips - Whatever.  There is nothing that interesting about this.  What's interesting is the word for "lipstick", which is "hullipuna".  Lip red!
  
  
• rinnat = breasts - Also not that interesting on its own, but "bra" is "rintaliivit".  Breast vest!

When I lived in Helsinki last year, I lived in a lovely little neighborhood called Töölö.  (Lovely to visit, but difficult to pronounce.)  It was quiet and quaint and close to a nice lake that I would walk around.  The other day I was reading a book about Helsinki, and it described the typical Töölö resident as a "middle-aged middle-class female culture lover."

I wouldn't have minded living in Töölö again despite that slight bruise to my ego about being middle-aged, but I ended up finding a perfect place in a neighborhood called Kallio.  Kallio's description in that same book is: "The transformation of Kallio from a dull working class district into a center of nightlife and creative collectives has been almost as rapid as the disappearance of cheap wines from the shelves of the Helsinginkatu Alko on welfare payment day."  I also remember someone describing Kallio to me as the only place in town where you can find a rockabilly-only record store.  Or score heroin.  There is something for everyone in Kallio!

I'm going to like living in Kallio.  (Bonus: I can pronounce it very convincingly!)  This neighborhood is very very central with a ton of public transportation options, lots of bars/restaurants, and ... a Thai massage place on almost every corner?  Hmm.  Every third restaurant is a Thai place, too.  What is going on? 

Anyway, here is my building. I live on the 6th floor, and you can see my balcony on the top right of the first photo.  (Whoa, I didn't realize I was on the penthouse, score!)  My front door in the middle photo is not terribly inviting and looks more like a delivery dock, but maybe that will help keep out the riffraff from the Helsinginkatu Alko and Thai massage parlors.  Once you go inside that grated door, you can veer left and go into a giant courtyard, or veer right and go through that glass door into the building.





Once you get to the sixth floor, there are four units.  Mine conveniently has my name on it.  But be careful not to accidentally knock on my neighbor's door.  "Fatali orava" means "fatal squirrel" in Finnish.  I have no idea who or what will answer, or what they will do to you.

  



Here is my living room.  I made sure to buy a sofa sleeper for guests (hint, hint) and splurged on a very soft cushy rug.  I'm not in love with the puke pink walls, but they'll have to do for now.  Also, I have nothing to hang on the walls yet, other than that tiny, tiny painting of Gene Simmons.  And strangely enough, the pink walls really complement his pink tongue, which makes me kinda want to keep the walls pink.

  



Now for the kitchen.  If you know me or have ever visited any of my various homes, you know that I have a thing about my kitchen being all white and lime green.  I think my kitchen in this apartment might be my favorite kitchen of all time.  It's spacious, there are tons of cabinets, and it's all white white white and just begging for some lime green accents!  I still need a rug and some curtains in there. 





In the bedroom, the walls change from puke pink to sky blue.  This room also needs a rug and some curtains.  For now I have a makeshift curtain up, which is a Holly Hobby sheet from when I was 4 years old.  It was that or foil, and I'm not sure which is trashier.





The bathroom is eleventy million times better than my other bathroom, which was approximately one square meter.  This one is huge by comparison and has heated floors...and a Pink Panther sticker on the door?  (Not pictured.)




So that's the new place!  It's still pretty bare and echoes a little, so there is still a lot to do before it really feels homey.  There is also a gigantic courtyard, with lots of grassy places to lay in the sun...but I decided not to include a photo of that because it is currently covered in snow and/or mud and doesn't look that nice. 

I should end this with a shoutout to everyone who helped me get all set up: to Sinttu for driving me all over everywhere (twice) to buy most of this stuff, to Kati for selling me her old furniture at a stupidly good price, to Tanja for arranging firemen movers to help me (a dedicated entry on that will come later), to Sami for hooking up all the light fixtures, and most importantly...

...to Ikea for making all this possible.

Oops.  Three months just went by in the blink of an eye, and I haven't wrote one single thing about my time back on the ranch!  I have a list of posts that I want to write about life in the Texas Panhandle, and I think I'll try to write a few of them over the next two weeks.

Because after that, I'm going to have more Finnish stories to tell.

Because I'm moving back to Helsinki.

And in honor of going back, I need to post something from a silly night out in Helsinki many many months ago.  I just found this in my Gmail drafts, and I had always meant to post this but forgot.  Now seems apropos:

Wow.  And the evening doesn't stop there!  After a quick rollercoaster ride, Sinttu, Sami, and I went for dinner and then decided to check out Heavy Corner, which is a heavy metal karaoke bar.  We walk in to find a guy with 17.38 blood alcohol level propped up in a chair on stage trying to "sing" Metallica's "Unforgiven" which basically consists of him moaning and occasionally drunkenly slurring "uuuhh-forgvn...."  Then things got serious.  Apparently lots of guys in local metal bands come to this bar to practice.  (And EVERY guy in the place had on camo pants with a black tshirt with some metal band name on it.)  We were treated to some balls-out rock, some black metal screeching, some Pantera-style growling...and it was all seriously pretty high quality.  Then Siegfried appeared.  Siegfried was an unassuming Asian guy with an emo haircut wearing a Sonata Arctica tshirt.  And he sang the ever-living-SHIT out of Firehouse's "When I Look into Your Eyes."  He seriously got a standing ovation.  Then...Unforgiven came back to sing Ugly Kid Joe. Another guy was dissatisfied with Unforgiven's performance, and there was a tug of war for the microphone.

I can't wait to return to Heavy Corner...see you soon, Helsinki!

Well, this is it.  It's my last night in Finland.  I still have several backdated posts to catch up on, particularly the one about last night's Ewing Oil-themed farewell party.  (!)  But for now, I'm going to post a list that I've been cooking since I arrived here one year ago.  My list of the things I miss about home, and the things I will miss about here.


Things I miss about the USA:

• tumble dryers
• my iPhone
• cheddar cheese (or any orange cheese)
  
• cornbread
• Sonic Drive-In
  
• pho
• Netflix
• attentive customer service
• playing tennis
• 9 months of sunshine (Texas only, does not apply to Seattle)
  

Things I don't miss about the USA:

• people wearing flip flops and sandals year round
  
• rain (Seattle only, does not apply to Texas)
  
• waiting for buses outside in the stupid rain
  
• cockroaches, rats, and other vermin
  
• tipping
• flakey people
  

Things I will miss about Finland:

• people always saying what they mean, meaning what they say, and always being on time and well-organized
• saunas
• kitchen shelves above sink that double as a dish drying rack
• public transit efficiency
• excellent tap water
• proximity to continental Europe
• garbage service (especially biojäte)
• forest activities (lake swimming, mushroom picking, etc.)
  
• Spotify

Things I won't miss about Finland:

• mandatory coat check with fees
• snow, ice, cold, bronchitis
• spiral staircases
• bureaucracy
• Jonathan from Spotify

There is something missing about what I miss about each place.  The USA one lacks a list of all my friends and family who I can't wait to get back to.  And the Finnish one is missing the list of all my friends (and defacto family) that I am devastated to leave.  I won't list all your names here, because you know who you are.

There have been many buckets of tears this week.  I'm heartbroken to leave.  But if my biggest problem is that I have too many friends and too many places to call home, I'm a very very very lucky girl.  Thank you Finland (and all your inhabitants) for the best year of my life.

A couple of weeks ago, a male colleague of mine gave me a second-hand verbal meeting request for the morning of March 8 (today).  This annoyed me.  For several reasons:

• This particular colleague generally tries my patience.  He tends to boss me around all the time, and him ordering me to attend a meeting (especially with no details on why my attendance was mandatory) made me want to ditch on principle.
  
  
• I had other shit to do and didn't really have time to spend my whole morning on a status meeting that had nothing to do with me.
  
  
• That is disorganized.  Don't tell me about a meeting and expect me to remember/show up!  Forward me the official Outlook scheduler request from the original meeting organizer, jackass.  Otherwise if details of the meeting change, I won't know.

So this morning I went to the agency office for this alleged "meeting."  Over the past year, vague mandatory meetings have come to mean "someone is getting fired," so I was pretty uneasy.  I patiently and confusedly and worriedly sat through their weekly status discussion.  Then when the meeting was wrapping up (and no one was fired), Samuel the meeting leader announced that all the ladies needed to get out of the conference room, and go gather by the desks.

I continued to be confused.  And scared.  All the other girls stood around grinning like they knew what was up, and I was panicking.  I hate not knowing what's going on.

Then suddenly...all the Wunderboys emerged from the conference room bearing roses!?  And chocolates!?  And each boy handed a rose to one predetermined girl, along with a quick hug and/or kiss!?

Then suddenly...a guitar appeared?  And then all the boys stood and serenaded us???



And one guy used a beer can filled with rocks AS A MARACA??!!??

As it turns out, all the secrecy and trickery was because today is International Women's Day and all the Wunderboys were being particularly sweet and sensitive and European and adorable about it:

"Started as a Socialist political event, the holiday blended in the culture of many countries, primarily Eastern Europe, Russia, and the former Soviet block. In many regions, the day lost its political flavor, and became simply an occasion for men to express their love for women in a way somewhat similar to a mixture of Mother's Day and St Valentine's Day.

And they totally made my day/week/month/quarter.

And I won't ruin this nice story with what they told me was expected from women on "International Men's Day." 

In honor of it being -25 DEGREES CELCIUS today (that's -13 F!?!), I think it's high time that I talk about the cold and the snow.  I was reading about average temperatures in Helsinki yesterday to try to understand when it will warm up, and I was surprised to see that it's been about 10 degrees colder than the average since I've been here.  I confronted my boss/client about that today, and he said, "Oh yeah...this is like the coldest winter in Helsinki, well, in my lifetime." 

Great.

Actually, I've adjusted better than I thought I would.  (Which isn't saying much because I expected instant hypothermic death when I stepped outside.)  Obviously I'm used to Texas weather where there are only a few super-cold and/or snowy days per year.  The snow is an exciting and rare event in Texas.  Here in Helsinki, it's a daily reality.

Sidewalks
All the sidewalks are completely snowed over, and have been for months.  I can't tell you how much snow is there, but it's enough that it's difficult to visually distinguish where the sidewalk ends and the street begins.  Someone goes around town and scrapes all the sidewalks, and then sprinkles them with gravel and/or sand and/or salt to make them safer for walking.  The snow gets pretty hard-packed, and when you walk on it in rubber soled boots, it makes the weirdest sound.  I've struggled to define the sound which is something between a "crunch" and a "squeak", and the best I can come up with is "squoonch."  (And yes, I did double-check that "squoonch" wasn't in urbandictionary.com before I published this.)

As long as it stays below freezing, all is well.  It's been very weird to learn and accept the fact that it getting above freezing is a BAD thing.  Below is good because all the streets and sidewalks just stay snowy.  If it thaws, it will freeze again then you have to walk on black ice instead of white powdery snow.


Bus/Tram Stops
Every time I walk up to my tram stop, I immediately get annoyed because I see that everyone around the stop is smoking, and that I'm going to have to stand in the middle of all that stinky cigarette smoke while I wait for my ride. Then I realize no one is smoking, it's just their breath!

Streets

Pretty pristine white snow + dirty cars = volcanic ash snow nastiness. 











Cars
When I first arrived, my dad was very worried about me not having a car here.  Dad, I don't want a car here.  See Exhibit A at left.











Piles of Scraped Snow
All that scraped snow from the streets and sidewalks has to go somewhere.  And it usually ends up on random street corners in a huge pile.  This one you see behind the white car is a small one.  Many of them are the height of two cars stacked on top of each other.










Drifts and Sparkles
One of the wonderful things about Helsinki is that even though it's very urban, there are still lots of areas within the city that have little pockets of nature.  When I walk to my bus stop from the office, I walk through a semi-wooded area where there are pure untouched, unstomped snowdrifts.  And when it's dusk (which is usually), the streetlights catch all the little sparkles in the snow and it seriously is so pretty it just takes your breath away.  Unfortunately there is no way to capture that in a photograph.  I think it's probably more magical and accurate if you just imagine it, anyway.

And speaking of beautiful snowy, icy nature...


Trees

















In conclusion, Helsinki is coooooooold.  But you know what?  Even though there are definitely moments when I'm completely freezingly miserable (i.e. can't feel my appendages, having chapped lips/nose/eyes, lungs burning from the arctic air, slipping on ice and falling), when I look around at the landscape, it's pretty amazingly beautiful.  So beautiful, in fact, that it makes me forget how cold I am...

I went to my colleague's house for dinner tonight.  This colleague is a Spanish guy married to a Finnish girl, and they have an adorable 4-year-old son who speaks both Spanish and Finnish.  The little boy is too young to have learned much English yet, although he apparently fakes like he speaks English sometimes by walking around jabbering and littering his jabber with the only English words he knows: "chicken" and "fish."

My Finnish is only at the level of a 1 month old baby, but my Spanish is decent enough to carry on a conversation with a 4-year-old.  So this little boy and I became fast friends.

When we were in the house, he wouldn't talk much.  He mostly just pointed and giggled at me, giggled at the toys he brought in to show me, at his coloring book, whatever.  But when we got in the car so they could give me and Leslie a lift to the metro station...the little boy suddenly became very chatty.

After arguing with him in Spanish for 10 minutes on why he shouldn't open the door while the car was moving, he took off his glove and held it in my face.  This conversation ensued:

Boy: "íCómelo!" ("Eat it!")
Me:  "Ew, ¡no!" ("Ew, no!")
Boy: "íCÓMELO!" ("EAT IT!")
Me:  "No.  Tiene el olor de....stinky." ("No, it smells like...stinky.")
Boy: "Chicken?" ("Chicken?")

I had begged him all evening to say his English words to me, and as it turns out, all I had to say was "stinky" and he would be ready to talk about chicken.

Wednesday was a Finnish public holiday.  Obviously everyone goes drinking on Tuesday night.  The Wundergirls and Wunderboys invited me to join them for pre-Epiphany drinks.  (Sidenote: it appears the Wundergirls and Wunderboys have started referring to themselves at the Wundergirls and Wunderboys.  I am very pleased and tickled by this.)

After a nice traditional Finnish dinner, someone suggested we go to the restroom for drinks and karaoke.  I think I looked at them blankly for 5 solid minutes as I tried to figure that out. 

Ahh, "The Restroom":



The first thing I did when we got to The Restroom was to go to the restroom, which is conveniently and thematically and accurately the first thing you see when you walk in.  Then there were many beers.  And many songs, including but not limited to:

• "Summer of  '69" by Bryan Adams
  Performed by Ville and Jaakko - The boys did a lot of hand-holding and lovingly looking into each other's eyes during the more tender parts of the song.  And during all the musical breaks, Ville was kind enough to announce to the audience that there would be a "25 second musical interlude" at certain points during the song.
  
  
• "Pamela" by Jaakko Teppo
  Performed by Tanja, Tanja's friend whose name I can't remember but when Tanja reads this and tells me what her name was I will fix this, and me - Um, this song is in Finnish.  And even though I've listened to it a few dozen times and am getting better at pronouncing Finnish words, I was totally lost.  I resorted to mouthing "strawberry, watermelon, strawberry, watermelon."  But I did sing the chorus, and make the moped sound effects.
  
  
• "9 to 5" by Dolly Parton
  Performed by me - Duh.  When have I ever not sung this?  Seriously, when I die just put "Tumbled out of bed and stumbled in the kitchen" on my gravestone.
  
  
• "La Isla Bonita" by Madonna
  Performed by Ville, Jaakko, and me - This one was hard, because as a child I rewrote the lyrics to this one to be about allergies at harvest time, and I kept almost slipping and singing those lyrics.  "Allergic to the harvest breeze, full of pollen makes me wheeze, blows through the wind and in my eye..."
  
  
• "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen
  Technically performed by Steve - I say "technically" because we all couldn't help but join him.  We all got carried away with the spirit of Freddie Mercury, and sang the shit out of this song together.  It was equally epic to the Muppets version.  How I remember it, anyway.
  

Later we moved on a non-karaoke bar, but when the super catchy "Wonderwall" by Oasis came on the loudspeaker, we were all still in a sing-songy mood and drunk enough that we sang along, anyway.  Oh!  And I just remembered the Finnish American Idol was there, I forgot about that!  That is the second Finnish American Idol I've seen since I moved here, Helsinki is crawling with them!

Sorry about the lack of updates for the past week.  It's a week I'd like to forget, actually, so I'm fine with having no posts to show for it.  To explain, here is the emotional roadmap of what it's like to move to a foreign country:

Weeks 1 and 2, aka Wide Eyed Optimism - "This is so cool, oh my gosh, I can't believe I actually live here!  Oh, rad...what is that place?  Who is that guy?  How does this work?  Neat!  Is it really this easy to use public transit?  Don't I look cute in my coat and new boots?  Man, I am awesome, I will have this figured out in no time!"

Weeks 3 and 4, aka Reality Sets In and It Is Not Pretty - (my current state) "I can't read the label on one single thing in the stupid grocery store, I am so hungry living off carrots and dried banana chips.  It starts getting dark at 3:30pm, and it's freezing and wet outside and I'm afraid I'm going to slip and break my ribs AND my laptop.  At first it made me happy that people thought I was Finnish, now it just makes me feel like a dumbass to make them say things over again in English.  Work is hard, I'm not sure I'm cut out for this job.  I have no reason to leave the apartment, no one will know the difference, anyway, because I don't have even one measly friend.  Did I do the right thing in making such a blind and huge commitment to live here for a whole year?  Can I come back early?  I miss my friends."

Weeks 5 and 6, aka Reality Isn't Quite So Bleak - I can't really speak to this yet, but my guess is that after such a beatdown couple of weeks, my confidence will return, I'll get re-excited about exploring my new city, a few things will go my way, and I'll befriend just one person, and that will make all the difference in the world.  I'll start figuring stuff out (like where to buy salt, for example) and little by little I'll start conquering all the little challenging annoyances and have some semblance of a social life.

Weeks 7 and 8, aka You've Got This - My friend Leslie moved to London from Seattle a few months ago, and she says her emotional roadmap has matched mine pretty much exactly, and that around the 2 month mark, suddenly it all comes together.  I will be with Leslie in London at my 2 month mark, so if she's not right I will let her know it.  With my fists.