Freezingly cold!

We've had a peculiar winter in Finland this year. First it seemed that winter wouldn't come at all; we had surprisingly high temperatures in December and January, and all the snow that we had had so far melted away. Then the weather suddenly got cold and it's been like this for several weeks now.

The lack of snow causes many problems. Naturally, people who like to ski or downhill ski are annoyed because their skiing season cannot start, but also farmers are worried about their future crops because of the combination of terribly cold weather and lack of snow. Snow works as a good insulator, and also many animals who live in the wild are unable to find shelter.

I can relate to these problems, but personally, I really didn't mind that we didn't have a 'proper' winter a month ago. I'm constantly cold in the winter, so relatively mild temperatures suited me just fine, and since I'm not a winter sports' enthusiast, I didn't miss snow that much. Of course, it's nice if you have snow at Christmas but that's about it if you ask me. Actually, I wouldn't mind being somewhere warm right now, dressed only in a bathing suit and sipping a cold drink to keep the heat away. Tahiti or Mauritius; that would sound nice...

Week 2; back to normal

Now that we've had Christmas and New Year's celebrations, it's time to get back to the normal everyday routines. Many people have actually said that it feels good to get the holiday season out of the way and the usual rhythm back. It might take a while to get it back, though, because it seems that quite a few people -including myself- have been extremely tired in the morning during the past week, and in the evening it seems difficult to go to sleep early. I've been trying to console myself saying that getting up early in the morning will get easier; it's just this post-holiday period which is always difficult. And it is a fact that we have passed the Winter Solstice about three weeks ago, which means that we are heading towards more light every day!

January is also a time for New Year's resolutions, and it's a known fact that fitness centres, gyms and all kinds of health clubs get loads of new members every January. "New year, new me" seems to be the goal for many. I don't normally make New Year's resolutions, but this time I've promised myself that I'll try to struggle myself out of this sugar addiction I seem to have developed over the holidays.

I actually came up with one long-term goal for myself: from now on, I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to make sure that my children will never become astronauts or any kind of space engineers. The reason for this notion is that I went to the movies yesterday and saw Gravity on 3D, and the experience was so scary that I don't even want to think of having someone I love working in space!

Week 48; autumn term about to end

This week I've had the last lessons of the autumn term for most of my groups, and we've done our usual things as well as talked about Christmas. In my Write it down -course we've exchanged opinions on advertising around Christmas, and we've all agreed that it seems to start too early nowadays. Somebody wrote that this year she heard the first Christmas carol already in September, and those of us who have small children have noticed that different kinds of toy booklets and ads seem to be delivered in every household earlier and earlier every year.

For children these toy adverts seem to be an endless source of inspiration when Christmas wishes are concerned. They come up with all kinds of requests when they browse through the pages of these booklets. Of course, now some of you think that okay, why don't you just throw those booklets away before your kids get to see them; that will solve the problem. Maybe so, but it's not that simple. You see, children tell each other about these booklets and if someone hasn't got them, the finger starts pointing at the parents pretty quickly..

Well, of course parents don't have to take all of these wishes too seriously, and I think that it's very healthy for children to learn that you can't have everything you wish for. When I look at the lists my children have written to Santa, I just try to figure out which of these Christmas wishes are truly important, and ignore the ones I consider unsuitable, too expensive, or totally useless. I guess that's what parenting is: you try to do what's right by your children without pampering them too much or being too hard on them.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

week 47

This week we also got a foreign visitor to tell us about herself and her country. This young woman, Esther, comes from Spain, and it was really interesting to hear her thoughts about many things. She said that it is fairly common in Spain these days that young (well-educated) people go abroad to seek for employment or participate in different projects because there are no jobs available in Spain. Esther herself has been abroad twice and is now going to go back home within a few weeks, hoping that she will find work in Madrid and be able to stay there permanently.

That got me thinking that actually it takes a huge amount of courage to leave for a new country all by yourself. Of course, when you're young, you usually want to experience new things and see new opportunities as an adventure, but still I think it's admirable to have the courage to do this.

I myself have been abroad but not actually lived anywhere besides Finland. Still, I have an idea of what it feels like to jump into the unknown. When me and my husband (then fiancé) were young, he got a new job from a city we had never even been to, let alone had any connections to. When we moved, we literally had to read a map to be able to find our way anywhere -or back home. First it seemed exciting; it was just the two of us in compeletely new surroundings. After a while, though, the feelings of isolation and alienation began to grow, and the new home town didn't feel so alluring anymore. The different phases of a phenomenon called "a culture shock" can be very strong, and naturally they are more difficult to bear if you have to go through them alone. In my case I had my fiancé to keep me company, to ease my feelings of loneliness, and help me read the map!

Week 46; a visitor from Poland!

This week we got a visitor from Poland to tell us about herself and her country to the people in my discussion groups. We got a lot of information on Poland and its people, Polish customs and holidays, and different places of interest.

Our guest, Maria, also told us about an ongoing campaign to promote Poland, which is called Come and complain. The idea behind this campaign is to tell (foreign) people about Poland and remarkable Polish people in a new way. This campaign doesn't emphasize how beautiful the country is or how many prominent scientists, composers, engineers, directors etc. the country has produced. On the contrary, the campaign focuses on something Polish people are apparently very good at: complaining. If they introduce for instance Marie Curie and say that the was the first woman ever to win a Nobel Prize, and that she actually won two of them (in physics and chemistry!), they immediately complain about  it saying: what, only two? The same style goes on and on complaining about beautiful buildings, famous people, natural sites and all sorts of things. Naturally, you might argue that using this kind of inside joke as a marketing gimmick might be dangerous since not everyone understands jokes the same way, but in my opinion this campaign is a refreshing idea! Actually, I think that also us Finns use a lot of self-irony and we find it hard to praise ourselves, so at least I understood the jokes in the examples Maria showed us, and I thought they were hilariously funny! In fact, I went on Facebook today and found this campaign there as well, and of course I pressed the I like -button quite a few times!