A Finnish Easter Weekend

Easter in Finland means everything closes for 4 days (from Good Friday to Easter Monday) and half the population leaves town for cabins, relatives, spas or other holiday fun. The remaining folks go to one or more of a myriad option of Holy Week worship services.

We, in our typical "got the holidays all wrong" experience in Finland, are home for the holiday while everyone else is gone, but are leaving town next Wednesday for our own "escape the rain, gray and melting snow" holiday in Barcelona with my dear friend Dawn and her two kids.

Here's how our long Easter weekend went:

Thursday -
After school Kalee opened the Easter package from Grandma Ann to find some Dove dark chocolate eggs (Kalee's favorite), a note that said this was just a little something "eggstra" for Easter (eggstra is now Kalee's favorite word), and a little thing called a "Wonder Knitter" with which Kalee can knit bracelets, necklaces, and other long thing things. She loves it!

Friday - Daddy made biscuits for breakfast. Usually this is a sign that it is Saturday so it got us all off to a confusing start. The day was beautiful, clear, sunny and up to 48 F by mid-day. We got Kalee suited up (to stay somewhat dry) and walked over to the park to play on the playground. The playground is much more accessible now that there is only about 8 inches of snow left on the ground. Last time we were at this particular park there was at least 2 feet of snow, it was bitterly cold and we were ice skating. Much more pleasant this time, though Kalee wished we could skate.

She mastered crossing this part of the playground even though she was scared to try. Once she did it once she kept doing it over and over and over.
On the way home we visited the last vestiges of the cave Kalee and Charles made three weeks ago.
In the afternoon we colored Easter eggs.


The tulips are from our guest, Suzelle. The box of grass Kalee grew at school (a traditional Finnish Easter project). Later we started watching E.T.! Such a great movie. Kalee is loving it.

Saturday - Kalee popped awake at 6:15 with the sun. I am counting the days (and hoping there are not too many) until the sun wakes up early enough that Kalee will go back to sleep after it has awoken her. We went to our English play group in the morning (so nice to have English speaking kids and moms).

After Kalee went to bed I went off to the Kuokkalan Kirkka to sing with the Finnish Lutherans for their 10pm mass. The service starts with the lights dimmed and everything shrouded in black.

Within the first 5 minutes of the service the music changes mood, the lights come up, all the shrouds are removed and the celebration begins. I understood for the first time that all the Holy Week services combined are really one long ritual expression of death and rebirth. I know, I'm a little slow on these things sometimes. Not understanding the words helped me experience the ritual without my head getting in the way. The head, the intellect, rational discourse and skepticism are all great things, but it is good to set them aside on occasion for a different kind of experience.

Sunday - The Easter Bunny came! Kalee nearly exploded into our room saying the Easter Bunny had left little chocolate eggs all over the living room and kitchen! There was even one at the entrance to the lego-airport.
Charles made Sticky Buns for breakfast. Oh my goodness they were rich! Kalee could only eat half of hers, then asked for some regular cereal. So sensible. Charles and I each ate two of them. An hour later and I still only wanted to drink warm water to cleanse my mouth and body.

Kalee seemed to need some down-time after breakfast. She shed her PJs, crawled under her blanket with Brownie and stayed there for an hour. She choose this activity over going to the spa for swimming. She is in her tomb, perhaps, and will arise ... here she comes ... wrapped in a cape! Ahhhh, it is a fever, not the need for solitude. Bummer. (A little Tylenol did the trick.)

Charles made quiche for our Easter dinner and whole wheat crescent rolls from my childhood. Both were delicious.

Monday - Yes, the Finnish Easter Weekend just keeps going right through Monday. We had guests for dinner so spent the day cleaning and cooking. Entertaining in our apartment is a challenge. For example, we only have 4 chairs. With our 2 guests we needed to seat 5 so Kalee got to sit on swivel-y desk chair. It was a very nice evening and a nice ending to our long Easter weekend.

Tomorrow we head off to Barcelona where the forecast says it will be 63F and sunny all week.

Fun in Finland

Some more pictures from the past month. Kalee and I have new hats for spring. I learned how to crochet from a YouTube video.

The whole family is having fun with legos. We built a three-room house complete with furniture and bathroom.

Here you can see the living room with couches, chairs, lamps and a flat-screen TV ...

... another view of the living room ...

... the kitchen with table, chairs and fridge (the white thing)...

... and, the real triumph, the bathroom ...

... including storage cupboard ...

Another day Kalee and daddy prepared for a birthday party with clay.

Photos from Kalee

We got Kalee a camera for her birthday last August. Here are a few of the pictures she has taken in Finland. Self-portraits are, perhaps, her favorite:

Here is a view from our living room. Post-modern photography, hay?

We had some fun with clay one afternoon.

And Kalee loves playing school with her friends.

Finally, a portrait of Kalee's very best friend in the whole world.

of blogs, visits and teeth

Friends,
It has been a long while since I have written anything here on the blog. We were away for 10 days in Israel and Istanbul and then I felt I should get those pictures up and write about the trip before I did anything else. But I haven't done those trip summaries yet, nor have I culled through our over-500 pics from the trip, and I decided I just needed to get on with life and the blog. So here we go.

Last weekend my colleague/mom's minister, Suzelle, came for to visit for the weekend. She was in Finland to explore her Finnish heritage for 10 days as part of her sabbatical. After three days together I can now call her "my friend Suzelle." We had such a great time. It was delightful for me simply to have someone to talk to and do things with who gets me and listens and has interesting insights on the world. The effortless communication ... goodness I have missed that.

Kalee also had a smashingly wonderful time with Suzelle. This woman LOVES children and Kalee reciprocated. Suzelle charmed her with her warmth and her thick pile of origami paper. The spent the whole weekend doing fun crafty things. By the end of the weekend Kalee was physically attached to Suzelle as much as possible and when Suzelle left on Sunday, Kalee spontaneously ran up to her and gave her a hug. If you know Kalee you know what a radical thing that is.On Friday Suzelle took us to The Craft Museum of Finland. Leave it to the visitor to show you around your own city! How did that happen? Anyway, not only do they have cool exhibits, they have a workroom filled with every sort of craft supply and tool you can imagine (and some you haven't thought of). Suzelle, Kalee and I played there for nearly two hours. Kalee and I went back today for three hours. It is endless fun and my new favorite place in Jyvaskyla.

On Saturday we all climbed the big hill in downtown Jyvaskyla. Lots of stairs ...
... then up an elevator to the observatory where we could have seen our apartment over on the other side of the lake, just to the right of the bridge, on a clear day.
The snow is melting in Jyvaskyla and spring is on it's way. I haven't seen anyone out walking on the lake for about 4 days now. Which is smart of these folks 'cause it has been above freezing during the day for the whole last week. The next few days are supposed to stay above freezing even through the night.

This morning we woke to a dusting of snow and the sight of two giant bunnies (hares, I guess) in the parking lot. The snow meant that Kalee and I could follow bunny tracks around the parking lot while we waited for her ride to school. But the MOST IMPORTANT happening of late is that Kalee lost her first tooth today. She is proud and happy and trying to stay awake to catch a glimpse of the tooth fairy.

Arctic Circle (5 of 5): The ARKTIKUM Museum

Our last day in Rovaniemi we visit The Arktikum Museum a museum dedicated to teaching about arctic peoples, traditions, history, wild life and environment. The exhibits were great but we couldn't take pictures of most of that (we snuck a few). I was really struck by the building itself, though. Most of it is underground, practical in that cold climate and also mimicking the way nature shelters itself from the harsh winter in the north. You enter through the crecent shaped building at the back of this picture, then decend under the highway and into the grand hallway that is flanked on each side by exhibit space.
Looking down the whole length of the building, from the river to the entrance.
Chairs made from birth trees and reindeer hides. Much of the building uses these and other indigenous building materials.
We meet a polar bear,
... explore the inside of an ice chamber ...
... see a very old sled...
... hug a brown bear ...
... see some arctic fish ...
... and Kalee and Charles make an important proclamation.

There must be a traditional story about these geese and the little charter who is leading them, but we didn't hear it.



Kalee dances to some contemporary Sami folk music. We ended the day at a great restaurant at a mall next to our hotel and Kalee had perhaps her favorite moment of the whole trip - a free bouncer in the mall.