Snippets of Daily Life

I went to my Fulbright buddy's house for tea on Sunday. Her email said 'tea and toast,' so that's what I expected - bread and butter - but it was so much more. By tea, she meant tea or coffee, and by toast, little calzone-looking sandwiches with tomatoes, cheese, salami, and onions... on top of cookies, meringues, and home-grown plums (plum season). Delicious.


On my way down the stairs to the laundry room tonight, I could smell the various dinners people were cooking. Pasta with alfredo, rice, and maybe shrimp. Then on the way up: not just rice but sweet and sour sauced Chinese food, shrimp, then pasta again. It smelled so good, so I thought that I would put up an update about daily life here.

Laundry

I have learned so much about this since moving to Finland. My first attempt at laundry was an utter disaster that lasted for nearly a week. The temperatures on the washing machines were confusing, and the dryers were inefficient but endowed with intensive shrinking power. I also ended up abandoning a bottle of sensitive detergent for good ol' colors. Doing laundry really requires knowing the general characteristics of each item of clothing. For example, thin shirts and sweaters should be hand-washed once a week, machine-dried halfway, then hung dry. On the other hand, jeans should be machine-washed, machine-dried almost all the way, then hung-dry. Also, certain sweaters should NOT be washed with anything else, or you will end up with lint-covered outfits. I can't help but be a little proud of figuring these things out...though it took a couple of fiascoes to do it. I've also strung some twine across my window for drying socks. :)

Biking


I took my bike to the mechanic on Wednesday, so I'm really missing it at the moment. Even though biking to lab everyday makes me sweaty and out of breath, I much prefer it to sitting still for an hour on the bus each way. I'm also missing the daily exercise.

I still laugh at myself on the inside, whenever I see elderly ladies whizz past me, as I struggle up long slopes and small hills. My mentor joked that older folks should not exercise in public... it's too much of a blow to our egos.

Finnish

My Finnish is sadly as poor as ever. Helsinki is probably one of the most difficult places to learn Finnish. The minute you start to stumble over your words or look uncertain, the other party will automatically switch to speaking to English. Phrases like 'Do you speak English?' or 'It's okay if you all speak Finnish to one another' almost produce offended looks. I'm determined, though, so hopefully I'll get somewhere with it.

Helsinki International Film Festival

Now that the warmer season is almost over, the city seems to be trying to squeeze in as many festivals and activities as possible.

The Helsinki International Film Festive has been going on, and Sunday evening, a few friends and I saw a Finnish movie: 'Overseas and Under Your Skin' (Maata meren alla). It was actually really good. It's about a Finnish girl, who was adopted from Africa at the age of three. Her mother is into progressive movements. She has always thought that she herself was just another case for her mother, without realizing that her mother had brought her to Finland so that she could grow up in safe place, and the girl goes to Berlin to find her dreams. Just a brief plot summary doesn't do the movie justice, though. It never does, because it misses out on the nuances of the dialogue and the neat filming. There are so many good movies going on! :) If only I had the money to watch more of them!

The movie was shown on a screen in a courtyard behind Cafe Engel. I was worried about the cold, but there were these great heating devices near the chairs. I love how good Helsinki is at heating and insulation.



Feeling at Home...

I'm still trying to figure out what it means to feel at home, but I think that it has something to do with building sustainable relationships. It's about coming home every evening and having one or two close friends to share your thoughts with, some kind soul to taste your newest dishes, or just a friendly roommate who's room you can burst into at any moment.

I'm beginning to make friends outside of my flat, too, but it's definitely more difficult to make those long-lasting and deep, without the advantage of living or having classes with one another.

I locked myself out tonight and had to call Matti, who lives a couple of entryways away, to open the building door for me. It was nice to have someone to call in this situation: someone willing to leave his studies for five minutes, throw on a jacket, and come unlock the door for me.

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By the way, I am finally, in earnest, beginning a personal recipe book. Since I cook most of my meals now, I've been gathering recipes here and there from friends... a creamy recipe for chanterelle mushrooms (mushroom season!)... boiling, sauteing, and stewing beets in various ways... instructions for pasta from my Austrian flatmate ("The Italians would say to start with cold water.") Now I can put them all in one place for future reference, with little notes and histories on the side.