Where the river runs into the sea...

It's the end of my first month, and money has been flowing out of my account like water, which means that I'm having to be quite cheap until the end of the month. My excuse is that there have been a lot of start-up costs: secondhand bike, one-year gym pass (yay for free group training!), Dinsko shoes, condiments, etc etc. As suggested by Kate, I have started a budget spreadsheet for the rest of my year in Finland, and according to my projected budget, I can finally start to save money next month. :) Learning to manage my money via this spreadsheet is surprisingly satisfying. Because I have no money right now, Christoph and I spent the day around my apartment, rather than going into the city center. I threw together some leftover ingredients and made us fried chicken (recipe from Robert), fried rice, and this Finnish pastry with rice in the center. Then we took a walk through an area near my apartment.

To be honest, my expectations for the walk weren't too high at first, but I was once again blown away by this wild sort of beauty in Finland. We found the place where a river becomes the sea.

The Witch of Blackbird Pond, by Elizabeth George Speare... a novel I read in high school. That's what the whole scene reminded me of, especially the place where the river meets the sea, where fields of reeds merge with the water. It creates this intensely melancholy sort of beauty.



I found a few small fields of daisies.


Christoph grew up in Kiel, Germany, a city which curves around a bay, much like Helsinki, so he has a bit of knowledge and connection to the sea. He told me that freshwater fish can actually live in the Baltic Sea. The many rivers flowing into the Baltic greatly overpower the salt water from the Atlantic, so that the Baltic Sea is almost completely fresh water. The Atlantic perhaps has a salt concentration of 5.8%. The area bordering Germany, which is closer to the Atlantic, is the saltier part of the Baltic at 1%. In the more northern parts between Finland and Sweden, the salt concentration is maybe 0.1%.

A neato, half-pier/half-couch-like bench we found.


These snails were everywhere in these bushes in the woods.


Mushrooms?


The coming of fall...