Puoli vuotta Kauhavalla (Half a Year in Kauhava)

A nice, but very cold winter day coming to an end in Kauhava.

Over six whole months here in Finland, and more specifically here my new home town, Kauhava. Well I have been quite busy for the past little while. I have fallen back into my bad habit of not taking very many pictures, but I’m trying hard to mitigate this problem. It is definitely winter here in Finland, although I have heard from almost every Finn with whom I’ve spoken that this winter is nothing compared to last year. That being said, there is currently about a foot of snow on the ground. It is once again light outside for more than four hours per day. A few weeks went by with the highest temperature being -15º C and the lowest somewhere around -35º C.

Avanto – AW-vawn-toe – noun; a hole in the ice, frequented by Finns during the winter months immediately after sauna. There is a lake near Kauhava named Ojutjärvi. Beside the lake is a church camp, compete with a sauna. Beside the sauna is a hole in the ice. My first trip to avanto was with my friend Kalle. Apparently it was my “knighting” as a true Finn. Basically, we sat in the sauna getting nice and warm and then we went outside and submerged ourselves in freezing water (except not our heads because that’s dangerous). Now consider that this is when the air temperature outside was less than -20º Celcius. It feels so stupid when you climb down the ladder into the water, but afterwards it is a super refreshing feeling. You feel cleansed inside and out.

Looking down at Simpsiö from the top of the hill.

I have checked out local ski hill, Simpsiö; in all actuality it is in Lapua (about a 20 minute drive away). To try to put the size into perspective for everyone from Kelowna, maybe the entire hill was a bit smaller than Telus Park at Big White. One Friday night my host brother Konsta and his friend wanted to hit the slopes so I came along too. Sanna (my host mom) and Saila (host sister) came to go sledding. Saila also tried out down hill skis for the first time. We were at the hill for three hours. I skied off the main lift, which was a T-bar. There was a chateau at the top of the hill were we could buy food. Saila and Sanna drove up to the top and then everyone from our party went in to warm up; I had some hot chocolate. For your information, in the Finnish language they have two different words for the two different types of skiing: laskettella (to downhill ski) and hiihtää (to cross-country ski).

The skiers at our final destination

A couple weekends ago I went on a skiing (cross-country) day trip with my friends Kalle and Niko and the German exchange student Martin. We skied seven kilometres from the head of the trail to Fröötilä, which is a little red cabin with a fire place and some places to sit and eat. We each brought some makkara to eat and we drank some hot chocolate that I brought along. After our lunch, we got our skis back on and headed to Ojutjärvi to go swimming. We went back along the trail to its intersection with the path to the lake, just to find that no tracks had been made, and Kalle our resident skiing expert didn’t know the correct route to take. So we headed back towards Fröötilä and then went along the road to the lake. After a long day of skiing, we estimate 17 kilometres, we reached the sauna and avanto. We proceeded to spend time cleansing our soles as we repeatedly got warm and subsequently very cold. It was the first time that Niko, someone who has lived his entire life in Finland, went through the hole in the ice.

The first weekend of February I went to Vaasa, a primarily Swedish speaking city on the coast, to visit my friend Cindy who is from Northern California. Cindy was the first exchange student I met in the Seattle airport more than 6 months ago. It was a cold day (between -20 and -25) but we spent lots of it walking around the city and just catching up in general. We walked to the “water front” but the sea was frozen over; we took advantage of the cold and walked across the sea (ok we walked a little way on the ice but that’s because the wind was too cold). Unfortunately my camera’s battery died as soon as I turned my camera on in Vaasa.

This past weekend I went on another skiing day trip with Kalle and we went to Voitilanjärvi which is near the border between Kauhava and Lapua. It was a 24 kilometre round trip (more than a half marathon!). It took about 3.5 hours including a break at Fröötilä to get warm and drink some hot chocolate.

Our band providing accompaniment for some of the dancers.

On ystävänpäivä (Valentine’s Day) there was a dance show at the school which also featured some of the school’s rock bands, mine included. I sang in two songs and played my oboe in one song. We, the second grade boys, also performed our poikientanssi which we also danced at the lukio’s gala in November.

 Some of the biggest news I have to share (which has nothing to do with Finland, but whatever) is my receipt of the Chancellor’s Scholarship at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. This prestigious scholarship is awarded to fifty students every year on the basis of school and community involvement, creativity, and demonstrated leadership. It is valued at $36,000 over four years of study. I would like to thank everyone who was directly or indirectly involved in helping me obtain this award.

 This is an assignment I did with my new Finnish teacher to test where my language skills are currently at. If you really want to know what it says, Google translate does an ok job at translating it (but not perfect). I think it is definitely an accomplishment when you can correct Google translate, mostly because it doesn’t understand Finnish grammar. I presented this little speech the Abit (graduating students) on their last day of school.

Elokuussa mina tulin Suomeen. En tiennyt minkälainen minun vuodeni olisi mutta minä olin päätänyt että minä yrittäisin opiskella suomen kieltä.

Nyt, kuuden kuukauden jälkeen, minä jo osan suomea paremmin kuin yhdeksänkymmentäyhdeksän prosenttia ihmisistä maailmaassa, vaikka tiedän että minun täytyy vielä opiskella. Sanotaan että suomi on eräs maailmaan vaikemista kielistä. Tämä voi olla totta, mutta te suomalaiset olette auttaneet minua ja olen kiitollinen teille, suomalaisille.

Suomessa minä en ole oppinut vain teidän kieltänne mutta teidän kultuutianne myös. Mitä minä olen tehnyt täällä? Olen syönyt poroa ja hirveä, olen uinut jarvessä kun oli minus kaksikymmentä astetta ulkona, olen pelannut pesäpalloa, ja olen tavannut monta uutta ystävää.

Minulla on vielä neljä kuukaudet täällä Kauhavalla ja haluan että se on niin mahtava kuin minun ensimmäiset kuukauteni. On vielä paljon asioita joita minun pitäisi tehdä Kauhavalla ja haluaisin että minä voisin yrittää tehdä jotain uutta kaikien kanssa.

Haluaisin sanoa toisen kerran kiitoksia kaikille ja jos tulette Kanadaan te olette tervetulleita minun kotiini.