Kuusamo trip

During Easter we went to Lapland to Kuusamo and Ruka for skiing. Unfortunelty I had a flu so we didn't ski to much in the end but we had a good time anyway, and it was nice getting away from the city for a while.

In the beginning of the trip I had to write Stefan when I wanted to communicate something longer because I had completely no voice;

But once we were in Kuusamo I got the voice back. We had miscalculated a bit our stay as we had booked only three nights in the hotel and we realised we were acctually gonna have to stay four nights since our plane back was not until monday morning....:-P Luckily the hotel could book an extra night for us without problems.

Skiing;

Trying to figure out were in the hill we are;


The next day we went husky sledging, the huskies were super cuute :-P

Stefan was our husky sledge driver;

The huskies;


My favorite, lazy and silly like me;


Stefan got hot;


Young and cute ones;

and friendly;


The leader dogs;


The puppy;

and the mascot, Emma;


Videos;

Our team;





sledging;




One of the doggies was impatient when we had to stop;




It feels funny writing about the winter wonderland when I am writing this is in a top and shorts on our balcony :-) Summer has finally arrived to Helsinki! Amazing that Easter was only 2 weeks ago.

Happy Easter!

I bought some Kinder eggs and Fazer Mignon Egg's.
The mignon eggs are made out of real eggshells and filled with chocolate.


Stefan really liked it :-)

Hope you all have a Happy Easter!

Non Sequitur

As I am sick and staying home today I got a bit bored and started googleling my favorite comic strip, 'Non sequitur'.

Luckily this helped me with a subject for a post :-D

Today´s strip;


There´s been some excellent strips on the economic depression lately, unfortunetely I couldn´t find all my favorites but these are pretty funny;







Since Stefan has studied advertising I have to also publish this one for him;


I like the way this guy make humour out of more difficult subjects as well;





The best ones about Monday and mornings....horrible combination :-P
I´m sure Stefan is gonna say this reminds him me in the morning...I admit, I´m not a morning person!





I could go on still for long but I better get back to resting:-)

What is your favorite comic?

Sauna

Since I mentioned smoke sauna in my last blog I thought I have to share our sauna with you. As a Finn it is very difficult for me to live without this great invention, luckily for me Stefan likes the sauna just as much as me.

This is our sauna;

Not very big but perfect size for two. I think we have even manage to fit 5 persons in there so not too bad :-D

It is an electric heated sauna so the heat is quite dry but it is ok...It is difficult to create the same athmosphere as in a wooden heated sauna though. Also the wooden heated sauna gives a much more even heat and much more humidity, which is what the sauna is all about.

After a long day the sauna is the best place for relaxing, to make it more luxurious it is easy to add some candles, foot bath and some oil scent and it is just as good as any spa.


The smoke sauna is more difficult to find. A smoke sauna has to have a kiuas, oven, made solely of stones;

To get the best smoke sauna you heat the oven for about 4-5-hours before even entering. In a real smoke sauna there is not either a chimney, only a hole in the roof or the wall, so it gets smokey inside, therefore the name. That is also why it is usually black inside a smokesauna;



It can be a bit difficult to breath because of all the smoke but you will be fine as long as you do not start couhing. If you start you can't stop.

A smokesauna from the outside;

This is one of the smoke saunas I have been in;

The little pool in the front you can sit in and relax after the sauna, you can also make it bubble, like a bubble pool. Like this;

There is so many different sort of saunas, me and Stefan tried a infrared heating sauna in Estonia...it was different, but not very enjoyable.


Also in most swimminghalls you can find a turkish sauna with the smell of eucalyptus.


Some people think, the more heat the better, when it is acctually much better to keep the heat at a reasonable level and go out several times in between to have a shower or get some fresh air. In the summer it is perfect to go swimming in the sea or the lake after sauna.

Some crazy people do it also in the winter, if you dare it does feel very good afterwards.

Do you like sauna?

Thoughts about the challenging parts....

Cia sent me this link the other day; Buttermilkbisquits. It is written by a Finnish girl living in Holland with her half-Dutch half-asiatic boyfriend and she is talking about what is most difficult or most challenging in a multicultural relationship. She came to the conclusion that the most challenging was the fact that they did not share memories from the same culture. She found it difficult to share with her boyfriend memories from her childhood, like how a smoke sauna smells and how it feels when the snow gets stuck under your skies in winter.

For me, personally, this has never been difficult. Stefan has already tried to ski and I hope that one day I can share with him the experience of a lovely old smoke sauna. The same way I enjoy listening, experiencing and learning about his culture. The more important is that we value the same things in life.

Here two pictures of the different environments we grew up in;

Liljendal lake


Alicante and the Mediterranean

For us the most challenging part, I think we both agree, is the language. Since the start we have communicated in english which is none of our mother tongue. Sometimes that is difficult, especially when talking about feelings sometimes you prefer to use the language that you know best to express yourself better. On the other hand I think we are doing pretty well, a lot of material thing are called by us "thingy" and we still always understand each other. ( at least most of the time ;-) ) Also othertimes whenI cannot think of the right word Stefan is finnishing my sentences. Same with me for him I think.

The learning of swedish for Stefan and for me spanish is still in the process, but hopefully one day we will be able to communicate somehow with these languages. At the moment speaking Swedish or Spanish with each other is not going so well...mostly because we forget we should practise and when we try it is so frustrating since the communication is suddenly so sloooow. It can be a pain for someone who likes to talk as much as Stefan and for someone who is as unpatient as me;-)

But as John Mayer puts it "Say what you need to say"