The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
I never thought I'd go much farther north than Flin Flon in my right mind, but here I am in Hollola, Finland around the 65th parallel. In the last couple of days we finally got some snow that has stayed more than a day. I've been told that such warm, rainy weather isn't normal for this time of year in Finland, but we sure have gotten a lot of it lately! I started off my exchange to Finland with a language camp in which all Rotary Exchange students in Finland have to take part. It lasted a week and gave us all a chance to get to know each other as we tried to learn the basics of the difficult Finnish language and get over our jet lag. After the camp, we went our separate ways and got settled with our new families. So far, I've been blessed with two wonderful families. The first was a family of eight; and the second, the one I'm living with now, is a family of seven. I think they may very well be the two biggest families in Hollola because most families have two - three kids like in North America. It has been pretty easy to adjust to family life because both my families have functioned very much the same as what I'm used to back home. My first host family had very common Finnish names like Sirke, Essi and Emppu for girls and Jukka, Joona, Janne, Roope and Rasmus for boys. The city I live in has a population of 20,000 and is 8 km from Lahti - a city of 95,000 people. Hollola is in the southern part of Finland, about an hour north of Helsinki. It's a great place, very residential because most people work in Lahti. Because walking is such a big part of the Finnish lifestyle, the sidewalks are always cleared of snow and can get you anywhere you want to go. I just recently started my third of five periods at school, and so far I've really enjoyed going to the high school and noticing all the differences in the education systems. One of the most surprising differences for me was that representatives from the church come to the school every Wednesday and have a 5 - 10 minute meeting with the students. Also all the students have to study at least three languages at school: Finnish, Swedish and English. Lots of them also study one or two other languages like German, French, Spanish, or Russian. Swedish and Finnish are the two official languages of Finland, most of the West Coast speaks Swedish. See 'Friends' P.# Con't from P.# As for friends, I have made some great friends at school and have gotten really close with the five other exchange students living in Lahti. In general, Finnish people are very honest and genuine, and I think that makes it easy to be around them. They're also pretty reserved and shy though, so some exchange students have a tough time adjusting to the quiet atmosphere. Overall, I'm really loving it here and am constantly surprised at how quickly the year has been going by! I really looked forward to experiencing a Finnish Christmas. The Finns celebrate Christmas a little differently than what I'm used to. Santa has a house in Lapland, the northernmost part of Finland, and I think he goes there right after he leaves the North Pole Christmas Eve because he gets to the Finnish homes before everyone goes to sleep and hands out presents then. As a result, stockings aren't hung for Santa to fill and nobody leaves him milk and cookies. Christmas trees aren't decorated until the evening of the 23rd or the morning of the 24th, and most families have a morning sauna session after decorating the tree. I hope you all have a great New Year! Hyv joulua ja onnelista uuttaa vuotta! Angela O'Brien-Klewchuk
