Welcome everyone!
I hope this blog post is read with a nice, hot cup of cocoa in your hands and a snowstorm outside of your house. There is NO snow here. Not even one snowflake has fallen on the ground and stuck. It will be very, very strange to not have a white Christmas. I hope snow comes soon!
Anyways, I bring good news. I have been in my new host family for a week and three days now and I am loving every minute of it. It is a very nice change from my first host family. I spend lots of time with this new family because at least one person is always home, and I very much enjoy all of their company. Also, I am learning Finnish faster in this house because they are always here and speaking it. However, it has proven to be just as difficult as everyone says. But, its a good challenge for the new year yes?
I have some picture to show you all from the first weekend I was here. We went to the "old" city square and there there was a Christmas market being held during the weekend. There were all kinds of knick-knacks you could buy and chocolate and gingerbread houses galore! And also fresh bread, fish, and the famous glögi and piparipulla!
There were many things to buy such as, hand woven wool gloves, hats, and scarves, hand carved glögi cups, handmade gingerbread houses, freshly baked bread, Christmas ornaments, chocolate, jams and flavored honey, baskets, Christmas wreathes, sweet and savory roasted almonds, fresh fish, smoked fish, fresh cookies, Christmas decorations, candles, ect., ect., ect.
After we shopped around for a while we went inside one of those old buildings and had piparipulla and glögi for a snack.
Piparipulla! Oh this is delicious. Its basically like a cinnamon roll but instead with ginger and cardamom.
I had a very nice time walking around the Christmas market and warming up with glögi and sweet piparipulla. My host parents bought some fish and fresh bread and I, of course, bought some chocolate. It was a deal though, two for the price of three. Therefore I bought a bar of mint, salmiakki, and gingerbread chocolate. Maybe they will make it home, but there is very high change they will not. We shall see...
Thus this brings me to my next set of pictures which were taken just yesterday. I so happen to love sushi. And luckily enough for me, so does my family. Therefore we spent all last evening preparing the sushi for a wonderful sushi dinner that night. I never knew it was so easy to make I can't wait to make it when I get home!
Haha! Saija's eyes are closed again. But the food looks great!
Time to eat!
Kaikki tehneet! = All done!
Thus concludes another post in my amazing and truly one-of-a-kind year in Finland. I hope you will be looking forward to my next post which will be on my first Finnish Christmas! I can't wait to try all their strange and exotic (not exaggerating) Christmas foods! And I too will be contributing to the feast with an All-American Apple Pie, a nice and sweet blueberry pie, and my families traditional Christmas food, pierogies (both potato and sauerkraut)!
Nahdaan sitten! = See you then!
&
Hyvaa Joulua! = Merry Christmas!
Love always,
Karlee
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