My Finnish Birthday

Had my first Finnish birthday today - and so far it's been great!! Woke up this morning to a wonderful birthday morning call from CW and then Adeline, Rachael and Sabine (from Switzerland who lives next door to us) surprised me with a little spice cake with candles and everything! They also gave me some cards and and a few little presents including a beautiful marimekko mug (famous Finnish brand) and some typical Finnish socks - blue and white stripes also from marimekko (see links). We also enjoyed some leftover pulla we made last night - even better the second day! People in my class all wished me a happy birthday and one of our Finnish friends, Katri, gave me a little box of typical Finnish candy called Salmiakki which is like a salty licorice. Marika, our course tutor and friend from EMICC, stopped by and gave me a really cute duck bottle stopper - another classic Finnish item!

So all in all, it's been really good - that is despite the absolute horrible weather we had this morning. We got to class absolutely drenched and everytime going out was just miserable. As I sit here now at about 7pm the sun is finally trying to peak through which is good for our evening plans. One of the organised freetime activities for the summer school is a pub crawl tonight since tomorrow is a national holiday and we don't have class, so we'll probably be going into the centre in a little while... But anyway, thank you everyone who has been sending me such wonderful birthday wishes, e-cards, texts and the like! It means so much to hear from you!!

Day after: So the rest of my birthday was just as good as the beginning, though again with the exception of the weather which only remained as wet as earlier and got even colder. We started at a couple of different bars and then ended up in a karaoke bar which was a completely unique and hilarious experience, mostly because you have to remember that we are in Finland - so most of the songs were in Finnish. Our (at least 15 of us) enthusiastic attempts to sing along probably sounded absolutely terrible, but at least the karaoke was of the usual standard as well. After Katri, our Finnish friend, did a great Finnish song and our two tutors, Marika and Venla made their debut singing 'hit me baby one more time', we moved on to a nightclub called the Giggling Marlin.

The place was huge - with four different rooms each with their own theme - but really creatively designed with loads of space and tons of people (today is a National Holiday in Finland so everyone was out last night taking advantage)! There was a room with live rock style music, an 'oldies' room, a 'disco' room with the typical nightclub music, and a 'Finnish' room. The Finnish room was quite special - loads of people crammed into the smallest of the four rooms - dancing on the tables and singing along to popular and traditional Finnish music. All in all, we had a fabulous evening complete with licorice shots and other varieties of Finnish cider and alcohol and didn't get home until 4am (mind, in practically broad daylight already). A perfect ending to a great birthday!

p.s. the cartons on the table in the pictures above which look like fruit milk are actually yogurt - the Finnish way!