The light side of winter

Oops, it took two months for us to get back to this blog. Gosh - time doesn't just fly, it evaporates!

The big thing since the last entry is that we have bought flight tickets to the USA and back. And with hotel and B&B reservations already made for NY, Washington DC and Toronto, pretty much all we have to do is leave :) Departure will be on June 5 and return home on August 1. So yes, it's eight full weeks on American soil, four weeks in the USA and another four in Canada. We so look forward to everything: reuniting with people so important to us (but also hoping to make new friends as well), seeing new sights and whatever... The state of affairs in USA, Canada and Europe is much bleaker than it was during our previous visit, but we thought we can't postpone this. There is a time for everything, and we felt the time for a longer stay is now.

But summer is still long ways away. As the light increases here in the far north, the winter landscape becomes more tolerable each day, and since New Year, we've gotten a decent amount of snow and subzero temps: a real winter for a change! We have gone skiing and ice skating, and Annu and the boys had some nice winter holiday days in Kuopio last week. Marko stayed at home this time, working for a couple of days and spending rest of the time watching horror movies and revisiting Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America.

Atte has turned out some cross-country skier, and both boys finally have their own hockey sticks, although neither shows much enthusiasm for the sport. Which, by the way, is totally OK with us grownups - there are way too many parents in this country who see their kid as the next Finnish NHL professional...

Both boys are picking up more English now, and Atte actually speaks some words and sentences by now (and understands a lot more, it seems - what are we now going to use as "the Secret Language Adults Use for Saying Things Kids Should Not Hear"???)

Reko, on the other hand, had to decide which language he wants to choose as his so-called "A language", or major foreign language, that starts on 3rd grade in all Finnish schools. To our surprise he chose French! He has been fascinated with France for a long time, and he reasoned that "everyone will learn English anyway!" And of course, he is in an "English class" already, and will remain there until the end of 9th grade, so his logic is most likely valid here. Besides, English is everywhere in Finland anyway, and it kind of soaks through the skin, especially with kids - the movies, the music, the games, the tv, the internet, everything kids like to mess with is 90 % American...

Otherwise, nothing earth-shattering has occured here. The recession/depression carries with itself some very unpleasant side effects... but we'll leave the serious stuff out this blog, right? Right.