Our American Tour 2009

Well everyone, here we are then: five days to go... and we feel every second, trust us. We haven't written in a while since we've been very busy with both work and travel plans, but finally everything seems pretty much set.

So here's our itinerary as it stands at the moment

June 5: Arrival in JFK at 3:10 pm, then on to our hotel, Novotel New York (www.novotel.com/gb/hotel-0753-novotel-new-york-times-square/index.shtml)

June 6: A day-long guided tour of Manhattan - nothing surprising probably, but it's been a while (19 years, no less!) since Marko's been there and Annu & the boys have never done the Apple, so it'll be good.

June 7: By train from NYC to Richmond. Sterling already knows when and at which station we arrive, so that's well taken care of. We'll stay with Sterling, Kathy, Rachel and John until the 20th, and we're so looking forward to all that time :)

June 20: Sterling has promised to drive us to Washington DC where we have booked a B&B accomodation for three nights at Adam's Inn (www.adamsinn.com). We try to take in the White House, the Congress and the Mall, and two of the Smithsonian museums: American History and Space & Aviation.

June 23: Flight from Washington/Baltimore to Detroit/Wayne arrives at 2:16 pm. Can't wait to get to Michigan!!! And thank you J&J for picking us up - again :) Just bought the tickets for this one so that's all set too. We have absolutely nothing planned for Michigan (everyone there take it easy!) - we'll probably be pretty travelled out after NYC, VA and W.DC, so just seeing all you guys there and just relaxing would be the best thing in the world for us.

July 1: Depart Michigan for Ontario where we have rented a place in an apartment hotel in Toronto. We'll probably rent a car at Hertz in Flint and drive to Toronto, it's about 265 miles, so it can be done in a day. It's Canada Day so there will be some celebrations going on when we arrive. Nice, eh?

During July, we'll relax in Toronto but also travel about a bit. We'll visit Annu's Facebook friend in London, Ontorio, and Marko has managed to arrange a business day on the 15th: he meets Canadian colleagues in Ottawa, where we will then also stay for three nights. Montreal is only a stone's throw from Ottawa, so if we still have money left at that point we just might... And there's a very attractive culture festival is Sudbury on July 3-5. And... oh there's so much, really. Time will what we can and can't.

July 30: Departure from Toronto; on to NYC by train - a 13-hour stretch that arrives in NYC at 10 pm. We have a room booked at a hotel at JFK so we'll be there already for the flight home the next day.

But we are still here, for the time being. The last few days have been very warm, this year's first heatwave, and right on time for the graduation weekend. Here's some recent pictures we've taken:

Reko in a nature preservation area (called Lemmenlaakso = Love Valley!) a few miles from our home; this was the first warm spring day in April.










Same place, with Annu and Atte walking through the fairytale forest.













School's out for summer, pancakes are in! Scene in our backyard about 30 minutes after the boys had been freed from their academic duties. Both had a great school year and Atte was awared a special recognition for his achievements in... first-grade English! Will be interesting to see how he picks up the language this time around.


Lots of celebrations to attend this weekend: two graduations, two birthdays (45 and 50) and one christening. And it was hot!

Spring pictures

Hi,
just decided to post some photos taken yesterday and today. Spring is here, but the temperatures have been chilly, although the sunshine does warm a bit by now.


Atte has a new bike.














No leaves on the trees yet.













The backyard flowers haven't minded the night freeze.












Summer's getting near when the restaurant ships appear in the Helsinki harbor.












Flowers decorate a balcony on Helsinki City Hall.












Tourists are already arriving at Senate Square and the Cathedral.

It's the Easter Report!

Hi everyone,

The Easter holidays came and went and we realized it has been awhile (again) since the last entry. Easter gave everyone a welcome breather for a few days, after some fairely hectic weeks. The weatherman promised splendid spring weather, but for one day of sunshine (Saturday) we got three days of chilly and overcast. The snows are gone, at least, but you can't say it feels really like spring yet.

On Saturday we took a pretty massive opening ride for the biking season, about three hours on the saddle, and that includes the boys! And even if Reko complained and protested a lot (he did at first), we ended up having a very nice day on two wheels for a change.

As for the rest of Easter: lots of movies (stuff like Borat and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for Annu & Make; Narnia - Prince Caspian and Kung Fu Panda for the whole family), chocolate eggs and good eating. Yard soccer was played too for the first time this year, with our kids, Make, one of the other dads in our house and some neighborhood boys doing their best to twist ankles and crush knees already this early in the season ;) So yes, it is April very much, no matter how cold it's been.

From the personal news front:

Reko celebrated his 9th birthday two weeks ago, and fun was had for two whole days. He got books, dvd's, the Wall-e PC game and other goodies that he'll enjoy for a long time.

Reko has also begun to read for good now, with Narnia and Harry Potter topping the list at this time. Plus he loves the Pirates of the Caribbean movie soundtracks! He actually sits in their room and listens to those cd's all the way through again and again (the rest of us know them pretty well by now, too).

Reko, with Harry P.

Atte shines in school and loves to ride his new bike now that he finally can. He sometimes plays the drums, but more often spends time with the synthesizer. He wears headphones when he does that so we don't know if it's Bach or bratwurst he creates there... He spends time with his friends, both live and online; he joined Club Penguin a few weeks ago and it's kind of unsettling watching him chat, in English, with other kids.

Atte's spring style...

Annu has been working hard and working out as well, and now she's back on the jogging track too. She plans to ride the bike to work when her shifts leave her time to ride without any hurry. It's 25 kilometers one way, a bit over an hour. Not bad if you don't have to ride back the same day, and she does get these 24-hour shifts that just right for the bike. She's picked up reading in English again, playing online Scrabble on Facebook and other such stuff to practice her English before the trip.

...and Annu's spring style...

Make's been pretty busy at work too, but had to slow down physically a bit; a slip on late-winter ice caused some "epic-scale bruising" (doctor's words!) to the right hand and wrist. Luckily no bones broke, but the damage to the ligaments and muscles was pretty hard. Three weeks after the fall the hand is still sore, healing slowly, but at least it can take drumming now, which is great.

...and Make's "where's my hair?" style, for spring.

About our trip: no changes to the plan. We now have reserved a hotel at JFK for our very last night, and also the train from Toronto to NYC when we leave for home. We'll most likely fly from Washington DC / Baltimore to Detroit when we come to Michigan, it was far too complicated and slow by train/bus. Annu considered renting a car, but that would have been far too long a drive, especially with no previous driving experience in the US. The Otisville -> Toronto stretch is still possible for us to drive, though; it seems very straight, and at least we've been passengers on the US side of that route.

Time seems to speed by sooo fast... we'll be over there in the US of A before we (and you there) realize what hit us ;-)

Love,

M+A+R+A

Bass drums, overworked mothers and melting snows

Hiya, 

nothing earth-shakingly new or exotic is going on - well, except that Marko finally mastered the double-pedal bass drum technique used in modern heavy metal, and that might have caused some minor earthquakes around Saturday hereabouts. The neighborhood must have loved the barrage of rapid bass drum machine gun fire emanating from a certain rehearsal room... ;-)

Reko's 9th birthday is next week, and we've planned three (3!) separate birthday parties: one for the kids in the other apartments of our condo, one for his classmates, and one for "the adults": family and friends. Sounds complicated but is much easier than trying to coordinate a good time to all these people at once.

As we're writing this, Annu is stumbling through a sleepy haze even though it's around 8 pm. Spending over 50 % of your waking hours at work during the last three days works wonders for you! She's got some crazy shifts but gets workdays off, of course. Some people (like Annu) enjoy working in ever-changing shifts and cycles... and some don't (guess who).

Homestead, late winter snowscape, with ski tracks and a family in the distance

The temperature is finally rising above zero degrees celsius at daytime; there's the cheerful sound of water dripping and we've had some sunny days that remind us of the summer ahead. Although it's been nice these past couple of months: we've had loads of snow and a decent old-time winter for a change. Annu's been doing some serious cross-country skiing, and Atte enjoys that a lot too. As for Reko and his old man - well they do try their best, very bravely too (Marko likes the flats but hates steep downhills; visions of broken limbs and concussed brains). So it's with a certain wistfulness, really, that we wave this winter bye-bye.

The Skiing Mom and the boys...

...and the "These ski poles help me stand on these darn boards" Dad, with the aformentioned Wonder Boys.

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.

Christmas Peace

It's the evening of Christmas Day, and all the excitement and anticipation that comes with a family Christmas is over.

Yesterday was very nice, as we celebrated Christmas Eve in the traditional way. The boys were understandably a bit restless at first, but the centuries-old, annual declaration of Christmas Peace at noon put them in the proper mood.


Christmas Peace was declared in the city of Turku at noon, Christmas Eve










Before going to Grandma's and Grandpa's, we stopped - as most Finns do on Xmas Eve - at the cemetery (in Helsinki) to light candles at the graves of family members buried here and for those loved ones who rest in other cemeteries and cities. The sight of a large cemetery lit up with thousands of candles is always moving, even on a snowless Christmas (Helsinki was without snow, but we had and have some centimeters).






After that, it was a very nice evening with Marko's family. The boys enjoyed themselves (and Grandma's famous Xmas dinner!) immensely and Santa himself dropped by and brought them just the stuff that had been on their letter to Santa! Seasonal magic :)














Not that presents and gifts are the important stuff of Christmas, but it has to be said the kids have been having a great time with their new stuff: lightsabers, vintage Donald Duck comics, Simpsons stuff - and a little synthesizer! It's a basic Yamaha for Atte who had been plag--- I mean, entertaining us for many a pre-holiday week with his non-stop I'll-learn-to-do-this-by-myself piano playing. He's very enthusiastic (and pretty talented) about it, and so we thought it would be nice if he had his own keyboard instrument... with a headphone connection ;-)



Reko gets into the comics Christmas spirit with a collection of vintage Donald Duck Christmas tales (1945-1963) by the comics legend Carl Barks.














So now it's 11 pm, the kids are very much asleep and Annu is putting finishing touches on our Christmas Day special for adults: re-arranging the downstairs bookshelves! We think we'll watch a movie yet before lights out - we've slept so well the past couple of nights that we can do a late nighter, like in our younger days... :)

Hugs to everyone!

Birthdays and Christmas headbangers

Atte will turn seven on Tuesday but he already had birthday celebrations during this weekend. We had guests over on both Saturday and Sunday. It was an extra busy weekend since Reko's music school had their Xmas concert on Saturday and the boys' school's Xmas bazaar sale was today; hosting both adults and sugar-high firstgraders on top of those was a decent test of stamina for us.

Atte's birthday weekend was nice, though. He got a new bike - we know it's a strange season for bicycles but his old one got stolen earlier in the autumn, and he asked for a new one for his birthday already then. And thanks to the help from grandma, grandpa and auntie, we got him what he wanted and needed: a seven-speed beauty with 24-inch tires, a far cry from the kiddie bike he rode before. Atte just loves to ride his bike, so this one he really appreciated.

Snow has been coming and going and the temperature hovers one day just below, then just above freezing. We did have quite the winter wonderland again for a few days, but that's pretty much gone now, too. Santa will probably have to use reindeers of the flying variety because the sleigh's no good on slush. But there's no way weather's damping our Xmas spirit, and gingerbread cookies have been baked as they should. Even by adults.

We planned to go the top Finnish heavy metal musicians' 3rd annual "Heavy Xmas" concert on the 20th - they play wonderfully and the arrangements are pretty tasteful and respectful, really. But it seems others like this stuff too: the concert's sold out and we now try to get someone less enthusiastic than us to separate himself from his tickets for our benefit. There's a nice musicians' web site that may turn out helpful, but we have to be prepared to face an evening at the movies in the end.

One working week to go, and then we can settle into holiday peace. Some family members have already done that:


And now - where's the hot glogg...