A Finnish Easter

So! It’s just been Easter and what an Easter it was! Very different to what I have grown up with but it was a lot of fun! The Finnish Easter is filled with many different little traditions and customs dating back to who knows when!

Good Friday I spent the day with who will be my third family. Lamb is a centrepiece to the Finnish Easter and that is what we had for lunch! We had a lovely afternoon with lots of food, talking, and tobogganing. I took some spectacular spills but it was a bit of a laugh and a nice day ended by seeing the Northern Lights for the second time!

Saturday was where the traditions really came out on show though! The day was our usual Saturday which we spent cross country skiing. Just my host mum and two of my sisters came out and we finished the whole 10.5km track! I was pretty chuffed with my efforts considering I have only recently gotten the hang of it and I haven’t before skied over 7kms in one go! I still took some spectacular tumbles that I wish we’d caught on camera! I was in stitches of laughter at how ridiculous they were! I have gotten the hang of going downhill now, my stopping and turning were still an issue though and so when it came to a corner I was still gaining speed and just kept going straight! I went straight into a huge pile of snow! I managed to basically bury myself and I had to fight to roll out onto the track and try and get up! If that’s not bad enough I managed to faceplant from a stationery position soon after! I had recovered from the laughter at the first fall and moved on. I was with my host mum and we were just coming up to another slight slope. At this point I had basically completely stopped and she called out to me to go faster so I could get some speed on the hill! I don’t know if I just anticipated the next fall and decided to get it over and done with there and then or what but I managed to just fall to the side and sort of lay my head in the snow… I can’t even begin explain it… I was still standing; just I was tipped to the side with half my face buried in the snow! I have no idea how or why but it happened! Possibly the most ridiculous thing ever! I was in shock and was quiet for a minute just leant over with half my head and face in the snow as I came to terms with what had just happened! Once I had processed what had happened I then had to take a few minutes to laugh at myself before I could calm down and balance long enough to pull my face out of the snow and get going again!

Maybe I am not so good at skiing still but what I can say is that I am becoming quite the professional at getting back up again!

After this mayhem of a skiing adventure we headed home and out came old random clothes and head scarves and we dressed up as witches! We had the ashes and soot from the fireplace dotted onto our faces to represent disease and had sticks decorated with colourful bits and bobs in hand and off we went! It is an old Finnish Easter tradition for the children to dress up as witches and knock at the doors of neighbours where they will do a small chant of good blessings and hand over one of their decorated sticks to the owner who will reward them with lollies, chocolates and small change. It reminded me of Halloween. Although, in Australia we don’t really get so involved in Halloween I think it’s more an American thing, it seemed similar to the concept of ‘trick or treat’. Except this had more meaning and tradition to it I think. We live in a sort of spread out village so we don’t really have neighbours nearby but we do however, have the grandparents’ house just at the other end of the driveway! In order to maximise our goodies though we first of all went outside and turned around and rang our own doorbell! Soile opened the door and feigned surprise at us being there and we began the chant and the whole little gift giving exchange took place. We then went on our little journey to the end of the driveway and visited Mummo and Papa (Grandma and Grandpa). It was all just a little bit of fun, dressing up with all of my sisters and mucking around. The idea of the tradition though is  a mixture of a few things. The blessing with the branches have to do with Palm Sunday and the Christian faith and then it also mixes with the old tale that the day before Easter witches would come and do mischief and evil. 

This little belief followed through til the night where it is traditional to light bonfires and the idea is that the fires scares the witches away. My host mum and my little sister and I went for a drive to see all of the bonfires dotted around the countryside and we stopped at a school where there was a large one and a community gathering.
Nowadays, even though people may not believe these old tales, the traditions are continued and it makes for a really unique and exciting Easter! 

I must be one very lucky exchange student because that day ended in seeing the Northern Lights too! So that made it up to three times in two weeks with two of those times being two nights in a row! Happy Easter to me! :D

Easter Sunday was very relaxed. It was also the day that the clocks changed here for the Summer. I don't really know why they change their clocks for the seasons. In Australia we have 'daylight savings' where we change our clocks an hour so that in the Summer we have an extra hour of light in the evenings and then we change them back for the winter. In Finland though in the winter there is basically darkness all of the day and night and in the Summer it is light almost all of the night as well as the day... What is the purpose of changing the clocks then? I don't really know but oh well! The sun is now setting around 9pm!
Easter Sunday I went out with my sisters and my eldest sister's husband, Antti. We went to Ylivieska (a town about 30kms from Oulainen) and we went bowling in the afternoon!

Monday through until Thursday night I went on a holiday with who will be my parents in my third family. We went to Vuokatti in Sotkamo, about 200kms east of Oulainen. We went crosscountry skiing on lakes, I had a lesson in downhill skiing and spent 2 days practicing that, I tried savusauna (smoke sauna), went to my first real public sauna (not as weird as one might think! I think this Finnish sauna culture is really awesome!) and among other things we went swimming in hands down the coolest swimming hall ever! It was in the Holiday Club where there are all different things like sporting courts, restaurants, etc. There was glass around it so from each floor of the building you could see in and from upstairs in the restaurant you could look over it! It was like a little indoor Bali or something! Pretty cool with Palm trees, bridges and bamboo huts dotted around the place. It wasn't one singular pool but a series of spas, a bar you could swim up to and sit and eat and drink and lots of different things! There was a waterfall, and places where jets of water were coming from the ground and floor and pipes and everywhere! There was even a pool that lead you outside where you could swim! It was pretty cool!

Coolest swimming hall ever!

Took a dip in the cold pool and boy was it cold!!
Close to the ice hole but not quite as cold I don't think...

Vuokatti! Downhill skiing!
Top Right: Me all decked out in my gear!
Top Left: View from the top,
Bottom Left: Ski school
Bottom Right: ... Yea I stacked it :(

I was out on the slopes practicing downhill skiing that I’d just learnt the day before. Still well and truly an amateur with the potential to kill myself on the kiddy slope I made the only logical decision and took the lift right to the top! Standing at the top I looked down the slope. I knew in that moment that maybe it wasn’t such a wise choice but there was no way down other than skiing so taking a few deep breaths I came to terms with my certain death… I stacked it so spectacularly that my skis actually came undone in my rolling and some whopper bruises have come up on my butt, thigh and legs! Of course I realised that it was rather stupid of me to have done that so what did I do next? That’s right, I went up again!! Didn’t break any bones so it mustn’t have been so bad...? Again I stood at the top looking out over everything. I stood there and took a moment to seriously question my sanity and address the question- “do I have a death wish?”. Oh well! Again, there was no other way down than to ski so off I went! I was fine for a total of probably 2 seconds and then I was, yet again, tumbling and stacking it right down the side of the steep drop off! When I finally came to a stop with my skis wedged into the snow, propping myself halfway up the slope I felt so absolutely ridiculous! That was until I saw a man of around 40 stacking it right after me! YAY! I wasn’t alone! I laughed so hard! How stupid the pair of us must’ve looked to all of those little kids on the jumps not far from us! The man stopped not far from me and joined in in my laughter. He said something to me that I immediately recognised as Finnish and without thinking I asked ‘mitä?’ (what?). Oh ohhh! At home even when we are speaking English I use ‘mitä?’ and other random words amongst my sentences. This has now become a habit and without thinking I said it to this Finnish man on the hill! He repeated for me what he had said and I just laughed awkwardly and did this weird noncommittal shoulder shrug and head shake that you wouldn't know was a yes or a no. Obviously even repeating it wasn’t going to help me but he was under the impression now that I spoke Finnish! He gave me the weirdest look and stared at me like he was waiting for an answer. I got up as quick as I could and continued the rest of the way down the slope! Too bad we were both on the same slope the whole afternoon! We kept bumping into each other at the lifts, on the top of the hill, etc. He kept saying things to me and I kept trying to muster up the courage to tell him I didn’t actually understand but the longer I put it off the more awkward it got to admit to the poor man that I didn’t actually speak Finnish! He was probably so confused by me! I was very friendly to him, I laughed and smiled and listened to him but just didn’t answer his questions or respond with any words at all… He must’ve been genuinely confused by me and thought I was an absolute nutter! I wasn’t being a snob but I wasn’t exactly being polite by ignoring everything he said! Maybe he thought that I’d taken my parents ‘don’t talk to strangers’ warning as a child very seriously! Who knows! Oh well, our little encounter has become a little bit of a funny story for me to tell and I’m sure I have become the same for him! I’d like to hear his side of the story of the events of that afternoon! Would be a good laugh I’m sure!

A view from the top! A little clip I took from the slope I almost died on... Ok, so it doesn't look so big in this but I promise it was really steep!!