Rain? Grass? What are these things?

My sister, Juulia, wanted to write
all over my cast.
"Juulia on kaunis kuningatar"
translates to
"Juulia is a beautiful queen"...
Nice try kid, nice try ;)

So this is super difficult but I am typing this post with only one hand! Why, you ask? Because I am a ridiculous person who managed to survive months of cross country skiing and a week of downhill skiing with mere bruises but couldn't manage to walk to the bus stop without slipping over and fracturing my wrist... Yes, you heard right! On Friday I obviously wasn't paying enough attention and I just completely went bottom up on the icy step outside our house and fractured my wrist in the process of trying to save myself... Good one Emmy! It's not a huge problem though; painful and frustrating as I have a cast on it :'( but I'll live! I went in for more x-rays today (almost a week later) and I'm hoping to get the all clear from the doctor to have this cast taken off! Maybe so soon is a little unrealistic but I'm praying! It's such a pain when you're trying to get dressed or slice cheese or basically do anything! Plus, next week I am going on one of my Rotary trips! This one is a few days in Saint Petersburg, Russia! I've been looking forward to this for a long time now! Should be an awesome trip and I'd rather not have this cast on for it... so everyone cross your fingers for me that the verdict is good and I get this silly thing off beforehand! I'll keep you guys updated!

Last week one afternoon we went out onto the river and had a little fire.
We had juice and grilled makkara (sausages).

Friday night through to Saturday morning was 'Yösäbä'. It's the annual floorball tournament that Oulainen holds where teams enter and compete against each other for the title! The tournament has grown over the years since it started and now there are many teams that enter from well outside of Oulainen and travel to take part in the competition. The tournament kicked off at 7pm with a game of Oulainen town council members against a mixed team of kids that had organised the event for the year. All of the games were great to watch. My sister, Riina, played in a team and they ended up winning the tournament! Woohoo!!
It was a great night and the atmosphere was awesome! It was just held in the school gym but so many people came to watch and cheer everyone on. Especially towards the finals, the matches were very competitive and there were no dull moments! We left straight after the final and still we got home just before 6am on Saturday morning. I didn't even play and I was knackered! I had been up for almost 24 hours! It was worth the sleep deprivation though!

We have just had another week of exams as another set of subjects ended. Due to only having 3 subjects, I scored a couple of days free from school! Monday was one of those days, however I used it to visit the little primary school in the village of Matkaniva (where my current family lives, about 8kms from Oulainen's centre). My little brother, Sami, goes there and under 40 other students from grade 1-6. It is a very small school but quite nice just tucked into the countryside 10kms from town. At the school I did a little presentation about myself and about Australia to the students and the teachers. I had learnt a bit of Finnish and did the first part in it (introducing myself, where I'm from, my town and describing my family) to which they applauded! Whilst very basic stuff I was pretty happy with my effort; it's a good start!
It all went well besides the point where one of the little boys in the front row turned around and there was a little fuss... There was a picture of a Redback Spider on one of the animal slides! I had put it in and wondered if it was a good idea or not, thinking that maybe I might scare some if the girls, I hadn't expected to scare the boys though! Turns out two of them had spider phobias... Whoops! When the English teacher explained it to me I felt so bad! I quickly downplayed them and move on as fast as possible to the dolphins and pelicans! Happy happy! Please don't cry... To my relief they recovered pretty quickly when the boomerangs were being passed around and they saw our colourful money and crazy 50 cent coin! Phew!

I swear just over night everything has melted! One day there was ice and snow everywhere and now, in the place of all of the piles of snow, are just massive amounts of huge puddles which are seriously more like lakes! This must be a difficult time for Finnish parents trying to keep their kids out of the water! Everyone loves a good jump in a puddle, especially kids, but seriously, if you jumped in these ones you'd have to swim back up to the surface!... Ok, that may be a little bit of an exaggeration but you get the idea...

This is an example of what a 'puddle' looks like and this is just flat ground! There's water everywhere!

I have rediscovered grass and actual ground! After months of walking on either snow or ice, I have never appreciated asphalt and grass more! (Although grass isn't as nice to walk on at this point because it's so so wet but it's nice to see it again at least!)
It has now stopped snowing and begun raining too (also not helping the puddle situation). The river that runs through Oulainen is flowing again and basically melted also, just some loose slabs of ice left on the banks. Each day is around 5˚C (give or take a few degrees) so it is warming up! Winter is over and Summer is coming! Well kind of.. this feels more like the dead of a really wet and cold winter back home. Whereas here, since it snug above the 0˚C mark everyone has started whipping out the summer jackets and said goodbye to the snuggly winter ones (I'm still using my winter one because I don't have another at this point... and also because I'm not used to this and 5˚C is still ridiculously cold! I want that big coat thanks!) I'm sure I'll get used to it though and even though Summer is much cooler here than Australia, it will probably be warm for me too after experiencing this winter!

Everything is wet and bit drab at the moment but I can imagine that once this passes and the water soaks away, this is going to be a very green and lush place! Summer will be beautiful!

View from my bedroom window; winter and then today (early spring).
Not looking so nice now but soon enough it'll be green and beautiful!