May Report from Adrian Beadle - Finland

This month was very good and a lot of fun. There was Easter for starters where we got to eat a lot of lamb, apparently more than half of all the lamb eaten in Finland is during Easter. I got to experience the Lutheran Church where there was a wonderful organist playing all sorts of music. It was a bit different from the Roman Catholic Church I have grown up in but I am quite sure that the content was fairly similar. We visited some family friends in Porvoo which is a lovely old town by a river. It is one of the really old towns in Finland although it has burned down a few times but it is still really beautiful.

After Easter it was back to school which continued as usual although with some different subjects as it is a new Jakso, which is a bit like a school term in Australia, only each Jakso they choose new subjects. At school we had a multicultural day where I got to teach some potential exchange students a little bit about Australia.

Just about all of the snow has gone from the school’s sports field so now we are playing sports outside. So far it has been soccer but we will be playing Finnish baseball soon which is very different from the rest of the world’s baseball, so far as I have been instructed in how to play. I also joined the schools Ultimate Frisbee team in preparation for the sporting battle between my school Norssi and the “enemy school” Ressu. There are events such as tug of war, rowing, Ultimate Frisbee and soccer. Seems like it will be a very fun day!

It has been warming up a little bit, it doesn’t get to below zero at night any more, well, not often anyway. Just about all the snow has melted bar some very large piles, all of the ice has gone from the rivers, there was even a kayaking competition in the waterways out of Helsinki, some of them even managed to navigate a waterfall without rolling over too much.

With the eruption of the volcano in Iceland all of the flights out of Finland were grounded once the ash cloud got up. This caused some problems and I heard they were giving out temporary visas at the airport for people who couldn’t leave. Things are better now and if you really needed to leave there are always boats.

I am going to be changing my host family at the start of this week, and I’m not sure I want to, because this family has been so wonderful. I am also right in the city here but my next host family is in the suburbs so I will be getting the train to the city and then a tram to get to school. It is good to get some change though, to try new things and experience a different way of living. Maybe they will eat more steak.

Speaking of different ways of living, on Thursday I, along with about a hundred other exchange students from Finland, will be going to visit St. Petersburg in Russia. Although the city is quite close to Helsinki very few people that I have talked to have been there. I was told today that it might be because of bad feelings towards Russia from wars and things.

That brings me to the next topic, today. Today was Vappu. It is like a May Day celebration for the coming of summer. Originally it was a celebration for workers but now it has become a day for university students and high school graduates. When you graduate from high school you get this hat and after graduation the only time people really wear it is on Vappu. I went to see the formalities, the “hatting” of a statue. And that’s all it was, they put a hat on a statue and then everyone put their hats on and started celebrating. Celebration is in the Finnish style, with excessive drinking, and everyone becomes infinitely more friendly. I baked a Pavlova for the party. Actually about what happens on the day before Vappu, the children are out all night in the parks and the next day, Vappu day May 1st, the adults have expansive picnics in the parks. This year it was threatening rain but that didn’t deter them. Some people have apparently had the same spot for tens of years and it is a bit of a competition to see who has the best set up and they bring all sorts of things.

That brings me to the end of the month, next time: the Russian adventures (some people taught me a few words in Russian and they say my pronunciation is very good)

Adrian