HERE I AM IN FINLAND, 
GETTING FED AND BATHED!

After a long and rather bumpy ride in the cardboard box,  l finally "landed" on Eero's desk...

Eero's English group welcomed me (and my gifts) with open arms. One of them carried me on his head, and another boy promised to take me tobogganing this weekend, so I am looking forward to it (I think...). There's plenty of snow for that, but I hope I won't freeze to death!

Then I got an invitation to visit Satu's (the Swedish teacher) family, who wanted to introduce to me 1) Runeberg's Day with its traditional gateau and 2) the sauna!

Johan Ludvig Runeberg was our national 19th-century poet (more info here), and the story goes that his wife Fredrika had to quickly develop a recipe from what she found in her cupboard... You can see the result in the picture above... Yummy!

Satu's children were quite excited about having me as a guest, and could hardly let go of me the next day... They took lots of photos and played with me till it was time... to have a sauna.

I was slightly frightened of the heat at first, but the presence (and the smell) of the sauna sheep (!) helped me relax and sweat away my travel tiredness. The other sheep (called Pökö) is meant to give off a scent and remind the family of the Midsummer smell of a summer forest - we got along just fine!

Here's what Satu wrote - in Swedish, our second official language. Feel free to use Google translator to see what it means!

Tack, Scaffy, för besöket. Vi hade jättetrevligt med dig och barnen hade svårt att låta dig fara vidare. De ville till och med ha dig till natidjur men jag lät inte dig sova med barnen. Jag var rädd att barnen aldrig skulle ge dig bort mera... 

Satu