Joulu Asiat

Today, Rami and I went to check out the joulumarkkinat. In honor of Christmas, vendors set up shop at the fortress to sell mostly local, handmade, or homegrown goods. Though it has warmed up some and the roads were a veritable sea of slush, we had quite a Christmasy time there. 

Although we had intended to buy a few trinkets for the folks back in the states, we failed to find anything really suitable and instead bought some smoked salmon for ourselves. Family and friends, it looks like you guys'll be getting a whole lot of chocolate again this year. Try not to cry.

Since it gets dark pretty early these days, I was unable to get any very decent photos. You'll just have to trust me when I say it was neat. 

I do wish we had things like joulumarkkinat in the states. Larger cities have street fairs and things, but it's somehow not quite the same. There is a definite yet ineffable Christmas/joulu atmosphere, what with seasonal songs, the decorative lights,  and the (very wet, grey) snow.

Afterwards, Rami and and I got some lunch at Kasino. For dessert, they had joulutorttuja (singular nominative: joulutorttu). These are flaky, star pastries with plum jam in the center, sprinkled with a bit of powdered sugar. One of my joulu favorites, actually.

And now, to go back two days time, my Finnish class had our holiday/end of the semester party on Friday. A lot of people brought sweet things (as you can see from this terrible cell phone photo), and we had some coffee and glögi to wash it all down. This holiday season hasn't been especially kind to someone with trouble digesting carbohydrates.

I had some really nice conversations with a few of my classmates (sometimes entirely in Finnish when we did not share another language), as well as a nice long chat with my teacher (in English). Among the topics she and I discussed was how well our little international group gets along. There are no tensions to speak of, and everyone appears to pull his or her weight in terms of doing assignments and showing up to class. I imagine that's not always the case, since learning Finnish can be a frustrating task. I left feeling proud of just how much Finnish I've managed to learn in the last three months, as well as connected to the larger community here. Back in July I assumed that, by now, I'd still be flailing about in the joulukuu wind, desperate to ground myself in some degree of integration. Well, perhaps I'm doing just that, but not only do I have a lot of help, I feel strangely comfortable in the role of "immigrant."