Our Thanksgiving

Since Finland does not celebrate Thanksgiving we had to wait until today to have our first Thanksgiving as a married couple. We cooked a whole chicken, sweet potatoes, dressing, green beans and had a an apple cake. I cooked all of the items from scratch except the green beans and cake. The green beans were canned and the cake was pre-made. They do not sell dressing here so I made my own with bread, onions, homemade chicken stock and some spices. The chicken came frozen with out the neck or gizzards. I soaked it in a brine solution for 24 hours, then stuffed butter in between the skin and breast and baked it. It was really good and juicy. The sweet potatoes are pretty large in the stores here so we cut them into cubes, boiled them and baked them with sugar and cinnamon. Everything turned out really well and we were pleased with our attempt at a Thanksgiving dinner.

Some of you may be wondering why I opted for a chicken and not a turkey. Well, they did have two turkeys in the freezer every time I went to the store for over a week. The only problem is that those turkeys were about $50! They were large turkeys but still, we cannot eat that much and that is most of our food budget for a whole week. So, I opted for the much cheaper chicken instead. Our Thanksgiving meal was not what we would have shared if we had been at home with our family but it was good and we made the most of what we have available.

We are glad to be here and are thankful of the support we have from our family and friends. We are also thankful for each other and the opportunities that we have. I hope that all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and were able to remember the reason for the holiday. We are also thankful for our football team as we are 3-0 against UNC under TOB! Way to go Wolfpack!

I am sorry that I have not been posting a lot lately, not much is going on here. I am busy with school work and Randall is busy with work. I will have more to post around Christmas as we are going to do about two weeks worth of traveling. Until then I may only post on Saturdays.

Christmas parade

The Haflinger horses pulling Santa

The choir preceded by frosty and some winter princess looking lady

Helsinki City float

Little kids on Shetland ponies with bears

Old historical fire truck

Old Fire car

Some of the choir members with their children

The Basset hounds

An old delivery truck

Children walking with bells on their hands

Two mounted Police officers, I don't know the breeds of horses but they were pretty tall.

Today we went down town to watch the lighting of the streets and the Christmas parade. The lighting of the streets was pretty cool. I will post a picture of it later, the one I got today did not turn out well enough because it was not dark outside. The Mayor gave a speech that we did not understand, but everyone else seemed to enjoy. A choir sang a couple of songs in Finnish and "Jingle Bell Rock" in English! After the choir finished and the street was cleared the parade started. The parade was very very small. Washington's (our hometown in NC) parade is about 6-7 times the length of this parade. All of the parade participants are in the pictures above (sorry that they are so blurry). The most interesting thing about the parade were the Basset hounds. Everyone laughed when they saw them. Once they passed us one of the dogs let out a loud bay and everyone busted out laughing. Once the parade was over everyone just followed the last group out and left.

Since I have so little to tell you about the parade I will write about yesterday. Yesterday Randall finally decided to get his hair cut. So, we went to this place he read great reviews about online. The guy that cut his hair was from Tunisia, which is in the northern tip of Africa close to Italy. He spoke English well and said he knew Finnish ok. He did a good job with Randall's hair and was nice. After Randall's hair cut we decided to go to the local meat market. The market is in a two story building with meat, cheese, and baked goods on the first floor and fabrics, crafts and artwork on the second floor. the market was small but different. The prices were higher than the Prisma so we will most likely only buy baked goods and sweets from there if we get anything. After we left the market we came home and spent the rest of the afternoon working on homework. Overall, this weekend was pretty uneventful much like the rest of the week.

We found Nemo in Tampere

One of the interesting looking fish from the aquarium

Nemo and his friends

A painting of Lenin speaking to a crowd of peasants

A statue of Lenin

The hill that we climbed to get to the observation tower

The city of Tampere from the observation tower

Saturday we went to Tampere; a town about a two hour train ride away from Helsinki. We decided to go because they have an observation tower with a really good doughnut shop, an aquarium that I wanted to see, the Lenin Museum, an indoor fresh foods market and a stable yard. We arrived in Tampere and realized that the visitor center was closed which left us without a map. We did find a large directory and located our first stop, the observation tower. In order to get to the tower we had to walk half a mile up an ice covered hill. We made it safely to the top where we ate some really good poppy seed doughnuts sprinkled with sugar. We then climbed that tower and took some of the pictures above. We also picked up a map from a stand at the base of the tower.
After leaving the tower we walked to the Lenin Museum. The museum is dedicated to Vladimir Lenin, who is credited with starting communism in Russia and helping Finland gain its freedom from Russia. You can read more about Lenin by visiting this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin . We took several pictures while at the museum of some of the sculptures and articles displayed there. The museum was interesting and broadened our knowledge of how communism got its start and how Finland gained its freedom.
After touring the museum we walked to the indoor market. We walked around for a few minutes and looked at all of the booths. Many of the booths had fresh meats and vegetables of all varieties. There was a fish booth that sold fresh and cooked fish of several varieties including salmon. There were a few baked goods booths and some booths that sold crafts and other supplies. We decided to try our luck at one of the baked goods booths and ordered salami and cheese sandwiches and "desserts". I got a lemon creme iced cookie while Randall ended up with a rice cake of sorts. We both thought he had ordered a dessert but it was a pastry (unsweetened) folded like a flat football around rice. It was good but it was not sweet as he had expected.
Once we finished lunch we headed to the stable yard. The stable yard is an old horse farm where the factory owner and workers kept their horses. We though it would have open stalls that we could see how the horses used to housed but it was empty. They did have several shops which ranged from a modern tack store to a chocolate shop. We decided to get a small sample of some of the fresh made chocolates. So, we purchased a mix of strawberry and white chocolate, plain white chocolate, milk chocolate and dark chocolate. We got two pig shaped pieces of each kind in the pre-assorted bag I picked out. We have two left and they were quite good.
After our short visit to the stable yard we went to the aquarium. There we saw Nemo and all of his friends. We saw some of the fish from the movie and some other types of fish that I have never seen before. They had an electric eel, horned puff fish, lion fish, several fresh water stingrays, an iguana, lots of algae eaters, catfish and cichlids. They also had rainbow trout and regular trout in a tank that the top opens outside. They had a tank that had a thunderstorm demonstration which was a joke compared to what we experience in North Carolina. We took our time and enjoyed seeing some of the fish.
After leaving the aquarium we went out to a local non-American restaurant. We both ordered different dishes and sampled each others food, Randall ordered sauteed reindeer with gravy over mashed potatoes and I got the sausage pan, which is a small iron skillet layered on the bottom with potatoes, ham and onions, then topped with four types of sausage. I liked all of the sausage except one type. We both ate until we were about to pop. We took our time and enjoyed the food and warmth of the restaurant. After we finished we headed for the train station.
At the train station we had about an hour wait for our train so we sat down and talked about our day. While we were sitting there a drunken homeless man walked up and got in Randall's face. He began saying something quietly in Finnish. When he paused for a second Randall looked at him and politely said "I do not speak Finnish". Well, that set him off, he started yelling at Randall in Finnish and we have no idea what he said. His tirade only lasted for about 15 seconds, because a police officer came over clasped him on the back of the neck and escorted him outside. The officer did not say a word to us or the man. He did talk to the two men seated behind us and we are not sure what he said to them but no one said anything to us either. The man did come back in about 15 minutes later but he did not look at us or speak to us.

Here are some of the other photos that we took while in Tampere

Weekend in Tampere

Downtown Helsinki

Cruise line possibly going to Sweden Some of the buildings near the port

One of the Churches near the port

Some of the houses on the other side of the port

Another cruise line in the port

A fountain in front of the port

One of the statues downtown

Another statue downtown

Saturday we went downtown to check out some of the sites that we saw last weekend when we went out to eat. We got off the bus and walked toward an area that will soon become the Christmas market. The area that will actually hold all of the booths and tents is a grassy area with lots of benches and lined with trees. There is a large statue in the area as seen from the above picture. Across from this area are several high end shops including, Lauren Ashley, Luis Vuitton, and many that I do not know or cannot pronounce. All of them looked very high end and we did not even bother going into any of the shops.
After we walked down that street we turned down a side street toward the port. There we saw several cruise lines that do short (2-3 hour) and longer (full day) cruises to Estonia and Sweden.

We also walked through two outside markets selling anything from jewelery and animal pelts to baked goods, fried and fresh fish and fresh produce. We will return to these markets and purchase some of the sweets from the baked goods tents and possibly some of the fresh produce. The fish were disappointing; all they had were small sardine size fish fried or whole (scales, guts, and all) fresh fish. We may eventually purchase some fish from either the market or the Prisma but that will not be any time soon as we still need to figure out what kind of fish they have.

After we walked around downtown we headed to the bus stop. Along the way we saw the Ford Mustang above and had to get a picture. It is the only American sports car we have seen the whole time.
After we came home and ate lunch we went to the largest mall in Scandinavia! It was a little disappointing. The mall was bout the size of Crabtree in Raleigh or two Colonial Malls put together. We decided the malls here are so small because there is nearly one on every other block. They had a lot of restaurants and more high end stores. This is a very metropolitan city so some of the people here must make plenty of money and can afford the items. We will probably go back to the mall for the restaurants and some of the chocolates! Otherwise we will only return with guests and for something to do.

First Snow in Finland

The street in front of our apartment

The fields and barn down the street

The gym/deli beside our building

The parking lot for our apartment

The playground at our apartment

Our balcony

We had our first snow last night. The ground is covered in about 1-2 inches of snow! It will most likely melt throughout the course of the day but it did stick. Last year in Finland they did not have a snow that stuck until late November. This may mean we will have a white Christmas. Even though Finland is a very Northern country, here in Helsinki (southern point of Finland) they do not receive the majority of their snow until January! There is a chance for snow and sleet for most of the weekend, so we may see some more snow before the week is over with.
On a different note, we cooked a Finnish dish Tuesday night. The dish consisted of fried cubed potatoes, diced onions and hot dog pieces. It was really good and very simple. We will try to expand out Finnish cooking as Randall tries different foods at work.
I am starting to figure out classes and will start on a literature review course soon. I have to compile a list of literature to write a review on and then submit any literature that is not available at the University of Helsinki.

My Birthday weekend

View of our neighborhood

Randall walking down the rock

Downtown view from the rock

Side of the rock from the top

View of our neighborhood from the rock

View of downtown and the side of the rock

A "cave" at the base of the rock

So, this past Friday I turned 23! We went out to an "American" restaurant to celebrate. I really wanted a cheeseburger so Randall was nice and let me pick an American style restaurant. The burgers were ok, they were like Hardee's Thickburgers. The restaurants use pre-formed patties that are large but thin. I would guess that our burgers were 1/3lb burgers. Mine was good because it was mounded with bacon, onions and a sweet BBQ sauce. They served the burgers with a small (5 pieces of lettuce, 2 tomato and cucumber slices and dressing) side salad and a large serving of fries. I managed to eat all but two bites of my burger and half of my fries. Randall ate all of his burger and all but 3-4 bites of fries. We most likely will not go back to the restaurant because it was a little pricey considering the quality of the burgers. We did enjoy our meal and it really hit the spot.
On Saturday and Sunday we went walking/hiking. On Saturday we explored some of the surrounding area near our apartment. We walked down several trails that take you through the wooded area and around a field. We did not remember the camera so we went back on Sunday to take pictures.
On Sunday we climbed up a rock hill to get a good view of the surroundings and get some pictures of the downtown area from the rock. It was fun walking around on the rock and looking at the different parts of Helsinki and our neighborhood. We hope to do some exploring downtown this coming weekend. We saw another area of downtown Helsinki when we went out Friday and plan to go back with the camera during the day to get some pictures. I will post any that we take so everyone can see them.
On a side note I have decided to name my plant Orphie Phalan (Fay-lon). This is a combination of the two names that both of our mothers suggested. Orphie is because it will be an orphan plant when we leave and Phalan is part of the scientific name of the plant. I will call it OP for short :) Thanks moms for your help. Thank you, to all of the others who gave suggestions.