I have received my first Finnish gift while in this country (that is not edible) and I am now ready to be a Finnish house wife (only… I am sure I never will be). Raija made this apron in typical old fashioned style and gave it to me when we visited the house today.
This is the heater/stove/oven thingy that I think looks really cool at Heli’s parent’s house.
I have often seen people here “walking with sticks” (Nordic stick walking). Now I admit – at first I thought: that looks silly. Like they are skiing without skis on! Why do you need sticks to walk? Just walk. After seeing it for awhile it seemed more normal, and now I finally thought: I should try that.
Well. It’s not as simple as it seems. Apparently you need to coordinate the movement of your feet with the movement of your arms! I ended up with four Finns laughing at my pathetic attempt to have my foot and the stick hit the ground at the exact same time. They were simply amazed at how bad at this I could be. I guess when you are born with (cross-country) skis on your feet, this seems like a natural thing to do. Personally, I have not yet tried cross-country skiing… I used to downhill before I moved on to snowboarding. And after the long lesson in trying to stick walk… maybe it’s a good thing I haven’t tried cross country yet!
They say that practice makes perfect – I am not sure that I will live long enough to practice that much!!
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