Writing everyday has become too much for me to handle, so I have decided that I will write a couple times a month, at least. It has been 8 days since I last posted, and a lot has happened!! For starters, I saw "Rogue One," and I loved it. I thought it was so good. I would talk about it more, but I don't want to give away any spoilers.
I also wanted to talk about forcing both my host families to eat PB+J. Oliver, Taru and Tommi all said that it wasn't awful, but it took time to get used to. I was disappointed haha. My host siblings absolutely refused to eat it, because they thought that the peanut butter was mustard, so they were repulsed. Sari didn't hate it, and Jarno took another piece. Apparently sweet and salty stuff put together is not normal. They were disgusted when I put butter on my banana bread.
I went with Aada and Sari to the doctor today to get Aada her influenza vaccination. I tried to distract her while it was happening so I took a picture of her. At this point she has a needle in her arm, even though you would never know just by looking at her face. She didn't cry, but apparently Venla did when she got it done a couple hours later.
Thursday was our last day of school, but we didn't have any classes. Instead we had a big Christmas assembly. There was singing, dancing, teachers performed, they threw candy at us, Santa came, and they handed out presents. People in my grade honored me by choosing me to be one of the 2-3 people to receive a present. I am so honored and thankful to them all!! It made my day!
We went to Aada's Kindergarten's Christmas Party, and they sang us a sweet song. And Venla and Aatu were both in a Christmas show in their school that we went to see.
Christmas was on Saturday the 24th. Here in Finland, and basically all of Europe, celebrates Christmas on the 24th instead of the 25th, like we do in the US. There are a couple key differences that I want to talk about. The 24th starts off with the kids watching Santa on tv. Santa has his own hour where kids anywhere in Finland can call him and ask him questions. Then, after that, we eat breakfast porridge. It is a special porridge that they only make at Christmas and it has lots of fruits that have been boiled down into almost a sauce. There were two cashews in it and whoever got the cashews could make a wish. Aada got one, and I got one. Then comes the hard part... The waiting. Of course the kids are insane. Santa doesn't come in the middle of the night, instead he comes early evening on the 24th, and individually hands out the presents to the kids. Our Santa was a neighbor, and Jarno (my host dad) was Santa for the neighbor's kids. I actually got to go with him, I dressed up like an elf and I was his helper. I didn't do much but sit and smile, but it was still really sweet and interesting. The kids were so excited when Santa came to the door.
Tommi says hi!