Ensilumen & fireworks

It was a busy week. particularly for Gerald working all week at various locations around Espoo (pronounced expo with a b) and last week he should have won a transportation badge for getting on all the various transport systems in two days, including trains, trams, buses, subways and a sailboat too. He's really getting a hang of it and we now have our travel cards so we don't need to pay per trip and just walk on and ride. Mass transit works great here and we're happy to be able to use it all the time. Here's a picture of the metro stop in our new neighborhood - a 3 or 4 floor descent! I made my way up to the University of Helsinki early in the week and had a helpful chat with the administrator in the English Department. As school is just about to begin most everyone is all staffed but she had some good suggestions for me otherwise for teaching and editing work.

Ensilumen means first snow as I decipher it. When looking words up in the dictionaries, we seldom find the exact word and have to make uneducated guesses on what the parts of the word may mean. So when watching the news the other day (trying to learn the language by osmosis) I saw a nice lakeside picture with snow and titled Ensilumen or something close to that. It's a reminder that we are here in this country that has the arctic circle running right through it, and way up in the top of the country it has gotten to 0-C and so they did get a dusting of snow. For the last week the winds have been coming from up there so it's been cool here (50s & 60s-F), but also really interesting. We've seen two rainbows as the rain will pour down in one spot and bright sun will be shining just a few blocks away. The air is very clear too. They do say it's unseasonably cold so I hope we do yet get some of those warm fall days that are so pleasant in Michigan.

It was a week of contrasts - probably typical for expats - like the rain and rainbows. I decided to walk over to the Design Museum Thursday and happened upon an exhibit of vintage Marimekko dresses, evening gowns and fabric designs- it was a fantastic surprise. Then yesterday I got all pent up trying to sign up for Finnish classes for us online, and encountering the majority of those sites in --- Finnish! Like this emphatic note: Kurssille täytyy ilmoittautua henkilökohtaisesti koulussa. Kela-kortti ja työvoimatoimiston asiakaskortti mukaan! Huh? We finally settled on a course at the university's language centre so hopefully we can get registered for that. Then Gerald was too fatigued from his busy week to go up to a fireworks competition last night, so I found my way onto the roof after he went to bed and saw the most awesome and unusual fireworks (well the top two-thirds which showed above the roof tops - pictured here in the daytime) that I've ever seen.
All different shapes and colors - some like Saturn. The moon was out and I had the terrace to myself so it was a very magical hour on the skyline of Helsinki. I only learned today that the terrace is not really a public space so I feel lucky to have inadvertently snuck out there last night. Next year this event is a must as it is done on a bay right in the middle of Helsinki.

We met the owner of the apartment we will be renting this morning and we're all in agreement on things so we'll settle that this coming week, and he was very nice which is reassuring. We should be moving in the last week of September. Jet-setter Gerald is off to Denmark for a meeting Monday and returns Tuesday. In the time I've been writing this entry it has poured rain and now the sun is fully shining, and I'm listening to Michigan Radio - since Gerald wanted to hear Car Talk. We get it at 5pm instead of 10am. And I'm so happy that Gerald got us wireless again today. We've been sharing one ethernet cord and we're not used to that! Oohh - really dark clouds coming this way - that Baltic is quite fickle.