Winter Time

Here is a picture of the Crusell bridge that is being built just outside our windows, named after a Swedish clarinetist/composer (not a string player?). We have all kinds of big machines, dredges, barges or other unidentified objects appearing at any given time as they prep the canal for the bridge. Now that it is officially winter time, meaning we put our clocks back one hour tonight, I think we'll be okay for the noise that comes along with the machinery, as our double windows really block much of the sound. But it has been hard to have to close windows on nice days due to noise. This is the way it is around Helsinki - they are building everywhere. Once the bridge is built, I can walk right over to my office directly across the canal, if it's up while we are still here. I imagine one day they will ferry in the roadbed, and I'd like to see that engineered into place. Once done, this will be quite a beautiful structure.

With all the machines coming and going, though, the swans are keeping scarce, so I haven't had updates on them. I have seen one family with ten (!) cygnets a few months ago, and more recently one with two, but I imagine they'll find another spot to overwinter. And we are rapidly losing our daylight, already noticeably shorter but luckily the fall really stretched out nicely and was so colorful. Now we're feeling the winter nip in the air and the winds are picking up too.

Tomorrow Finland holds its municipal elections and there are posters everywhere with the candidates' pictures and numbers. Here they just plug in numbers to place votes, and there are about 39,000 candidates for all of Finland so they also have a candidate finder program, where you can use a computer program to find your choices. I did a unit for my students with some US election terms, like mudslinger and lame duck! They are all very curious about the US election, and I showed them a copy of part of my absentee ballot too. It's nice to find a current events lesson of such interest, and of course they are voting adults too. I have a new class on Business Writing starting next week, so I'm back with the marine engineers again, and they do need my help. My other classes are mostly in corporate offices.

Gerald returned from his 2+ weeks in the US for work, but was able to see Kaliecia the last weekend and they had a fabulous time seeing the Blue Man Group in Vegas. The night before he left for the US, we tried to get to bed early before his dawn departure, but then a helicopter started some kind of dragnet operation along the canal right outside along with a police boat in the water. Both were scanning the area with spotlights and I thought there was some international invasion of some kind or maybe someone's yacht got stolen - something really serious. Well, here's what Google translate gave me, from what I cut and pasted from the paper:

"Drunken man caused extensive searches Ruoholahti in Helsinki late Friday evening. Events began when the guard found the shore, heavily intoxicated man's wet clothes just before midnight. The man said he is being friends with the water resource. He however could not tell humalatilan, where or how the accident had occurred."

I guess the guy had a few and decided to go for a swim. Humalatilan is some conjugation of drunk. The limits of Google Translate!! I am glad they finally added Finnish this year though. I have to work around what is produced to find meaning, as you can see, and it gives you some idea what we are up against in trying to learn Finnish - the structure is just so totally different. I am in Finnish class again, a perk provided by my job, but it's still quite a struggle. I'm sure the Google site works great for other languages though. It's quite a useful tool.

Now, as we fall back, I'll just have to rework what time it is where everyone is - a constant challenge. Happy Halloween soon! Have some candy corn for me.