SUNDAY – 09.09.2012

Once more and on our day-off, we had a great day – beautiful scenery and a special encounter with reindeers crossing our path…

In reality, we walked for a while and we had a wonderful day at the Jyppyrä fjeld nature’s trail, we had a great view to the Ounasjöki, which led to the Ounasjärvi and the island Karjalansaari, the Ounastunturi at a distance; we admired nature at its best.

At the visitor’s centre in Hetta, we learnt about the Sámi’s reindeer herding and lifestyle; saw an artist’s exhibition – quite interesting, and bought a few souvenirs.

It all ended with a traditional camp fire, sausages and coffee; and a visit to the church (Kirkko)

On the way back… some more reindeer grazing by the road.

Saturday 08September - Lapland at last!

We finally arrived in Lapland with the beautiful nature to admire, after some hours by bus and a few stops on the way. Someone woke me up - we are getting to Rovaniemi... and indeed we were I recognized the Artikum - a museum about Sámi and their way of life and all related to Lapland and how it evolved economically, and what have been their sources of income throughout the years.

On Saturday, we just enjoyed the scenery, the different species of plants, mushrooms and berries – the most amazing view was to actually watch reindeer grazing by the side of the road: white, brown and grey ones. After walking for 2 Kms and spectacular views were ahead:  ponds with clear waters; brown, green, yellow and red leaves – just so beautiful! 

A wonderful day in the Lappish nature with a camp lunch – coffee and sausages, 2 more Km and a bus ride back to our cottage at Raattama where a wonderful dinner, sauna and evening coffee awaited us.

07 Sep. Friday

Today is Friday and it’s the day we will be leaving for Lappi (Lapland), until 6 pm we had a lot of fun.  

At 12 noon - Eira, a Finnish volunteer I had met before and worked together with both in Portugal and in Finland, came to pick us up from the hotel and walked us to her home where another volunteer Maini, met us – Eira served us a wonderful lunch, tomato soup with Finnish bread and cheese and vegetables, and we then started to learn how to bake. We made Ruisjauhoja Mustikkapiirakka (blueberry pie with rye flour) and Korvapusti that we were going to take to Lapland for kahvia ja pulla (coffee and cake). 

We went by Kaja for a quick visit and farewell and continued to the hotel. 

We then had a meeting with leaders of our host organization for the appraisal of this first week.

06 Sep. morning - school visit

Again, only movies from this morning - but now I know why Finns hava a school system that works and it's probably the most successful in Europe.

Wonderful visit - Sirkku came toget us from the hotel and we walked to this Comprehensive School (lower level). We spoke to the current and the previous headmasters, and visited the school facilities, they offered coffee and 'pula' and we moved on to visit two English classes happenning at that time (8 and 9 years old).

We also visited a Maths class for 7 years old - 1st graders. The amazing thing throughout was that all was so quiet children aren't noisy they are very controlled and behave so well...!!!

05.Sep Evening

I'm afraid I only have a small movie from our evening and I haven't been able to download it from my camera yet, there fore I will only write that we had a wonderful evening on Wednesday.

Lisa invited us over to her house, we were taken in two cars, I was in a one week old white BMW - beautiful car... Anyways, Lisa greeted us with a welcome drink at her beautiful garden, in which she digged and constructed a lovely small pond. 

We went then into her house and a sumptuous exquisite coffee & 'pula' and... so much more, awaited.

We had a great time at Lisa's, went by Meeri's and looked at her garden on the way back to the hotel. Wonderful way of finnishing this day.

05 Sep - afternoon

I have no pictures of this afternoon for several reasons; one of them, and probably the most important one is the fact that we have visited the Service house for disabled people, even though it is a service house, and they get help - it is in fact their house and I felt innapropriate to take pictures there.

We had wonderful conversations there, most of the people attending the meeting could in fact understand and speak English, so we presented the country answered their questions, showed them our flag and one of them asked what did our national anthem sounded like - and we had to sing it. 

They had heard it already because they are all very fond of football and they know Cristiano Ronaldo and José Mourinho quite well...

We saw pictures hand painted by one of the tenants there, we learnt that two of the tenants were married and two others were engaged, they proudly showed us their engagement rings...

We served them coffee and redberries cake and helped a couple of them to eat it, took a few pictures with them and went to visit the house of one of the tenants - Seppo's son's one. Tero was in bed and willing to have us over his place, his father showed us his life as it was before he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at the age of 24 and told us about his journey through the disease until now that he is 40 - a very sad moment... we  wrote a few words  in a notebook so that he could have it read to him, later. 

The most touching and difficult moment was when I went to bid him farewell... his hands grabbed mine,  perhaps as strongly as he has been grabbing his not so very much longer lifetime... a very sad moment, as I came out of his house tears rolled out of my eyes uncontrollably... 

On the outside his father confided - his next door neighbour had passed away the day before, the Finnish flag was at half-mast (Suomen lippu olli puolitangossa)... Not easy!

05 Sep,2012 - A day in the forest

Today, Wednesday - Keskiviiko in finnish, we had a hard day at the forest collecting garbage.

The amount of garbage collected was amazing, we now have new ideas for garbage collecting at Serra de Sintra and other places...

Lunch was served at a Traditional Camp Fire, like in the good old days... by Tauno and his wife, Helena - wonderful lunch I must add.

We had beautiful sandwiches, grilled sausages (makkarat in Finnish) and coffee, blueberries, apples and sweets.