Walking

Walking in the forests of Lapland was an unforgetable experience. Every each day we were leaving our country houses in Raatama at 9 o'clock sharp, taken by bus to one of the surrounding natural parks and walked for several hours, usually between 4Km and 10 Km.
Before noon we were stopping at one of the several fire camps for our sandwiches, coffee or tee and a delicious grilled sausage.

 

Watching ...

The town of Kuusankoski, our main base for the first and the third week in Finland, is now part of the bigger city of Kouvola.
Kuusankoski is very open and spread. Roads and streets are wide and straigth.
Very large sidewalks and not much traffic, thus ideal for bikers and pedestrians. This also allows people with limited mobility to live their lifes without having to face physical barriers.
Kouvola is a bit more concentrated, yet very open.

Watching, walking, working and ... taking care!

I've decided to use the title «Watching, walking, working and ... taking care!» as the most representative for our three weeks senior volunteer program in Finland.

I'll be using mostly photos, rather than words, for two reasons: first reason is that we already have a very deep description of our activities wonderfully written by Isabel Velez; second reason is that a picture may represent more than a thousand words and we have got so many photos that there would be no words enough to describe what we have seen, sensed and received in Finland!

Wednesday – Sep. 12th 2012 (keskiviiko)

This was the day that Luz and I stayed back in the cottage at Raattama to start our volunteer work. We were to prepare some Portuguese gastronomy samples so that our hosting organization could have a taste of Portugal in Lapland.

I started by trying to help Tuliki with the preparation of breakfast and the teas and coffees to go, and therefore at 06:30 I was downstairs cutting tomatoes and cucumbers, preparing lettuce, setting the cheese and ham slices, the different bread slices and crackers, and watching her cooking porridge, which Finns have with a notch of butter, or my favourite version – a ladle full of berries cooked in sugary water – yummy!

After everyone left for Levi, and I did the washing up, we went into the kitchen and started preparing the Portuguese food – Luz cooked for 2 hours “ Arroz Doce” a creamy rice porridge cooked in cinnamon and lemon peel milk with a bit of sugar, for flavour…

Meanwhile, I had on the stove ½ Kg of soaked black-eyed peas, which were boiling and some 6 eggs boiling in a different pot, after it was all cooked and ready, I added tuna to the drained black-eyed peas, Luz took off the eggs shell and we put it all out in the porch to cool.

While helping Tuliki making salad for the 4pm dinner – I sliced and cut into small pieces white cabbage, green pepper and watermelon, while she shredded carrots and zucchini, Luz took a couple of photos:

… And then, she started to yell: “come, look! COME, COME, QUICKLY!”… I then, saw this most bold little animal a “kärppä”, as they call it in Finnish, "arminho", in Portuguese… an ERMINE trying to get into our Portuguese dishes – especially the tuna and black-eye peas salad…

… and then left as it came – quickly and silently – what an encounter… so funny!

When the others came and after dinner, we had some Finnish games outside, 

After the games, time for the Portuguese wines and food tasting.

And each one of us received as a gift a”kuksa”.