Angel Moment at Helsinki Vantaa

Sorry I don't have a photo for this post, but I still wanted to share this little story. I wrote a few lines last week about those "angel moments" that sometimes come our way without us even realising it. http://www.atowncalledsomero.blogspot.com/2012/02/you-might-be-angel.html and I am fairly sure that another one happened today....

This afternoon I had to visit Helsinki Vantaa Airport, and as I was standing in the arrivals hall, there was a group of people standing around all wearing yellow jackets - who obviously all worked for the same company. One of them, an English woman with a clipboard, was talking to a Finnish colleague of hers in a very loud voice. Of course the conversation was nothing to do with me, but I couldn't help hearing parts of it, because of the way the woman was talking.

She stood in the middle of the hall, in front of everyone, obviously trying to embarrass her colleague about a business issue. She was talking to him as though he was a young child - with a tone that was condescending, patronising and arrogant.  Whatever her problem was (something to do with a PR tour in Finland for Landrovers), in her own mind she was right - her colleague was wrong - and she wanted the whole world to know it.

Throughout the whole episode the man remained calm and gracious and polite.  I have no idea how he maintained his self-control. Personally I would have been tempted to slap her, but if this man was irritated inside, he showed no sign of it whatsoever. ( I need to learn his technique for keeping calm under pressure). When it was over, the woman, now very proud of herself, strutted around the hall like a cockerel, and the man returned to stand where he had been before, next to where I was.

The man was a complete stranger to me, but I felt I could not let the moment pass without saying something. I told him that I had no idea what the issue had been, nor was it any of my business, but that I admired his composure and patience and that no-one deserved to be spoken to like that. He smiled (his name was Tomi) and said that he was grateful for that, because sometimes he felt as though he were living in some kind of surreal bubble where he was the only person that seemed to think that this woman's behaviour was out of the ordinary. I assured him that I was a completely objective bystander, and he was not.

We only spoke for five minutes, but even in those few moments we agreed that we were both at a stage where we were wondering how exactly we had ended up where we were - and we laughed at the absurdity of life.  Very soon after this we both had to leave, but just before I left, he said "Thanks for saying what you did... I thought I was going crazy and it's almost like an angel appeared to reassure me that I wasn't."

I'm certainly no angel (my family would confirm that) but perhaps this was another angel moment like the one that happened to me a few days ago.  In any event, if Tomi should ever read this... you are not going mad....the woman was nuts and you have remarkable self-control. I wish I had half of your patience.

Like I said the other day, we never know when those angel moments might occur, but I am pretty sure I got a glimpse of one today :)

Tomorrow I will tell you about my Somero piepo moment. It tasted like cement and my face was not pretty.  You have been warned....

Here They Are at Last

You already know who they would invite for dinner....and after a wait of several days here, at last, are the members of the Somero English Club group B. Forgive the fact that the photos are so "yellow," but that's just the ways the walls are in the room...sorry!

Vuokko, Kari, Antti, Kirsti and Anna-Liisa concentrating hard



Päivi, Kari, Soila, Heikki and Manu

They are a fascinating group of people, and every week I discover a little more about them. Between them they are well travelled, speak several lnaguages, play various instruments and participate in many sports - some to a high level - so there is never a lack of things to talk about.



Last week we discovered that a total of five of us (including me) had spent at least some of the week stuck in the snow with our cars...so in order to balance this out, I asked them to tell the class about the high point of their week. Their answers were very varied....

Soila has decided that she needs to get fit, and was proud of the fact that she has started going to the gym again.



Antti and Soila decide who to invite for dinner



 Kirsi told us about a dream she had had in which she was twenty years younger (always a good dream..) and working on an international camp in Slovakia. She said that even when she woke up she felt invigorated by having been younger for several hours during the night.  Now that is what I call positive thinking!



Kyösti and Vuokko contemplating life



Kari is a very good skiier and he felt enthusiastic about the fact that skiing conditions in Somero have been good lately. In just one week he had skied 40km... probably more than I will manage in ten years.  He said how he looked forward to a hot sauna at the end of the ski, and he must be doing something right because he looks more than ten years younger than his true age.

Kyösti told us about his holiday to Fuerteventura (you can see from the photo that he got plenty of sun).

Our second Kari told us that the highlight of his week had been attending a Bianca morales jazz concert as he is a big jazz fan. For some reason I seem not to have written down the highlight of Heikki's week. He is the star pupil for commenting on this blog...so Heikki perhaps when you read this you can tell us what your highlight was?

Päivi shared her good news about the birth of a new baby boy to her god daughter who lives in the UK. He has been named Otis Benjamin...so congratulations from Somero to the whole family!

Manu and Kari (the skiing one of the Karis)

Antti's son passed his driving test just over a year ago and this week the two of them went out to buy him his first ever car...so this was quite a milestone within their family. Manu described how he had visited his sister-in-law and enjoyed playing with their Collie dog who apparently has taken a strong liking to Manu and pounces on him every time he arrives at the house! 

Kirsi, Anna-Liisa, Päivi and Kari (jazz fan)

Vuokko had joined us for the first time and said how she had enjoyed sitting by the fire after doing the "snow work" outside, and other moments filling in the crossword with the cat purring on her lap.

Anna-Liisa said the highlight of her particular week was finally finding the courage to come to a language class...and we are also very glad she took the decision to come.

Heikki and Kirsti complete our guest list

By sharing the high points of our week, we not only practised English but all left the evening with a feel good factor. It is always good to know how to enjoy life through simple pleasures.

Tonight I have plenty of new questions for the group....and I have no doubt that will have plenty of interesting stories to share.

Hello from Somero to Finn-Guild Members!

A special hello to anyone reading this through the link published in the Horisontti Magazine, and welcome to the blog!

http://www.finn-guild.org/fi/content/horisontti-kevat-2012

Horisontti Magazine is published four times a year and is aimed at people having links with both Finland and Britain (you can see it online from the link above). This blog has been mentioned in the latest edition, so if we have new visitors as a result, hello to you from Somero!

In case you are wondering what this is all about, the blog was orginally set up just a few weeks ago at the end of January. This was to coincide with the start of the Somero English Club, which is a group set up so that people could meet together in an informal and relaxed atmosphere and chat in English.

Eighteen people turned up to our first meeting, and the idea of the blog was simply to give them something to read in English. I expected just a few people to log on when they had nothing better to do. As it turns out, in the first five weeks we have had almost 6000 pageviews, with visitors from as far away as Australia, South Africa, Japan and Sri Lanka, as well as many European countries. It's nice to think that pictures of Somero have been viewed literally all over the world!

At the beginning of February I rang Ossi Laurila, the editor of Horisontti, to talk to him about writing an article for the magazine and I mentioned that I had just started this blog. It then turned out that not only had I actually worked with Ossi on a radio programme twenty years ago, but also - that of all the places in Finland he could have come from, his home town was in fact Somero! So yes, it is a small world indeed. 

So there it is. The Somero English Club has so far met three times. There are now 22 regular members divided into two groups and I can honestly say that both groups are a really special set of people. Last week I introduced Group A on the blog and promised to do the same with Group B the next day until I was suddenly struck down with various illnesses, leaving the blog unwritten and Group B still in the shadows. I promise to finally introduce them tomorrow - but before then, just so you get a clue as to the nature of the group, here are the people they suggested for the guest list of our fictional dinner party.

• John Steinbeck
• Paavo Väyrynen
• Nigella Lawson
• Leo Haltsonen (Mayor of Somero)
• Antti Sarpila
• M.A.Numminen

Do you see the way that culture and Somero have been cleverly mixed together here? Poor Nigella ended up being the only woman to be invited and may even end up doing the cooking unless any of the others have secret talents in the kitchen.... but at least with this dinner party crowd we can be guaranteed to get a good conversation going. Which of course was the point. So hello from Somero to readers of Horisontti Magazine. I hope you will join us again tomorrow to see who our dinner guests were invited by!

My New Finnish Word....

...is poskiontelontulehdus. I will leave you to guess why. (sinusitis in case you are not a Finn).

Sorry for the silence over the last two days - but the only way to describe how I have been feeling is to use the English expression "death warmed up."  That should pretty much give you a clue.  The mixture of flu, coughing, blocked sinuses and headache meant that I have spent most of the weekend in bed. 



Somero's own Lumilinna



This morning though, the sun was shining and the sky was bright blue, so I thought it was time to go out and get some fresh air. I took my camera with me and went looking for things to make myself feel better.  This is what I found....




Freedom....




Light at the end of the Tunnel...




The New Kohnamäki Bridge



The sun is shining in Somero



Missed him.....



   

The view doesn't get better than this

Almost looks like summer

I know that I am far from the only person feeling a bit unwell at the moment, so this last picture is for you if you are feeling less than a hundred per cent today.



At least today the sun is shining and the sky is blue, and if you live in Finland you don't have to go very far to find pictures such as these. Tsemppiä for the new week starting tomorrow!

Meet the Somero English Club!

Jorma, Marja-Leena, Maritta and Sveta

This whole reason that this blog started was to provide something to read for our English Discussion Group...now renamed as the Somero English Club. So far we have met three times, but the club has already become a highlight of my week. Of course every language group will be individual and unique, because it is made up of the people who are in it, and it's not always this way! I remember once teaching a class in France of people studying IT.  They were obliged to study English as part of their course, and most of them were not were in the least bit interested in the class, so it was torture to teach. I dreaded going every week. 



Juha, Kirsti and Hannele discuss monkeys with no tails....

This group is entirely the opposite! We have a lot of fun every Tuesday....and I thought it was only right to briefly introduce you to the people who are in it. I'll start with Group A, who meet at 18.30 each Tuesday. This week we had a class of eight, and here they are...

Maritta came for the first time as she had been away on holiday in Fuengirola (as you can probably tell from her tan), so to start the evening I asked everyone to say hello and reveal an interesting fact about themselves.



Juha has lived all his life in Somero, enjoys skiing and is also studying Spanish. He has also promised to help me with my skiing, but I am not sure he realises quite how big a challenge this is going to be! Hannele is retired now, but used to work with young babies in a hospital - she has a wicked sense of humour (in case anyone is wondering, the word "wicked" in this sense is a big compliment! Ella is half Finnish and half Spanish - she is the youngest of our first group and still looking for inspiration as to what to do as a career. We have promised to try and find some ideas for her. Kirsti never fails to make us laugh. She used to work in an artitect's office...and just to give you a clue as to what she is like, when she first qualified, she decided which town she would go to work in by throwing open the telephone directory at random. She is not afraid to be spontaneous, and her sense of fun always livens up the class!



Marja-Leena plans our dinner party menu

Jorma is a relative newcomer to Somero. He moved here from Kirkkonummi in 2010 as his wife's roots are here, and they have settled here very well. Marja-Leena lives in a village called Häntälä and also speaks Estonian, so if we ever visit Tallinn we will be relying on her! Maritta was born in Somero and has lived here all her life. She is currently taking a year off work, and spending her time reading, travelling and genuinely profiting from life - her next destination is Italy. (This sounds like a great philosophy to me.) Svetlana was born in Russia and came to Somero after marrying a Finn and has now been here for 18 years.

 

Juha, Kirsti, Hannele and Ella

This week we played the dinner party game. The idea is that the group is put into pairs, and each pair has to decide on one person to invite to our dinner party, explaining the reasons why they were chosen. The person invited can be anyone at all, living or dead. This group's nominations were varied, to say the least. They were Rauli Badding Somerjoki, Sauli Niinistö, Whitney Houston and me! I was quite surprised to find myself on the guest list wit the new Finnish President, but in actual fact I think I was probably invited in order to translate! In any event, I plan to sit myself next to Whitney as I can think of many things I would like to ask.

During the evening the idea is that we try to find any words or phrases that would be helpful to the group...and I never have any idea what is going to come up. Let us just say that the things we convered this week included incubators, neck pillows and monkeys with no tails.....don't ask why, it would take too long.

Even when I'm having a bad day, just thinking about this group of people makes me smile and I feel very lucky to have met them. In the next post I will introduce you to the B Group, and let you know who they decided to invite for dinner. Let's just say it's a party that you wouldn't want to miss!

You Might be an Angel

I'll be honest. I had planned a completely different post for today. But then this morning I received a phone call with some bad news. I was very upset.  So upset in fact that after I dropped the boys at the creche I sat in the car and cried for an hour.

After a while I realised that I still had to go and get some food from the supermarket for lunch, so I dropped into Lidl to pick up a few things.

By this time I had a splitting headache (which has still not gone away...hence the short post for today) but when I got to the cash desk I saw a familiar face in the queue in front of me. It was a man I have bumped into a few times around town and at the auction, but someone I have never spoken to properly. I don't even know his name. He recognised me too and smiled, and then we stood and chatted for around thirty seconds. That was it.

Of course I didn't say anything about my news or why I looked upset -but those few seconds - someone I hardly knew saying a few nice words in the supermarket- made a huge difference at that particular moment. It was just the touch of human warmth that I needed right then.

The reason I mention this, is simply because it occurred to me afterwards that everything we do in life has an effect on other people. Often we have no idea how big that effect can be. Just smiling at someone could be the nicest thing that has happened to the recipient all day. Saying hello to a person you hardly know could brighten up their day just when they need it the most. We never know exactly what is going on in the head or the life of the person we are talking to...and it just might be that you are the angel that was sent to make things a tiny bit better at that moment in time.

Remember that the next time you are not sure whether you have the courage to talk to someone you don't know very well - it might just be that you are the angel they have been waiting for.

Love at First Sight!

 

Looking forward to T-shirt weather



This week Somero's children are enjoying their half term holiday (hiihtoloma). There are plenty of things going on in town. This morning I took the children to Lamminniemi Rehabilitation and Wellbeing Centre (http://www.lamminniemi.fi/) where they had a great time on the dog and pony rides.

 I bumped into Richard Conway (a fellow Brit in Somero) with his wife Piritta and his parents Alan and Mary who are over in Somero from Scotland visiting their grandchildren here. Alan and Mary have already visited Somero many times so it is almost a second home to them.

The Conway family, from left, Richard, Piritta, Alan, Mary and Ilse

Cameron Luca and Niko have fun playing in the snow

Miia, Saana and Olivia enjoy a pony ride

Samu the pony enjoyed giving rides to the children, led by his owner, Kirsi Kopra, who has just moved to Ypäjä from Hämeenlinna.

Once we'd finished with the outside activites we went inside the centre where Marjatta was showing the children how to make some fantastic bracelets and necklaces. I joined in myself and I have to admit that we were amongst the last to leave!

Niko's necklace in Finnish colours



Transport for every occasion



Miia and her Mum make some stylish jewellery

When it comes to love, I have always believed that you generally find it when you least expect to, and that was certainly the case today. One look at Nipsu's face and it was love at first sight. She was such a happy dog that I would have gladly taken her home. In fact I was so taken with her that although I chatted to her owner I didn't even ask his name, so apologies for that!



Nipsu



It's the third meeting of the Somero English Club this evening. My throat is still very sore so tonight I am planning to listen rather than talk. I hope they are all in a talkative mood because otherwise it will be a very quiet evening! 

Snow Postcards from Somero

After the winds, grey skies and  industrial smells of Rotterdam, it was a pleasure to be back in Finland yesterday evening. It had snowed a lot over the weekend so it took almost two hours to drive back to Somero from the airport, but the scenery was so pretty that we even stopped on the way just to admire the snow which was sparkling on the trees. I know it is a cliché to say this, but you always appreciate things more once you have been away from them for a few days.

Over the last few days I have had several emails from Finns living abroad at the moment, and every one of them has said how they are missing the Finnish winter....especially the snow.

In fact there is so much snow here at the moment that we were up at 6.30 this morning trying to rescue the car as it had got stuck and wouldn't move from our drive. But we managed in the end, and it still looks lovely and bright, so here are some pictures taken this morning in Somero in case you are feeling homesick!

I have now renamed our English Conversation Group (which was never a catchy name) as the Somero English Club. We have very few rules....but I have asked anyone who travels abroad to send us a postcard so at the end of the year we can look back on all the places we have collectively visited.  Today we received the first one, and it arrived from Kyösti and Maritta who were on holiday in Fuerteventura. Thank you! I hope you can tell us all about your travels in our class tomorrow evening.

Wherever you are in the world, enjoy these pictures from Somero. I hope they remind you how pretty Finland is when it is covered in snow...

Snowy regards to you all from Somero!

Three Little Stories to Inspire You

I'll be honest...it is Sunday morning and I am feeling really lousy. (If you don't know the word lousy, it means very bad indeed..). I have spent most of the night coughing, my throat and my ears are on fire and my neck and shoulders feel as though I have spent the night fighting with a professional boxer. In fact I was not well enough yesterday to even think about going to the tennis in the evening, so I stayed at the hotel with Minttu. I watched a bit of English television and read the newspapers. I started off feeling a bit sorry for myself because I felt so ill, but then I found three stories in the news, and all of them were inspirational in different ways.  I thought I would share them with you....especially if you are feeling ill too, or are otherwise having a miserable morning.

The first was the funeral of Whitney Houston which was broadcast yesterday. Although it was obviously a sad occasion, the whole spirit of the event was one of joy and celebration. I loved the fact that even though the service was being shown to the whole world, those present were not constrained by rules and regulations and timings. They remained spontaneous - saying and singing exactly as they felt appropriate for Whitney and those there to mourn her...not for the press or the television audience. The artists who performed could have chosen commercial hits, or their latest release in order to promote it, but they didn't, they chose songs that Whitney would have appreciated and which had a meaning to the people from her church. The whole funeral felt very authentic, and I found that inspiring. Whitney was obviously a worldwide celebrity, so neither her life nor her funeral can be compared to those of most people, but there was one theme that was common to us all. We will all die in the end.  So it occurred to me that we should take the opportunity whilst we are still alive to tell the people we care about what we think of them. As human beings we are good at thinking of kind things to say once someone has passed away, but perhaps it would be even more valuable to say those things direct, when they are still here to hear them. My uncle, Pentti Koivula in Lumijoki, is celebrating his 88th birthday today - so I am certainly going to take the opportunity to give him a ring and tell him how much I love him. He is still here, so I can. Just something to think about.

The second story is about a British couple who have just come back to the UK after spending 36 years sailing around the world. In June 1976 Bill Cooper (who is now 83) decided on the way back from his job one afternoon in London that he had enough. That was it - he didn't like his job, and he didn't want to waste anymore of his life doing it. So he quit. Just like that, with one phone call. He and his wife Laurel (now 82) sold their home, gave some of the money to their children and used the rest to buy a boat. They then spent the next 36 years doing exactly what they felt like doing...seeing the world. They visited 45 countries and had many adventures, and as Laurel Cooper said yesterday when she was interviewed "I've had a wonderful life and I wouldn't change any of it." Now that is what I call really living! The couple have now returned to live in the UK due to ill health, but now in their eighties, they do not have a single regret about life and can really say that they lived life to the maximum. There must be a lesson in there for us all somewhere. We need to find our dream and then just go and live it, however daunting that may feel.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-17084308

The final story that I found truely inspiring was about the Swedish man who was discovered in his car after being trapped in the snow for more than two months. I can't begin to imagine how it must feel to live in those conditions and without food for so long, but the fact that he survived and that he is still here to tell the tale shows what an incredible will to survive he must have. Others would surely have given up in the same circumstances, but whoever he is, this man must have a love for life that saw him through it all and helped him survive those horrendous circumstances.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17088173

So that's it really, this is what I wanted to share with you this morning. In physical terms I am not feeling great today, but all of these stories in their own way have made me feel how lucky I am to be alive. I have had the opportunity to travel, I have a home in Somero I am looking forward to going back to and a baby whose smile lights up the world. There are many reasons to be positive about life...even if we sometimes feel ill, at least we are still here...and I genuinely believe we should do our best to profit from every moment. Have a wonderful Sunday!

Some Pictures from Delft



Dutch tulips in Delft market



In theory, it is warmer here than in Finland. It's been about 7 degrees today. In fact though, it has been an extremely windy day and now it is pouring with rain...really hard.





Selection of Cheeses

 




The old church in Delft

 

As Rotterdam had appeared so uninspiring, we visited Delft today, which is between Rotterdam and the Hague. Delft is a city of around 95,000 people, famous for Delft pottery and also as the birthplace of the painter Johannes Vermeer (he painted The Girl with a Pearl Earring). As we arrived it soon became apparent that it was also carnaval day. Everyone was dressed up and dancing to the music being played by the brightly painted vehicles which were travelling in a procession along the streets.

Delft carnaval atmosphere

 



Minttu enjoys the carnaval





The atmosphere was very friendly, and even though Delft is a city, it felt almost like a village. It was market day today and stalls and shops were busy selling waffles, cheeses, fruit and flowers to the passers by. Of all the places we visited today, Rotterdam, Scheveningen, The Hague and Delft, Delft was definitely the place I would choose to come back to. See what you think from some of the photos I snapped today. 

  

He's just been invited to Somero...



The birds are fed next to the canal





Delft by the Canal



The most popular way to travel 

 

A Police Officer keeping control of the smurfs





Stall selling Dutch waffles

Oh and one last thing...we have been joined in the last two days by some new readers from South Africa. If you are reading this post...a specially warm welcome to you. It is lovely to think that people are reading about Somero from the other side of the world! It also seems a little illogical that on a blog which is supposed to be about our little town called Somero I am saying hello from the Netherlands to people in South Africa...but these are the wonders of modern technology.  We will be back home in Finland tomorrow, and if you should ever fancy coming to visit us in Somero then please let us know and we would be very happy to show you around!





Delft Carnaval