50,000 Hits

It's funny the way things happen sometimes. Well, quite a lot of the time actually. I have lost count of the number of times I have looked back on a sequence of events and thought how I would never have been able to predict any of it.

This blog is a bit like that. On Monday it will be exactly a year since the first post was published.  The original idea was simply to have some material available for people in Somero interested in practising their English. I had moved here just a few months before and was interested in making friends with people in the town.  I have also always loved writing and taking pictures, so the blog seemed a natural way to connect with the people who came along to the Somero English Club to chat in English once a week.

A year later, somehow the blog has been read by people literally all over the world. I have no idea how this has happened, or how it got to where it did, but I love the fact that people on the other side of the globe are interested in our little town.  I hope as many of them as possible come to visit us in person one day.  This week alone we've had visitors from Columbia, Japan, the United States, Jordan and India as well as countries all over europe.

Somero town centre

On the weekend of the blog's first birthday, it will reach 50,000 hits, which in my view is a great way to celebrate our town and all the people in it who make it such a special place to live.

For those of you who are not from here, please put visiting Somero on your list of things to do before you die. I spent more than forty years looking for a place to call home, finally finding it when I landed here. There are no theme parks or enormous shopping malls here, but what you will find in our town is a friendly welcome and people who have the time to talk to you. Somero still has that sense of community which has been lost in so many places where I have lived before.

So to all of you reading this, whether you are a regular reader or have just found it by accident for the first time, thank you for sharing the blog with us. I hope some Somero love will reach you wherever you are and whatever challenges you may be facing, and I look forward to welcoming you to the town in person one day!  With love from Somero.....