So, no update for a while again. Sorry! The holidays were incredibly busy, and I've been doing so much here with friends and my new family that I haven't remembered to blog about it :P
So, I'll have to cover a lot in this post!
About a week before Christmas, my host family introduced me to a Finnish tradition: Crayfish Parties.
Apparently, they're supposed to happen around the end of summer, but my host family does it a little different. Every year around Christmas they pull the crustaceans out of their freezer, thaw them out in a huge bucket, and set them out to eat on a nice platter. I was the one that got to arrange them nicely on the platter (bleh).
A couple of family friends came over to eat them with us, which is not as easy as you might think. I had to be taught a couple different times on the right way to eat them. First, you pull off the claws and crack them, suck the juice out, then take out the meat and put it on buttered bread. Then, you have to crack open the back, suck more juice, and pull it apart just right so you only get the tail and not the nasty stuff. Then, you open the tail, take out the tube that holds the poop (ew) and take the meat and put it on the bread. Rinse and repeat.
The whole process makes you incredibly hungry, and honestly, I was kind of grossed out. But I tried! I was done after filling up a piece of bread though, and luckily, there was steak after. :P
Christmas break came a couple days before Christmas, and me and all of my friends pretty much ran out of school on the last day. I helped get ready for my host family's relatives to come over in the couple of days before, which involved a lot of cooking and cleaning. :P
The relatives arrived the day before Christmas Eve, and we all hit it off pretty fast. They tested my Finnish, but everyone (besides Lumi, the two-year-old, haha) spoke english very well. Laura, one of my host dad's sisters, is even a past exchanger, and she went to Chicago during her 3rd year of high school.
This is a picture of Petteri, my host dad's brother-in-law, struggling to open a can of fish eggs, Riita, his wife and my host dad's oldest sister, and Mummi, my host dad's mom and the master cook of our Christmas.
Here's Mummi, Laura, and Riita, in the kitchen again. I'm not sure what they're making there, haha.
Here's Lumi, Riita and Petteri's daughter, moments before she forced me and Veera, my host sister, to sing Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer.
Christmas Eve is when the Finns celebrate Christmas. They eat, go play in the snow, eat more, relax, eat, open presents, and then eat. The picture above is of balini's(I have no idea how to spell that). They came originally from Russia, but its now traditional to eat them on Christmas Eve, just as it is to eat rice porridge in the morning. They put one almond in the porridge while its cooking, and whoever ends up with the almond in their bowl gets one wish that's supposed to be guaranteed to come true. I got the almond this year :)
The balini's are eaten as an appetizer to the Christmas Eve dinner. They're like a sour pancake, that you spread sour cream, fish eggs, onions, and pepper on. It sounds weird, but its actually pretty good.
That was followed by ham. I think we ate two hams and one turkey over the time everyone was here, and more chocolate than I can measure. It was a lot of food.
My host parents have a lot more pictures of me with everyone, and I'll be sure to put them up once I get them :)
New Year's I spent with my host family and some of their family friends. It wasn't so different from an American New Year's, other than us not watching the ball drop. We went outside at about 11:30 to start lighting off a ton of fireworks, though it was a little too cold to fully enjoy them (who wants to be out in -20C?), and my host parent's champagne froze in their glasses. It was fun nonetheless, and we stayed up until 4:00 playing bored games :)
Thanks for reading!
