So we were on our long (about 9 hours I think) train ride down south to our destination Mantyharju where my cousin Heidi and her family lives. The train ride was sooo long and boring cos after a couple hours it became dark and I couldn't see anything outside. BUT we had bought some food - dark rye bread (OMG the best food to come out of Finland truly! I wish we could get ruisleipa here in Australia ;_;), lactose free cheese and some chocolate :D. I think we changed trains once which was a bit of an ordeal, what with getting our suitcases down (we managed quite well) and dragging them to the next train. We were met at the Mantyharju train station by my cousin's (very handsome :D) husband Janne. It was a bit of a drive back to their place - they live in quite a rural area, very pretty lots of trees everywhere! There was very very little snow in this area, only a light dusting in some areas but most had melted away from the rain :(. Janne had brought their son Valtteri along but he was asleep. He's 5 years old and so cute! He always looked so huge and photos but in reality he's not that ginormous :D. When we arrived at their house (which is really big and beautiful!) their almost 2 year old daughter Vilya was still awake! Mine you it was about 11pm lol She had been excited to see us and was full of energy! It was so nice to finally meet my cousin Heidi XD I had written letters with her younger sister Tiina for a long time and now finally being able to meet them was just surreal! Heidi is so nice and natural and also soooo pretty! We had dinner and then Janne took us to their summer cottage where we would sleep at night.


Isn't it just gorgeous! I love how it's blue :D


This is their other summer cottage. The above cottage they rent out to holiday people and this one is the one that they use during the summer. It's ridiculoulsy cute, like something from Moomin!


Lake next to cottages :D

The cottage was really hot because they had put the heaters on full blast so my mom decided she would open the window. These windows don't have fly screens so we had a little visitor during the night. I heard rustling around my open suitcase during the night but I was so tired I just went back to sleep. In the morning my mom told me that a mouse had gotten in through the window! She had even seen it at one point. We looked through our stuff to see if anything was damaged and I discovered that it had gone into a little plastic bag in my suitcase and eaten 2 whole small chocolate bars! These chocolates were for my other cousin's kids. It had also chewed a hole into a bag of potato chips we had bought in Rovaniemi. I wonder if that mouse died somewhere lol But during our whole stay there we heard all these scurrying sounds in the roof and between the walls! Either it was the same mouse or another one! Towards the end of the stay the rustlings became slower and more drawn out and sounded really creepy. I know it's only a mouse but it sounded awful and made me freak out. The mouse was probably dying or something!

During our stay my other uncle, Paavo came with his wife Arja (the parents of Heidi) and at Christmas Janne's parents came as well. Christmas was so wonderful! In Australia Christmas is always hot and never feels real because ever since I was little I've always associated Xmas with cold and snow like in picture books. Also in Australia it's just me, my mom and my sister (my dad doesn't participate) so it's kinda lonely and crap. But finally I was able to have a real Xmas although there was no snow :P The feast was huge and delicious and it was so lovely to have family around (even though I couldn't understand what they were saying! Only Heidi, Janne, Tiina and her bf Petteri could speak English). Even Santa came and gave the kids presents XD Oh and in case no one knows (except kittyvane :P) in Finland you celebrate Xmas on Xmas Eve rather than Xmas Day. Back home we also celebrate the same way.



Christmas dinner! In the top left corner are Karjalanpiirakka, it's a little pie thing with rice filling, extremely yummy, back home we make them with mashed potato as the filling. To the right is salmon.



Uh...more salmon I think lol The Finns love their salmon!



Ham, potatoes, meatballs, casserole things which I can't remember...I think one was carrot....the others I don't remember! But they were yummy :D



Salads and then a beetroot dish which is soooooooooo yummy XDDDD

Heidi's place is a farm which has pigs (they sell ham), 3 sheep, 2 ponies, 400 chickens (selling eggs), 4 emus (it used to be an emu place but then they couldn't source any new ones to breed), 2 bunnies, a dog and 2 cats. We helped cleaning the poop off the eggs which was fun XD I like mindless work :P The pigs smelled so bad though! I felt like vomiting when I went inside the piggery. It also makes you stink like pigs. But the pigs were very cute! They were also really inquisitive something I had never seen before in pigs. They kept looking at us and coming over and their snouts felt all rubbery! I got to feed them too, lots of bread :D


This is Yeri, their Bernese Mountain Dog. Such a sweet dog!!! But he loved to stuff his nose in your crotch lol


This is Ville, she wasn't a particularly social cat so I didn't see her very much.


Sulo is the cutest cat!!!! He's so furry and loved to play with you. When he was playing he would huff and puff and wheeze cos he couldn't breathe properly and I love it when cats and dogs can't breathe!! It sounds so cute lol

We spent about a week at Heidi's and then it was time to go to Pieksamaki where my mom grew up. We stayed at my uncle Paavo's place. He took us to see my other uncle Pekka and his partner.


My mommy's childhood house! It's so cute and very small, I marvel at how they managed to fit in 2 adults and 7 children O_O We saw a squirrel scurry around the side of the house!

We spent the New Year at Paavo's place. I wanted to do fireworks cos in AUstralia they are illegal but he said it was a waste of money :( But we walked around the neighbourhood to watch other people do it :P We saw a lot of dogs! It seems like in Finland everyone has a fancy purebred dog! I did not see a mongrel even once, while in Australia most people have a mutt. It's weird cos in Finland, purebred dogs are about twice if not more expensive than in Australia. But it was nice, I even got to see an Afghan Hound, I had never seen one of those before in real life!

After Pieksamaki we headed towards Jyvaskyla where my mother's half cousin Paivi, her husband and their daughter Pilvi came to pick us up and take us to their home which was about an hour's drive away. They also have a really beautiful house (seems like everyone there does!).


Isn't it pretty!

They took us to meet her brother's family and they had 3 really cute cats!






This one is really old and had a (non-threatening) growth on her head.

Outside Paivi's house (and pretty much every house there) they had a bird feeder, everyday birds would come for a feed, it was lovely watching them!



We did a bit of shopping and I scored the best looking boots I've ever seen from a place called K-Kenka (thanks so much kittyvane for your shoe shop suggestions!). I'll take a picture one day when it gets colder, but they are black and it looks like a cross between a mary-jane and a regular short boot. They also resemble Mary Poppins boots :D. On the day that we left we browsed through Jyvaskyla city and shopped a bit. Although Finnish cities aren't really busy and overly huge I've realised I'm not a city girl. I much rather be in the country side or a more suburban area where it's quiet and you don't feel fenced in by other people.

Next stop was Isokyro where my cousin Petra lives with her partner Juha. They also live in a pretty rural area but it was very pretty. It was all flat and it was nice to just see endlessly into the distance with a few cute houses here and there. They took us around the place to see the sites and told us about their history. At their place Petra cooked us reindeer! I was expecting it to have a strong smell and taste but it smelled normal and tasted like beef lol. Petra also took us to see my mom's old friend who also had a cute kitty!



In th evening Juha's younger brother Jussi came over and we all had dinner and played an awesome game called Carcassonne. I ended up buying it in Helsinki cos it was so fun. The next day I went skiing! It was on created snow though cos the snowfall hadn't come yet :P But it was good enough! I had never skiied before and omg I was bad at it! I could stand up and was fine being along a flat stretch. But I couldn't get up hills the normal way I had to go sideways and inch myself up lol Then the downhill areas...they weren't very steep...not steep at all actually but I fell down twice, the second time I fell so hard on my bottom I thought I was going to cry but I made myself suck it up cos it would have been too embarrassing to cry in front of everyone. So because I am so unco Juha had Jussi stay behind me so that if I fell he would just catch me and everything would be ok. And I fell every time I went downhill! I feel so sorry for him, I wish I wasn't so bad at it! But going downhill is so scary, you have to bend your knees a lot and it feels like you're falling forward and I hate that feeling so I wouldn't bend my knees far enough which causes you to fall backwards and you know what happens next :P I was sad to leave, I really liked my cousin Petra ;_;

Then we went to Porvoo which is where I was born to another uncle's place (the father of Petra) Pertti. Porvoo is so damn pretty!!!! And there was quite a bit of snow, maybe 20cm (well actually that's not a lot but for me it's a lot :P). He took us into the main city area (he lives on the outskirts) and the Old Porvoo area is so beautiful *3*









Uh...this post will get too picture heavy if I include more Porvoo pics so go look at my Flickr account for the rest!

I was able to make a couple of demented snowmen! The snow was too fresh to stick so they came out all squishy looking :D



Then we headed to Helsinki to stay with Pentti. He took us around the city a bit, I didn't like it very much, it's too busy! The shopping was nice though :D We had a little party on the 12th where their daughters and their husbands came over we had a nice lunch. One of them has a 1 year old son and he was sooooooooo cute! He had a really wise looking face and looked so much older! The next day we had to go to church (my uncle is a reverend), it was so boring because it was all in Finnish. After church we went to the National Museum which was also a bit boring, I expected something a little different :P Then later that night we went to see my mom's aunt. This aunt smokes so her apartment reeked! It was only meant to be a short visit so I figured we would be there for about 20mins. It turned out to be 2 hours! I was so shitty at the end because early on I had told my uncle that I was starting to feel sick from the smell and could we go. He said soon soon....lier!!! I also couldn't eat anything there (chocolate and cake) cos my stomach was starting to get a bit bad towards this time. So I felt sick and hungry and had no clue what they were talking about. Blah!

On our second last day my mom and I went to Tampere to visit the Moomin Museum! It was sooo good, there were illustrations everywhere and little scenes created from the stories. There was also a Moomin shop :D


A cute statue outside the museum!

Oh yeah and we also went to the zoo, but it was a cold and miserable day lol most of the animals were in their warm houses so we didn't see much but I still got to see seals!

It was a bit of a relief when our day to leave came, not so much cos I wanted to leave Finland, I just wanted to leave Helsinki :P I would have been fine in the other areas. Our flight from Amsterdam was delayed about an hour because some people didn't have their correct VISAs...what the hell!! Don't people do their homework before embarking on a trip? So it made us quite late in getting back home. We arrived in the early morning, I think about 2am or something. It was hot D: And then it felt odd being back on the right side of the road (lol I had to think about writing that.."are we on the left or the right??"), I got used to being on the left! I will also miss my sauna's in the evening, although I don't want a sauna in this heat! But when it's cold it is very nice :D Also the food I will miss terribly ;_; And my family!!! OMG I want to go back so much DXX

Overall it was an excellent trip and well worth the horrible amounts of money I had to spend :D

The End