Although some of the pictures of spider webs, flying hair, lace drapes, flowers, sunlight and tree trunks might throw you off a bit. That's not really what we did there, you see, that's just me being silly.
What did we do then? Well, we went to the sauna and we swam in the lake and we ate incredible meals and we slept and we drank beer and we sang songs about stars under a starlit night sky and we danced silly dances and we played cards and we proposed toasts and we laughed and joked and made Finnish faces and laughed again.
And to make the post a proper Saara Post let us yet include the four essential parts: 1) Saara Bragging About Herself, 2) Botanical Trivia, 3) Translating from Finnish and 4) "I Miss You Guys".
1) On Bragging
Kevin announced a Silly Dance Competition. To win you had to dance as silly a dance as you could with a completely blank face. I determined to win and practiced diligently. I don't think I won because my dance was the silliest or because my face was the most Finnish. I won because I was the only one who really dared to do it.
You know, everybody cares about what other people think of them. It's because we are social animals. Don't get me wrong, I care immensly what other people think of me, probably much more than your average person. But I don't want people to think that I think of what other people think of me. And I don't care if people will think I'm a bit silly, well, because I am. And nothing nothing is so boring as being proper. So dance your silly dances and make your weird faces, people who know you will think you're cool and the others will certainly remember you. And you get to have all the fun and most importantly: You get to have all the prices!
2) On Botany
Just to clear something up. Birches and aspens are two totally different trees. I guess I was confusing people since I was talking about aspens. Normally a Finn talking about trees is talking about birches.
Birch is the Finnish National Tree. It has small light green triangular leaves and the trunk is white with horizontal black stripes. The branches are black. Xylitol is made out of birch fibers.
Aspen, however, is my favourite tree. It has round leaves with unusually long stems that are twined so that the leaves tremble in the wind making a rustling sound. The stem is greenish and silvery and very smooth. The aspen grows very straight. So does the birch but aspens are even straighter.
Aspen is a funny tree. It is what one calls dioecious: the individual trees have only male or female catkins. Thus reproducing through pollution is rather difficult. But the aspen can also multiply with the help of root suckers: new trees growing from the roots of the old one. Usually aspens grow in large colonies where the different trees are actually the same tree that is connected underground. And I just learned from Wikipedia that these root systems can live unimaginably long, one in Utah is claimed to be 80 000 years old.
In the Fall aspen's leaves usually turn bright yellow, but there are some that turn red and they will turn red every year. And they are incredibly beautiful.
3) On Translating
The name of the place was Villa Kumpare. Kumpare or kumpu means "a hillock, mound, hump, knoll, hummock or a hill". It's the same word as in Kumpula (the place where the math department is in Helsinki). The -la ending makes the word to mean a place where there are (a lot of) hills. And I just learned a lot of new words for kumpu in English.
4) On Longing
I miss you guys! I hope you're having fun in Ann Arbor and in Jyväskylä. You know, out of all of us I think me and Satu are justified in being the loneliest. We're the only ones here in Helsinki and we almost never see each other. And soon I'll be in Iceland.
Looking at the pictures makes me happy though. I hope it makes you happy too. And I've watched Qian's Monkey Dance video like a thousand times. It makes me laugh every single time! :)
So if you didn't click the link in the beginning of the post here it is again. Go check out these guys and other pics.
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