fun with family in Finland

[kareina]

Sometime back when regular access to the internet for normal folk was young one of my first cousins, in Wisconsin, received an e-mail from a guy in Sweden with the same last name, wondering if they were related. My cousin didn't know, so referred the question to my mother, who had been updating the family tree. Mom and the guy in Sweden compared notes and determined that their grandfathers had been brothers (which makes them second cousins). Years later mom and my step dad did a round-the-world trip, which included a stop in Sweden to meet that guy and his family (his parents had moved there from Finland in the 1960's), and they really enjoyed the trip. Years thereafter mom came to visit me while I was living in Italy, and we contacted her second cousin to see if they wanted another visit.

He had since moved to Finland, and suggested that we meet at the old family home in northern Finland, so we did, and had a great time. Now (nearly two years later) mom is once again visiting me for a month, so we decided to go back and visit the cousins in Finland once again. This time we were close enough to drive.

Therefore we set out from Luleå on Friday around mid-day, and five hours later we arrived in Oulainen. The couple we stayed with are an aunt and uncle of that first contact person (which makes them first cousins to my grandfather). They used to live in Sweden, so lord_kjar and I spoke to them in Swedish, and mom did her best to use Finnish. Fortunately, two of their daughters also visited, so we had people who could translate Finnish for us. They are all delightful people, and it was a joy to stay with them.

On Saturday we went to the home of another cousin, where we met tons of other relatives and ate lots and lots of good food. On Sunday we went to the home of another cousin, and met more family, and ate more good food. I feel very lucky that we liked everyone we met and had much fun visiting with them.

Both lord_kjar and I made progress on our nålbinding projects, which fascinated our family, none of whom had ever seen it before. One of the cousins (who is the same age as my mom, but is actually her father's first cousin) was so interested that I did my best to teach her how. However, she doesn't speak English or Swedish, so it was a bit of a challenge as I could really only demonstrate (anyone who has links to good Finnish Language web pages on nålbinding are welcome to let me know so that I can send them to her).

Mom enjoyed her visit, so we left her there. We will go back next weekend to collect her. With luck she will be a little better at Finnish than she was when she arrived. (She spoke Finnish as a child, but once her grandparents died when she was 7 years old her family largely quit using that language, so she doesn't remember all that much of it.)

On the drive home I read out loud to lord_kjar from The Wise Man's Fear. This is the first time either of us have read this book, and we haven't had a chance for me to read to him since before mom arrived, since we have been so busy, so it was nice to get a number of chapters in to it. It amused us both that he reduced to a couple of sentences a series of adventures that other authors would have devoted a full novel to. We are looking forward to reading the rest of the book, though we may not have time till we drive back to Finland next weekend...

I am pleased to report that for most of the drive wherein I wasn't reading aloud he and I spoke to one another in Swedish. I am getting better at it...