Helsinki :: Day One

We made it!

After our long travel excursions (Eowyn was a champ!) we have arrived in beautiful Helsinki.

We checked into our hotel with our 8 bags and 5 carry-ons and have settled in. We'll be living out of our suitcases for the next couple of weeks, but luckily everything fits in our hotel room. We woke up at noon today-after our 3 am snack feast- and ventured out to the city! We found Ben's work, then ventured on the hunt to get a month transit pass for the two of us. We succeeded and started getting excited. The deeper into the city we travel the more interesting this place gets.

With time to kill, we continued on to visit a few of the main spots: Stockmann (closed for mothers day-but we expected that) and the capitol area. At stockmann a group of asian tourists got exceptionally excited to see Eowyn (and what I assume was her blond hair.)  She got many pictures with the other baby in their group (I think they thought she was native.) We also heard a british couple (I assume) speaking english. It made me pretty excited.

We stopped at a park for Eowyn to play and shortly before we found a small pizza joint. We had the place to ourselves and they had hawaiin pizza! We've been offered an english menu both times we've stumbled over the finnish one, which has been incredibly helpful. Eowyn was given some sort of candy (it's like a tootsie roll...but isn't) when we left, and overall the people we've met are very kind. We are very fond of that little pizza place.

So far all of our attempts at life have been overall pretty successful.

We struggled with our first grocery store experience (it was one of the only places open in the evening, and was very small-I kept getting stuck with our stroller) but ended it with buying chocolate and bbq chips. Eowyn makes friends with the older people with ease (the middle age/teens are not smilers as we predicted, but some of the more mother and father types and grandparent age,  have been very friendly towards us.) We're figuring out finnish words and making our way.

Day one has seemed pretty successful.

We're tired, so I'm sorry if this entire post is a run on sentence. But we've definitely been impressed with our introduction to Finland. If I had to sum up the experience, I'd say that the finnish people are like those mitten warmers. The longer you engage with them, the warmer they get. Sales people are friendly for practical sake, and the more questions we ask people the warmer they seem to become.

The toilet, light switches and plug ins are different and the floors are heated in the bathroom (woah.) As well as the time is military time. (It's 19:00 right now) We can't read any signs yet, as they use different symbols, but our visa card works in the chip reader thing, and we've been able to find food plenty despite it being a holiday (So, mom we didn't go hungry!) Eowyn has loved the seagulls and puppies and we've loved the slower pace. People don't seem to hustle, they all seem to either be running for a bus, or else on a leisurely stroll. Perhaps thats just because its sunday, but we like it.

Tomorrow we're going to venture to get our passport photos for our residence permits, and try to find our apartment building. We'll be taking our first tram ride! Exciting.

We're just trying to wrap our brains around the idea that this is like....where we live.

Thank you for all the prayers, God is certainly answering them. We've had plenty of peace, even despite the exhaustion. Ben and I are still friends after this journey! Haha, Really though, I think this is the best we've ever travelled together.

Until next time,
Moi Moi!  (Bye!)