New Fan of American Christmas

Finland may claim the fame to be the Country of Christmas...but American Christmas is like any Christmas I know on steroids....and I just love it! :)

I felt guilty to arrive first on 21.12. to US and not be the contributing part for Christmas. But for that it has already been agreed that next year Christmas is in our house. Best of both cultures mixed :o)

Weekend before Christmas we spent with the family in Galveston, enjoying relaxed time together and us "kids" doing all 5k Santa Hustle fun run:
http://santahustle.com/galveston/

Part of the fun was to dress up like Santa :) The run was fun and there were loads of people. Christmas music was playing along the route and everyone was cheery. 

 The Christmas celebration started on 24th (yes, not all Americans celebrate only on 25th). We went to aunt-Laurel to join the extended family in celebration. The menu was fish and vegetables.
This comes from the family tradition in aunt-Laurel's house, which go back to Polish roots. It was such a lovely evening. I got to know one more cousin and her lovely family. I was totally unaware of any of the traditions. Anything and everything that took place over Christmas was super interesting.
Exchange of presents between the families took place at aunt-Laurel's house after the dinner.


After this we continued the Santa-game within the immediate family. I must say, I am eternal child when it comes to Christmas and I love giving presents. But even I have never seen this many presents in total...Ever. After few hours of back-up Santas delivering the presents there was an envelope hidden in the Christmas tree....and it was for ME!
I had just been hooked into the family's treasure hunt. The clues were in the form of poem, leading to a new clue or a pit stop. Along the way I found my comfort food e.g. Kalle's caviar cream, frozen salmon and Fazer Dumle candies. The final clues involved the rest of the females in the family...and the final treasure was a total surprise to all (except American Dad)...Girls' weekend trip to New York with some Broadway shows/musicals!!!! Hurray! I enjoyed totally that all this took place on Christmas eve, instead of Christmas day. Happy to have like minded people in the family, who are keen to open the presents in the evening of Christmas eve :o)

Despite all the lovely presents, which were amazing...the best present I could have was a Christmas with a family...not by invitation but as natural expectation. Nothing replaces the feeling of being welcomed and loved. My adulthood Christmases have been for most part bouncing around and being the extra participant, who always had to ask others if there was space to join for Christmas. From here on I know where my place is over Christmas and I know that I do not have to ask :o) The little elf in my heart was making cartwheels. Thank you Santa!

Christmas Day meant Christmas lunch at my American mom's and dad's house. Mom had prepared delicious turkey dinner with side dishes prepared in family tradition. There was funny discussion about the stuffing...whether mom's or dad's family recipe is better. One is with mussels and one is with raisins & onions. I do not pick sides when it comes to food...I let my stomach decide. Since I got to taste the one with raisins & onions, hard to say which one would be the winner. Thus remains to be seen.....

Aunt-Laurel's family came over and so did Nana (95 year old grand-mother). The food was excellent and the extended family spending time together even so. I got to bring some Finnish flavor into the mix. My fiancé and myself happened to find what I call "squeaky cheese / narinajuusto"  in the Specs store in Houston. I prepared that in the traditional way, warming it up and serving with marmelade. Then there were buckeyes and the mint meringue...yammi! Also glögi was part of the Christmas. I prepared Finnish glögi, spicing it up for adults with hint of Finlandia vodka. Nana fell totally in love with it. We jointly renamed it as Christmas party drink. The fun with glögi is that one can add the juice part even to sparkling wine / champagne. Glögilicious!

Apropos Mint: I so like all the minty tastes during Christmas. All the leadingcandy brands in US make a special edition of minty flavored batch for Christmas season. Sooooo dangerous :o)

After all the eating and watching with the younger kids (including me) my new present, the Moomin midsummer madness movie in English, (thanks to my käly/sister-in-law and brother-in-law)....it was time for some fresh air. We took a walk in the neighborhood in Woodlands. It would have been normally dark evening, had it now been the MASSIVE amount of Christmas lights.
I seriously thought that I was addicted to putting winter lights / christmas lights up...but I tell you, my lights are in baby shoe level. It was amazing!!! So many colorful lights, some even with music.
Yes, it is crazy....but it is again so crazy that I really like it!
How does the translation of the old hebrew saying go: "Let there be light!" :o) (Yep, don't spread phrases like that if you don't want millions of people to follow it)

Video of the musical lights: http://youtu.be/zkaJWx2TCkc

Funnies in traffic

To give some Christmas smiles to friends back on the other side of the Atlantic, I wanted to capture the traffic signs that have made me laugh while driving in US.
The beauty of the amusement is simply in the eye of the beholder. Especially when the beholder is a foreigner and seeing things for the first time ;o)

Last July when driving around Houston airport I could not stop laughing about this sign:

It was July, weather was probably around +40 C / 104 F and then these signs stand tall all over the place, where there are bridges. For foreigner the selection of words is really funny.

In best case scenario there could be group of German, Swedish or even Japanese tourists standing on the bridge watching FOR ice with their cameras flashing :o) In Finnish language we do not have the prepositions...so Finns would just drive by and scratch their head and silently mumble "those Americans are bit strange".

Maybe after such tourist staring at the ice event though, they would then change the signs to have "watch out - ice on the bridge" ;o)

In November while driving in Mobile and Calvert without navigation and trying to surf my way through the traffic sign jungle, I bumped into these ones:

Using the term "shoulder" in the traffic is totally new to me. So, at 7 am under the impact of jet lag, driving the first day to the client site...I was nearly having a laugh attack in the car.The only thing I could relate at that moment with the "shoulder" was a human shoulder.

My mind ran off to do its funny versions: in the middle of nowhere, there is the chance to get shoulder fixed if needed and for those, where there is no hope left - there is a dropp-off point. That one can call service indeed! There's something for other countries to take a note from.

In the meanwhile I have learned what shoulder in traffic means...but must admit, I still cannot stop smiling when I see those signs ;o)

The next ones gets my smile as well, every time:

We have somewhat similar sign in Finland but it does not contain any words and it means "prohibited driving direction". Those signs are only to indicate the driving direction. E.g. some of the Helsinki city streets are one way streets and there you see the "prohibited driving direction" signs frequently.

You got to love this US version, being a very straight forward sign: WRONG WAY.
Again me being new to these signs...I was thinking out loud to my fiancé that normally one could see from the cars coming towards you that this is pretty much the wrong way to drive. It is stating the obvious boldly and would be actually more suitable to Finnish thinking too - being straight to the point.

From the "Airport hell" to "Ticket to 7th heaven"

Changing the home country is never easy, from an emotional roller coaster to roaring and running through airports....it is not far from feeling like you were dumped into the airport hell.
But what if there was an angel that offered you a ticket to 7th heaven, wiping all the previously mentioned away?

Exhausted from the previous day packing the house. Neither sleeping so well due to all the anxiety, excitement and everything in between....at 5 am we packed ourselves and the luggage into the loan car. Unfortunately we had not been able to get flights to same plane. I dropped my fiance off, checked my bags in, took the loan car to the car dealer.

The morning energy package was to meet with one of my best friend, my honeymelone, (she is like a sister to me really) at the airport. Previous evening she had been texting and asking about my departure time. I thought it would be more for curiosity but never thought she would be keen to come to the airport early in the morning. But I guess that makes best friends to be the best friends...they do things, which seem crazy for others :o) (Well my 3 best friends....they are really wonderful crazy bunch. But I come back to that some day later)

But in all seriousness....How many of you would drive in cold and dark weather at 7 am to the airport to have coffee with someone before going to work? Nope, not seeing to many hands up there in the crowd.

It was the best morning tea/coffee I have had for a while. We babbled on with everything between earth and sky, with the energy and happiness which one would have at a after work meet up :o)
Even the "tear control" process was in place when saying good-bye to each other (I lost the control later but she was not there to see it). It felt so nice to walk through the gate after such a nice "bon voyage" morning session.

Like said, that was the high point of my morning....as from there on things seemed to just get crazier by the minute for next hours. At the gate, when it got closer to boarding time, announcement was made to inform that the SAS flight crew was had not yet arrived. Some of us, mainly Finnish passangers, were joking that the Swedes had gone to celebrate pikkujoulut (little Christmas party) night before. (Those not familiar with the pikkujoulu traditions see HERE)

But our joking stopped pretty fast when they informed little later that the crew will not make it in time for most of us to be able to make it to our connection flights. At that point the verbal statements around me changed to the traditional Finns disliking Swedes expressions:"Those Swedes cannot even get one flight to take off in time. Should let the Finns handle it, there would be less talk and no problems..." (It is a never ending love-hate relationship that exists between Finns and Swedes and it goes both ways)
Luckily they made the full announcement in Finnish first, which gave us Finns the head start to take over the service desk with the request to reroute. After all it was just 4 days till Christmas Eve and any day lost in transit was tagged with a personal price tag, loosing quality time with family.

I got lucky and was rerouted to Lufthansa flight, via Fankfurt to Washington and there on to my new home.As the airlines do not cooperate with each other, I got the privilege to pick-up my luggage and check it in again at Lufthansa counter. All this took me an hour and lot of running around.

When I had done that, sat down to take a breath...I realized that the whole rerouting meant arriving in the middle of the night without keys and forcing my fiance to wake up, who had arrived just 6 hours prior to that.
It made me sad to think that my fiance had just flown the same route some hours earlier and was heading straight from Frankfurt to Houston. I would be traveling alone the same route....hours later.

I called him (well in time before he was due to get on board of his flight from Frankfurt) to share the news and humbly giving the heads up for the need to have him to open the door for me in the middle of the night....
He was so good about it and promised to come to pick me up even from the airport and check my flight situation to see if there were any delays.

I thought to myself....I am surrounded with the best craziest people. First my best friend coming in the crack of dawn to see me off and now my fiance willing to come pick me up from the airport in the middle of the night (after he has just gotten settled in home after 18h travel and with 8 hours time difference).

The flight to Frankfurt arrived in such a tight time that I ran through the airport...the last thing I wanted to do was to miss the connection flight. I managed while running grab a bottle of my fiance's favorite chocolate liquor (Mozart dark), which I had not seen in US. I negotiated in the Russian style to jump the queue before a huge Chinese tourist group. I made sure to make an innocent face and explain that my flight is taking off in few minutes. It all worked well and they were happy to let me go first (or just really confused what I was trying to explain and too happy with all the piles of cigarettes and perfume bottles they had in their arms).

I raced to the gate and went obediently to the mandatory security check and to give my address in US, during which they reprinted the tickets for the remaining journey.
I browsed through the ticket and was sure that they had made a mistake. My seat had changed and boarding group zone too. I asked the lady kindly, whether she was sure that this was my ticket.
I mean name was right on the ticket...but nothing else matched to the ticket they had printed already in Helsinki. I was tired and confused...I was sure there was a huge mistake and then in the plane I would be bounced around, as they had given me accidentally someone's business class seat....until it stroke me that this must have been my fiance's way to say "I wish you a pleasant flight and I wish I was there with you"!! :o)
Could it be?! Would he have gone and done that...for me?! He is crazy!! ...and adorable at the same!

I was shocked, happy and not far from being high from the mind game or my fiance upgrading me to the business class. I walked tunnel that stated "Business Class" and I screamed on the way: Jipppiiiii!!!! (I did not care if someone was behind me and asked the stewards later to give me some mental medication)
I had 2 elder gentlemen sitting next to me. While I was settling in and packing my bags away I told them my conclusions to the business class upgrade and what a wonderful fiance I have. They were very happy for me. I sat down to read the inflight magazine and was hoping that my fiance would feel the warmth, somewhere over the Atlantic, from all the love I was trying to send him mentally.

The inflight magazine looked interesting, especially all the gadgets they had selected for the tax free shopping. I always take some home just to check the latest gadget trends...I love gadgets. I heard a familiar voice asking:" Miss, is this seat free?" I looked up to see if the ticket they gave me at the gate was really the ticket straight to 7th heaven and maybe I was there already... as it was my FIANCE! He was standing there, right there. I jumped up and just wanted to kiss him head to toe and hug him so hard.

As all the excitement calmed down, the elder gentleman sitting on my other side commented: This is definitely something to tell at home to my wife....well not everything though, as otherwise she will start having too high expectations. But this is like straight from a reality show with such a happy ending!"

I kept staring with an idiotic smile at my fiance the first hour. I could not believe that he was really there...with me, flying with me... making the entry to our new life in US together. While holding my eyes closed, I kept reaching my hand out to reach his hand...wanted to make sure that even though my eyes were closed...that he would stay there, right next to me...my angel.

And yes.....he had sooooo deserved his Mozart chocolate liquor :o)

Well planned is half way done....

With that motto in mind I started preparing my move to US since July.

For nearly 5 months I was living according to all kinds of project plans...one for the move, one for wedding preparation and few for my work related projects :o)

It has of course the benefits that one will most likely be well prepared for the day when the moving company comes. Not sure though that my fiance was overly happy when I decided to give away the tv already in September to our German friends...

The rising piles of boxes serves positively for one thing, the urge to move keeps increasing. The place one felt at home has changed into a warehouse. It helps a lot to overcome the mental and emotional side of things. As there are no preparations plans which would come with the tool "skip the emotional hurdle".

The past months have been at times a roller-coaster. Within one day one goes from from being totally excited and happy about the change in life to the other extreme...being sad about the increasing geographical distance and time difference to most friends and family. It was great medicine that my fiance and myself were actually able to go through this time together. It keeps reminding in concrete way the fantastic reason of ripping oneself off from the platform and rocketing to Houston to build a new one.

Generally I think that having lived the past year together in Finland has equipped us well for the future adventures ;o) My fiance knows the environment well, what I used to call home for the past 6 years and what kind of food I consider my comfort food. Though he keeps laughing and wondering how anyone can eat caviar paste (aka by him as "fish liver paste") :o)

Having sold and donated half of the house....somehow on the moving day I realize that still one gets confronted with the question:" Mistä tätä kamaa tulee?" / "Where is all this stuff coming from?" (famous Finnish mobile company commercial had similar slogan).

So, we start the new journey with souveniers coming from Finland in 108 boxes in about one months time. Then not just Houston will have a problem but till then we need to find space in our new home (which used to be my fiance's man cave) :o)

Excursion to my new future

Sometimes things just fall into their places...
Unexpectedly I got the chance to get view on my own to the American daily life prior to moving.
One week in Mobile (which is funny enough pronounced like mobil due to the Native Americans Mobilians http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobilian), Alabama is a great way to get the pre-taste of what will soon be my new life in America.

It's the little things that one starts paying attention to and appreciate when being outside the familiar surroundings.
My TomTom (aka Tomski) did not cooperate before the flight and thus I had no US map available when I took off from the Mobile airport with the rental car. Trusted enough to my wash proof Finnish orientation skills and decided that I will give it a shot to find my way to the hotel without navigation system. Worked out beautifully.

Managed to even amaze 3 Norwegians , whom I got to know at the Atlanta airport while waiting for the Mobile flight. They happened to stay in the same hotel with me. We left from the airport roughly at the same time, they took taxi and I drove my rental car. I arrived at the hotel only few minutes after them. Long live Finnish orientation classes! (....which though everyone dislikes greatly at school age but they do seem service the purpose)

This morning, when driving to the project site, again without navigation...was really smiling and feeling like singing "Living in America...."

I know it sounds silly as such.... But if one looks alone at the traffic signs, they are so different from each other (Finnish vs American). Another thing is that Finnish style to give indication in the traffic is more "search and you shall find guidance", where as American style is "we will inform you even those things, which are self evident".  The first time on the road in Texas during summer holiday felt like information overload. Here in Alabama that feeling followed during the first day. But one starts getting used to the busy scenery and learns rather targeted approach to get the necessary information.

Hope I can get a photo as an example of one of the intersections, where the amount of traffic sign pile in Mobile, Alabama looks like equally busy as the advertisement for Black Friday sales. Also noticed that at least cars in Alabama do not carry license plate in the front of the car. I know totally unimportant...but just shows that one really pays attention on a whole different level when being outside the comfort zone.

Alone today's experience here has definitely increased my confidence of being able to adopt rather fast to the local culture(s).
The feeling was amazing when I got to the office...that I will not forget so easily. I was smiling the whole drive and thinking to myself: "This is pretty awesome, I am driving to work in USA!" (I never could have imagined to get to live there one day, yet it has always been a dream hidden somewhere deep.

Houston, you have a Problem - I am moving to your neighborhood ;o)

Currently packing my life in Finland to boxes and waiting for being ready to be "launched" to Houston, Texas.

Despite the fact that I lived 12 years abroad before, after 6 years back in Finland, it is not just like that to fold everything neatly into the boxes and rip oneself off from the daily life in Finland. But must say having the man of my dreams right by my side, makes it worthwhile. My fiancé has bravely put up with one winter already and outcome of that test was "Passed but preferably not to be repeated any time soon". Which is what got me to take out the luggage and  start eagerly packing my things. Will be seen if my years in Singapore prepared me well for the Texan heat ;o)

One fine day I will not notice the little things anymore, which in the beginning of my new life in US caught my attention... One day those will be business as usual to me. That is why I wanted to use this blog as the method to capture the adventure and the journey to my future life in Texas.

I have learned a lot about Finland through the eyes of my fiancé. It has been a wonderful journey together and can only hope to be able to pay that forward. To my American friends and family, sharing these experiences, may give a new view to American culture and life. To my friends and family in Finland and around the rest of the globe this allows to get the feel of my adventures in my new life in US.

Hope all y'all enjoy the journey with me.