From the memory archives - Houston like multicolor movie

Before starting to catch up on the travel experiences and related posts, had to put out the thoughts triggered by the below peculiar article. It is amusing to read how American journalist considered a group of Finnish immigrant men in New York during the 1800.

Today I find the below article even more amusing than I did some months ago. This is simply due to the current situation in Europe and some of the comments, which one gets to read about in Finnish media or social media. It is too hilarious to read how Finnish men in New York were considered as undersized albinos. They were strange, standing out from the crowd.

This article and the current situation in Europe, made me think back to my adventures around Asia, Kenya, Russia and in Mexico. There would be many stories about those but one lesson, which is one of the most valuable lesson I got to learn:
It is very healthy and humbling experience to be THE minority, be the one who stands out.

Among many other great memories, I remember trying to shop in Changshu, China. It was an activity always coated with mixed feelings. Sales clerks shadowing me through the shop and giggling.
People in the grocery store taking items out of my shopping basket, while I was holding to it still and looking at what the "white devil" is buying and then putting it back.
Children staring at me and then looking at their parents with the look "Mom, dad...what is that?!" The smaller children just started crying because of being scared of the sight of my blond hair and blue eyes.

In Kenya some of the children we met just wanted to stroke my skin, cause it was so different. Also the way I dressed or wore my hair was very different compared to the local females.

I did not always feel comfortable and often hoped that I could blend in better. Not much one can do about that when blending in would mean changing eye or skin color or one's size/height. Hair one could dye black but it would not serve the purpose, as the white skin would stand out even more. Very soon I turned the experience around and took the positive out of it. After being the minority, the stranger, I learned to understand how other people must feel when they enter a country, where they stand out of the crowd.

How does that all relate to my settling in Houston?
After my adventures in the previously mentioned places, settling in to Houston has been very easy and comfortable. Yes, I stand out with my accent and sometimes with my lighter than average appearance. Thanks though to the long and prosperous history of immigrants coming to US, I can also be just one among the many.

My accent is not familiar and only twice the shop owner knew to link my accent & appearance with Finland. Mostly the guess is...Canada :) Which I do not mind at all either, Canadians are lovely people. Too bad I cannot claim to be one and state that we won all the ice-hockey gold medals last year ;)

Things are not perfect even in US. There is no such place in the world, which would be perfect. Things are different here and everything new takes time to understand and learn. Yet, especially in recent months, I have gained even higher respect than before to how things work in US.
Right now what I am thinking is mainly in the values that people I know have shown: acceptance, kindness, open mind, tolerance and readiness to help. Accepting also that there is no such thing as "one norm" in this country. I still make the error sometimes thinking that this would be a country, rather than remembering that US is more like e.g. Europe. Each state has its history, culture and specific features.

I think the best other example in the diversity, though on a smaller scale is Singapore. Being the melting pot of so many nationalities and religions. So many areas there, where buddhist temple, hindu temple and church are as neighboring buildings in the same street. People greet each other with a friendly smile and respect. One has people of various nationalities and backgrounds living as neighbors. All in peace with each other.

After having been and seen some of the rougher places in the world too, I got absolutely nothing to complain here. What I appreciate in US and in my American family is the open mindedness. They have heightened my appreciation to accepting that there is no one norm to anything, yet from state and nation level one is giving the solid framework & game rules for everyone to follow.

I still remember how it all felt at first.... After having lived 7 years back in Finland, the first weeks in Houston were like someone would have changed the movie from grey & white to full color. Suddenly I was surrounded by wide scale of nationalities, accents, dialects, languages, cultural nuances and food. It was a shock in the beginning, a sensory overload, and required my senses getting used to it. Now it would be tough to imagine living without it.

Come to think of it...my fellow Finnish immigrants from 1638 onwards have helped to build US and bring in their share to the mixed population and skills. Link to: How Finnish Immigrants helped to build America

Below just some good examples of the Finnish influence brought to US with the immigrants from before: log cabin building / log carpentry (in particular the V notching style) and roof construction, John Morton, Eliel Saarinen and Eero Saarinen, Larry Thorne, sauna and few other words.

More details about Finnish Americans and the culture, influence in US: LINK.

The time here has also made me realize; having a mixed influential factors is actually how it should be in the best case scenario. This is how one can develop and learn from life, not just as a person but as a community or nation. Being too homogeneous as environment / population / culture, even as per the laws of biology, is never good. Positive development stops when things get too homogeneous.

One of my dear friend in Finland, who for her research related profession "does cancer and alzheimer". I find it super hilarious the way she initially expressed her nature of work. Common sense, yet funny!
She has said in so many occasions, when we were catching up with the group of girl friends: "Girls bring foreign blood to this country. We are too homogeneous as a nation and thus have increasing amount, among other things, risk to have cancer or high blood pressure due to the homogeneous DNA structure. Go out there and bring foreigners with you! It is healthy for the country and for the next generation!" :)

Immigrant as I am

One of the biggest dangers for securing future development of the human race is the speed in which we tend to forget the history and in worst case, repeat the mistakes made. Thinking that one is somehow better than others...we are all humans and should be all treated as such.

"During the last one hundred years, more than one million Finns have moved abroad, nearly 500,000
of them before and about 730,000 after World War II."

The past days I am failing to understand the rejecting attitude of some Finns, and some Europeans, towards the refugees. I simply cannot understand people, who claim that helping the war refugees will destroy Europe and mess up Finland. That it is not beneficial to help refugees with different religious background.

If one would refresh the memory and look back few generations...to the times of World War II.
During that time, including so many current day welfair countries, were their people as refugees. Refugees of many different religions. Finland was one of those countries. In Finnish one did not use the word refugee but the Finnish word at the time was evakko / mennä evakkoon (to escape/flee more permanently).

Yet, the reasons were the same and among other people, Aili-mummi, one of my grand-mothers, experienced evakko as a child and also later as an adult. Many of the Finns have grand-parents or other relatives, who had to escape and who were provided help then. Had they not received the help...many of us would not exist today. I would be one of those.

Finland lost a whole area, Karelia, to Russia. People were taken their homes and had to escape. Hoping that they get help to start their lives from a scratch. Some of them returned during the between peace (välirauha) to help to rebuild the area but when continuation war (jatkosota) started, lot of houses were burnt and many of the Finns were back to square one....fleeing again, leaving everything behind.

Government at the time of WWII even made the decision to send children (without their parents) to Sweden for safe keeping. Many families escaped, apart from Sweden, to Denmark, Spain and US.
Link to historical statistics in English.

Another reason, why I cannot understand the comments made in the media and social media, is that I am an immigrant. I have been an immigrant for most of my adult life. My reasons for immigration have even been totally selfish. In my mind that gives the receiving countries less a reason to accept me entering their country. I had absolutely no proper reason to immigrate. My reasons were adventure, learning the local language & culture, work and my immigration reason to US was purely because of: TRUE LOVE.

Yes, get this the reason to settle and apply for a Green card in US was nothing more, nothing less than love. My husband, at the time my boyfriend, did not tolerate Finnish winter very well and I cannot blame him for that. Yet that did not stop us from believing that we can build a future together, here in US. There could have been several immigration authorities questioning the whole. Yet, they know better in US. After all, everyone else except the native Americans came from somewhere else for various reasons.

There is a whole American Finns heritage in US, as a result of all those Finns who chose to leave Finland in the hope of better tomorrow. They are very proud of their Finnish roots but they are also proud Americans. They would not be....had US decided not to accept all the immigrants at the time.

Where ever I have chosen to move (Germany, Singapore, Belgium and US) I have always been treated with respect and accepted to enter the country. Even if in Germany I took a seat from a German to do my studies and in Singapore I had no job initially.
In US, even when I was able to transfer within my company...the immigration officers could have questioned my entry, as I was taking a job. A job, which was one job less from an existing American citizen.

My two cents to the topic is: before judging or rejecting the refugees fighting for a better tomorrow right now. Look into the past and see...if not your own relatives were once fleeing or immigrating, I am sure you will find many in your circle of friends or colleagues. Without the help their relatives got at the time, they would not exist or have the life they live today. Refugees have even a better reason to be helped than immigrants like myself...who migrate for selfish reasons. Finns are high in the statistics to practice that kind of migration. There are 1.3 million Finns living outside Finland for various reasons. If you think that whole population of the country is only 5,6 million, it is a big percentage. The latest trends show that numbers for Finns migrating elsewhere are only increasing. Alone during the year 2014, when I migrated to US, in total 15 490 Finns chose to move outside Finland.

We are living right now in a world, where none of us can predict the political or economical turns for certain.
Just taking Finland as an example: Who can possibly know what Putin decides to do next or how long will people endure the economical down hill?
There will be many enough, who will choose to leave the country, in the hope of a better tomorrow. Wouldn't you wish then that those people will be allowed to pursue that hope into reality? Even if they would choose to migrate for selfish reasons?

I would...cause I am one of them, I am an immigrant.

Living abroad in today's world

Finns living in the US or Americans living in Finland, which ever way....one can gripe all one wants about missing something back home but the truth is...life is good!

With the globalization immigration to a different country is comfortable compared to e.g. the Finns, who took the journey to come to US during the Great Migration (1860 - 1930) in the search after a better life. I could think that anyone from US, who would have decided to immigrate to Finland during that time...would have been ultimately noted as a lunatic back in US.

Nowadays Finland's strengths have reached global media and the number of Americans living in Finland has been steadily rising. In 1987 there were 333 daring Americans living in Finland. In 2009 that number rose to 3907 Americans, who called Finland their home. Today that number is even higher. In 2013 there were in total 15 570 people living in Finland, whose mother tongue is English. This includes also Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and other countries in addition to the US.
Regardless, quite an improvement.

On this side of the globe, keeping up with the latest and the greatest from Finland is easier now than ever before. I browse the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper every day. Even this morning I was enjoying a quiet morning with my cup of green tea and reading the latest news from the web version of Helsingin Sanomat.

Side note: when there is no paper involved...for an ex-paper industry professional, it feels funny to still call a newspaper. I have yet to find a better way to describe it.

In Facebook there are great communities, where Finns and fellow Nordics post information or share knowledge about how to convert the Finnish recipes to the US environment. We exchange knowledge about which ingredient to use to replace some traditional Finnish ingredient, which is not available directly in the US.

The Finnish and Nordic community in Houston (as well as wider Texas) sticks together nicely. One gets to keep up the Finnish and Swedish language on a regular basis and spend nice times together, sharing the latest events about Life in Texas.

Also there are Facebook,  Facetime,  Skype, WhatsApp, Viber, Twitter, etc. which help to stay in touch with friends all over the world. Back in 1996 when I moved to Germany, I was communicating by good old letters, FAX (!!!!) and sometimes even by phone with friends and family back in Finland.

At least a few times a month there is a Facetime session with my brother and his family. My nephews know how to dial me via Facetime, which was the key reason they inherited my old iPad. It is so different to catch up with them, when they can see how life is here and they can show their drawings and latest lego creations. Especially with them it does make a difference, as they would not have the patience to just talk. Those discussions would stay rather one-sided and VERY short :))))

Then there are all these great internet shops, where one can get the necessary things. The few Finnish things that I cannot live without are proper rye bread, Fazer chocolate, proper loose green tea, Moomin mugs and Xylitol chewing gum. All of those are in one way or another accessible via internet shopping.
With good bribing and begging, friends and family in Finland have eventually also started sending occasional care packages. Yeiiii!

I do consider myself lucky that I have the luxury of learning about the US culture and life, and at the same time being able to keep my roots strong. That is a dream; a dream which the Finns, who left Finland during the Great Migration would not even dare to think of as a possibility.

The descendants of those brave Finns now number around 700 000 Finnish Americans living in the US. It is inspiring to see in the Finnish American Facebook page how proud they are of their Finnish roots, even if they would go a few generations back.  With some, the knowledge of Finnish language is limited to a few sayings, which their grandparents used to say. Yet, you can see that in their hearts....they are still Finns.

Who knows, maybe a few generations from now the descendants of the Americans immigrated to Finland will face the same situation. Hilarious thought, but everything is possible.

My American Idols

For several years I have followed few female roles models, who happen to be all American.

I remember when I moved back to Finland in 2007, after living 12 years abroad, Ellen DeGeneres shows started airing on channel, which was called that time Liv (Swedish for life and living)
After weekend morning runs I did my recharging while watching several episodes of Ellen. Obviously there was some serious catching up to do :) thus they showed 3-4 episodes non-stop.

Ellen has this positive view on things, which I find familiar. I would like to think positive energy being one of my strengths. She has pushed her way through in life and keeps amazing people and sharing the joy.
I love the fact that she dances in each of her show ;)

She has been also amazingly open about her personal life and she picks the most interesting people to her shows. Not to mention the self irony or cunning sense of humor.
I wish when I am 56 I am equipped with the same level of energy and sense of humor as Ellen is.

...and I also like her short hair cuts. My mother was hair dresser and very artistic one. She always said that cutting people's hair is like making a sculpture. She had the eye to envision the person with the cut. She also took time before the clients appointment was at the door to plan. She was in it with her whole heart.
From her I learned the habit to browse in internet always before going to a hair dresser. I often ended up suggesting a cut, which Ellen had or alternatively Pink.

Which brings me to my next American idol....Pink.
She has balls and she is kind of a boy-girl, which is what I am. I am more into exercise than fashion. I rather spend money on super food than make up. Her music speaks to one and is not just some purkkapoppia / "chewing gum pop" , as one would say in Finnish.
Pink dares to raise her sincere thoughts through her songs. I like when woman has balls enough to step up and challenge. I did not give myself the credit of doing so....until after my Kenyan assignment and nearly 2 years project in Russia. Latest there and then I had to give myself the credit of standing up and defending my team, when needed but also challenging the team, peers and management. But not challenging in the sense of bullying or rebelling, but finding the suitable way using the diplomatic skills combined with the Finnish SISU
(I will write separately about that in near future).
Pink has stylish boldness in her ways to express her strong views. She is also top fit, which has been the motivator on some days when going to the gym did not feel like it was really what I wanted to do :)






The biggest butt kicker of them all, to me personally, has been Jillian Michaels. Oh those dark and cold winter mornings in the midst of Finnish winter.... 6 am Jillian was on the screen making me to do squats, push ups and all possible moves, which made my muscles scream.
She continues being the person with whom I spent during weekdays my morning moment and she tortures every last bit out of me.....and (wo)man, that feels great!

Years ago I thought...wow, these women do not just have character but they get to live in US (fluffy clouds wooshing by as the sentence hovered in my mind). I never dared to dream even to live in US, as I thought somehow that life in US and me....we are sooooooo out of each other's leagues.
Little did I know that I end up moving to US because of my wonderful husband....also had anyone told me that I get to see Jillian Michaels live and even chat with her, hug her. I would have laughed and thought...yeah, right. Not gonna happen in this life, I already won the lottery when meeting my husband!

Yet that became real. Something again, I had not dared to even think it could be possible one day. I got to meet the woman, who has been my motivator to make me push myself beyond limits. Jillian had tour about nutrition and healthy life style, which are my hobby passions since teenager years. If I could choose my profession again I would become personal coach or nutritional engineer (if such exists). But since I am "just" a project manager I do all that for fun...and driving my husband sometimes crazy with it ;))))))

Anyway, back to the topic....Jillian....me....chatting...awesome and here is the proof and my reminder not to let work rule too much but take the time to exercise and stay fit :)
The best was to notice that she is very much a human, an awesome one but a human....and even my height :)

Tomorrow morning, when rest of our household is sleeping, I have my morning "date" with Jillian and maybe some running afterwards :)


And while exercising dreaming of the magical one day, when I might get to meet Pink and Ellen DeGeneres.