Go Fish and Fazer Fun

What a difference a day makes!  Well, actually 4 days. The first picture is from Monday morning. 

We were excited to see leaves appearing on the trees. We were shocked at how fast the leaves are coming so went back to the same area on Friday morning to see the difference. Notice how the buildings are more visible in the first picture.

Sisar Aura had asked Sisar Potter to be in charge of the food for Tuesday's zone conference. 

So on Monday we spent most of the afternoon in the office cutting up food, and getting things ready.

Spinning the salad was a two person job.

Here is the delicious spread at zone conference on Tues. Sisar Potter made the rolls. 

The missionaries loved the food! We had chicken salad on homemade rolls, vegetable trays and spinach salad with strawberries. Sisar Potter also made some brownies. It was all delicious. We overestimated on the amount though.

Here is the clean-up crew after lunch. Oh how we were missing the Londons and the Perkins!

It is fun to see so many people outdoors now. We went for a walk on Tues. evening since we didn't get to go that morning. 

This is a sports park. There were people playing baseball, soccer and frisbee all in this same area.

A game of cards in the mission office? Well actually it is our Finnish lesson for the day. We have been working on learning numbers, so a game of go fish seemed an appropriate way to study. Sisar Airto had never played go fish before.

Vahin Shurtz said these are not playing cards, but Finnish language learning implements.

Sisar Romberg is looking guilty though, and like she is having way too much fun!

We took a peaceful walk in the forest on Saturday morning. It is so fun to see how it is changing. 

Much of the area is now covered with these plants that have little white flowers.

You may recognize this tree stump from an earlier post. 

I thought a few weeks ago that this looked like home for fairies or elves. 

Now that there is much more green around it, it doesn't look nearly as magical, but it is interesting to see the changes.

I took a video of so you can see and hear what it is like in the forested areas. 

The Mission got new credit cards. Vahin Shurtz and Sisar Romberg needed to destroy the old ones and fill out a certificate of destruction. Here they are shredding the credit cards and then disposing of the remains.

 
  

One thing that is interesting here is that when you buy produce you weigh your own produce and put a price sticker on it. Each item of produce that needs to be weighed has a number on the sign by the price/kg. The numbers go from 1 to 200+. You put the produce on the scales and push the appropriate number and a sticker bar-code label will print out with the price on it which you then stick on the bag. It is embarrassing if you forget to weigh it and then try to check out.

 

Another interesting thing here in the stores are the escalator ramps. 

In many places instead of escalator stairs, they have ramps. When you get on with your shopping cart it is held in place magnetically I think so it doesn't roll back down. They have these outside of the grocery stores to go down to the parking lot. There is one inside of Prisma grocery store to go up to the upper floor where the clothing and other things are. 

This picture is actually taken in the middle of the mall. I think that you can take strollers on these as well.

Sisar Ulla Lehtinen offered to go grocery shopping with me and to help me understand more about what things I might want to buy. It was so nice of her to spend her time doing that and I really enjoyed it and learned so much. 

She showed me several things that we haven't bought in the past, including cottage cheese, chicken pieces that come in some sort of a marinade/sauce, porridge (that is very similar to cream of wheat) and pepper cream (her secret ingredient for sauces and soups).

We are fascinated by all the walking paths. They go under freeways, railroad tracks and even through the middle of buildings. This country is definitely in favor of walking and biking!

That fact was very evident when we drove to the Kulttuuritalo (Helsinki Hall of Culture) for stake conference. I had looked online to see if I could find where to park. The website for the building said that the Hall of Culture does not have its own parking facilities. The nearest parking facility is the car park for approximately 17 vehicles next to the Hall (4 hrs with parking disc). The hall seats 1400 people.  The web site also told of some car parks within a 5 minute walk and metered parking spaces on the street. We found a spot past this sign, which we found very confusing. The blue circle with the red slash means no parking. The meter picture and 9-21 means that parking is metered from 9am - 9pm. So is it no parking or metered parking? It is apparently in zone 2 (not exactly sure what that means) and we have no idea what the words or the J mean. We asked 3 people who all said we could park there. One woman said that it is free because it is Sunday. We were glad when we got out of conference to see that our car was still there and we did not have a ticket.

Here is another new sign that we saw the other day. It is parking for bikes.

On Saturday, we picked up Sisar Potter and Sisar Romberg and went to the Fazer visitor center for a tour. 

Fazer is famous for its chocolate here in Finland. 

It was fun to learn a bit about the founder Karl Fazer and the history of the company. 

The bunny in the background is covered with over 9000 egg shells 

like the ones used to make Fazer mignon eggs like the one I had for Easter.

We had to fill a wooden base with blocks representing different foods that showed a balanced diet. 

If we did well, when the blocks were placed on the robot's tray we would get a green smiley face.

We didn't get to see the actual factories, but we could peak in on the factories with these viewer balls.

At the end of the tour, you have about 10 minutes to sample as much of the chocolate as you want (you just can't take any out of the room).

Vanhin Shurtz kept the wrappers of the candies that he sampled. 

I think that he wanted to get his money's worth as the tour tickets were a bit expensive!

At the end of the tour, we each got a gift bag full of Fazer candies and some Fazer reissumies (rye bread).

Sisar Potter was surprised when she received a Mother's Day gift from her kids. Pres. Aura delivered it to her. 

She is not quite sure just how they arranged that, but it was fun.

It is interesting to see how light it is when we go to bed at night. 

This photo was taken from our balcony. It was taken at 10:17. 

You can see that it is dark enough down on the street that the outside lights are on, but notice how light the sky is still. 

We are noticing light through the bedroom curtains sometime between 4 and 4:30 in the morning. 

Today we have 17:02 hours of daylength in Espoo and in Provo there are 14:21 hours