American Pizza Night

Tonight was cleaning night in the Hukkala household. Every Thursday each family member cleans their assigned section of the house and then, as a treat, they order pizza. This is much better than the system Brian and I have where I leave the country for three weeks and he promises to clean the house while I am gone (I totally believe he will do it, but it's not a tenable system long term). I was somewhat disappointed to learn that this system is not typical in Finland and that in many households women are still responsible for the bulk of the housework. All the same, it's nice to be staying with a family who works so well together.

While I did not partake in any of the cleaning (I did offer!), I did still get to eat pizza. We got several different kinds of pizza, but my favorite as The American: ham, pineapple, and bleu cheese. I am not entirely sure why this pizza is called The American as it is unlike any pizza I have ever had in America, but it was good all the same. Besides the different toppings, the pizza was pretty similar to American thin-crust.

During the day today we went to a secondary school (grades 7-9), the Joensuu public library, and a Karelian history museum. At the secondary school, I noticed the same thing that I noticed at the other levels of education: Finnish education respects students and teachers as individuals. There are some small things the school does that makes the day much more humane. Classes are 45 minutes long, and students get 15 minute breaks between classes. There are plenty of couches for communal seating on each floor, and students are allowed to congregate. Classes in different subjects are in color-coded sections of the building that are clearly marked on maps to help students--who are switching classes during the day for the first time--find the correct classrooms. Today I also learned that Finnish school days are not allowed to be longer than 7 hours, presumably because at some point it is no longer productive or pleasant to keep kids in school.

Communal seating at the middle school

Junnu in the music room

The library was beautiful. Apparently half of the population of Joensuu uses the library, and they check out an average of 20 items a year. The library also makes a conscious effort to provide a sense of community:they offer discussion groups of books and poems, live music, and a cafe.

Okay, I am really distracted right now because David Hasselhoff apparently has his own Finnish talk show, in spite of the fact that he does not actually speak Finnish. It's pretty amazing though. His guests tonight were a woman who seems to be the Finnish equivalent of Tyra Banks (but a lot less crazy), Stefan from Top Chef, and the winner of Finnish Idol. Amazing. He is now singing a duet with the Finnish Idol girl.

I will be adding more pictures to this blog, but I can't get my iCloud to work, and everything on this computer is in Finnish, which makes it difficult to navigate. Bear with me. Kittos!