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Farewell to Summer


September always comes so fast!
The temps are more reasonable, and the sun now sets at 8:30 instead of 10:30.

Some trees are already changing here, and I saw my first migrating geese today. The autumn rains have started with the accompanying fog, which looks very strange 5 floors up!


My next big challenge begins now - full time school and parenting. As most of you know, I have been getting my MBA through an all online branch of the UW system. I’m thankful it is online so I can continue my coursework without issue! If everything goes right, I will finish All my requirements and graduate this fall 🎉👩🏻‍🎓🎉 I’m going to need to learn to be really productive with nap time!

Soren turned 5 months recently, which feels crazy! He’s getting so big - he’s moving into 9 month clothes and 12 month hats! He’s starting to sprout some fuzzy hair, which is hard to see but looking pretty red. Soon we start solid food!!!



We have an allergen specialist now, which has me reintroducing dairy into my diet. It is sooooo good to have cheese again. Unfortunately, the only cheese here is all really mild, making me homesick for some properly aged cheddar! Most of the cheese here tastes close to a fresh cheese curd, but without the squeaky freshness. It is sold in MASSIVE quantities- enough to impress a Wisconsinite! (borrowed photo)
Towards the end of the month, a giant shopping center is opening near our house. We will be just a 5 minute walk from bigger grocery stores (not just the small local ones that are every few blocks) and all the other shopping goods we could possibly need. It's called Redi (meaning Roadstead?) and it looks beautiful. It also is part of Helsinki's first sky scraper, and eventually four towers!

Malls here are not just for apparel and home goods. They contain your hardware store, good restaurants, Metro connections, and - of course - R-kioski.
R-kioski is the most in-explicable thing to me. It's a private store with contents akin to QuickTrip, except it also carries out a lot of post-office functions. It sells stamps, issues transit passes, hold packages that can't be delivered, and issues government services like ID-cards.

More musings about Finland:
- Smoking in public seems much more common here, as I understand to be true for most of Europe. Is it. Are there actually more smokers, or it just higher population density making it seem that way?
- Gambling also seems bigger here. There are large gambling stores - often in American themes - but also machines in every grocery store. And they are ALWAYS in use.
- I've truly fallen in love with not driving. It makes things a bit tricky to get home occasionally, but I've been able to use the stroller creatively to get a microwave and a cat tree home! In Finland, if you have a child in a stroller (or a child and a stroller, even if your child isn't in it) you ride all forms of public transport for free. I love being able to see and play with Soren for our entire trip and not worrying about traffic signals, traffic, or construction.
- Taking a sauna at the end of day is the best way to relax. Reading textbooks in the sauna is also the best was to study. We might need to install one in our house when we return to the US!

Some pictures from around Finland, just for fun:






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