My Finnish Sister



When I was a junior in high school, our family had an AFS student from Finland, Siru, live with us for a year. At 18 & 17 (me), Siru and I were both figuring out ourselves as well as the world. We spent hours talking about all the things that teens wrestle with, as well as endlessly listening to Cat Steven's, Tea for a Tillerman album and Simon and Garfield's Bridge Over Troubled Waters album. 





When I graduated from high school, I went to visit Siru in Finland for about 5 weeks before I went off to college at St. Olaf. We each followed our own paths - back in those years we didn't have cellphones and WhatsApp to keep in touch 😀 But we did learn a little about each others' lives through occasional Christmas cards over the years . . . . 



So what an amazing opportunity to come to Finland and re-connect with Siru. We just learned that we actually both got married exactly 6 weeks apart in 1978. And we've both been surprised at how many interests we share including spending time in nature as well as taking photos. Siru has photo books each year for her two grandsons (photo books are my specialty, too) as well as a yearly calendar featuring her beautiful photos of birds.




My parents actually traveled to see Siru and her husband, Niko, twice after we all left home, and the four of them traveled to Russia together. As my Dad and Niko were both dedicated Rotarians, they bonded over that passion. Siru is a retired pediatrician and Niko owned a hotel for his career. We are having a great time sharing time together and learning about each others' lives now. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Connecting with Tjugum Family Members

Image
When we left for Norway, we didn't really know if we would be able to find any distant family.  But luckily, we had a packet of geneological information on the Tjugum family that several of Greg's mom's family members had put together that we've had in our file drawer for decades!   We started with Ivar Olsson Tjugum (Greg's great, great grandfather) who was born in Norway in 1821 and lived on the "Tjugum Farm." Ivar had seven children with his first wife Kari, and then as happens often, he remarried when Kari died and had four more children.  Iver Olsson Tjugum lived until 1919. But as luck would have it, we rented a small cabin from Anders Tjugum who was able to fill in a lot of pieces of the puzzle. We learned that somewhere along the way, the Tjugum Farm was split into two farms. Anders is descended from the family who took one farm. Greg is descended from Iver Olsson Tjugum's family who took the other farm. Iver Olsson Tjugum's son, Ivar Ivar...
Read more

Bergen Maritime Museum

Image
We knew today was going to be a rainy day, so we decided to go to the Bergen Maritime Museum to learn more about Greg's Viking ancestors as well as the role of ship building in Bergen.  Greg admiring a beautiful sailboat in the Bergen Harbor. The Maritime Museum was about a two mile hike to the University area. Along the way, we passed some beautiful gardens.  The museum was really nice - it started with a history of the earliest boats built by the Vikings. This is a model of Oseberg Ship that was found in a burial mound on a farm in Norway. It was excavated in 1904 and built sometime around 815-820 AD. We saw a really interesting movie about the Viking Burial tradition for very important people - the king or warrior was laid on the Viking Ship. The horses and animals belonging to the king or warrior were sacrificed and also put on the deck of the ship along with the shields from all the warriors that traveled on the ship. Then the entire ship was burned. After the burnin...
Read more

Our Taste of Iceland

Image
As many of you know, Icelandair offers an "Iceland Stopover" where you can get off the plane in Iceland, spend a few days, then continue on to your destination. So, since we were flying Icelandair, it seemed like a good opportunity. When we arrived at Reykjavik Airport in Iceland, it was cold and raining hard.  We hopped on the shuttle bus to head to downtown Reykjavik and found our small boutique hotel that we had booked. When we arrived, there was a buzzer - luckily, someone showed up to the door right way and let us in. The hotel is old and quaint and the room is really nice.  We decided that the best way to get our "Taste of Iceland" would be to book a tour with a tour guide. So we signed up for a 10-hour tour where we had to meet at a bus stop pick-up at 7:30 am. We got up early enough to go get some coffee - because the European's idea of a cup of coffee is much less than what we're used to, we bought three.  Our first stop was at Kerio Volcanic Crater...
Read more