Thoughts

It's difficult to wrap around my head the fact that it's been over a week since I've come back from Finland.

In my spare time, I love flipping through photos on my camera roll, reminiscing about baking pullas for the first time in my life, relaxing in front of the beach at the summer cottage, visiting all the enlightening museums in Turku, smiling with Camilla and Ann-Christine in Stockholm...

But sometimes, even small things remind me of memories of Finland. A deck of cards on the desk in my bedroom brought me back to the first night I played "koira" (a Finnish card game) with Marja, Suvi, Ida, and Camilla in the summer cottage--and simultaneously detesting, dreading, and falling in love with the strategic mind war. A picture of a reindeer on a magazine cover brought me back to the time I wandered about in the Helsinki flee market, before our ferry departed to Suomenlinna. Hunting for a souvenir, my eyes quickly latched onto an adorable, fuzzy reindeer with the Finnish flag embroidered on its miniature sweater. Going to the grocery store with my family brings me back to the time Charlotta and Camilla were teaching me all these Finnish grocery words, from "sipuli," or onion, to "karkkeja," or candy, in the "Majakka" store next to our cottage.

Such nostalgia.