I'm starting to really like Finland!

To be honest when I came to Finland earlier this year I didn't especially liked it here. During those times the weather was really cold. In fact it was the coldest time of the year. Unfortunately I happen to be afraid of cold. When I was a kid back in China the winters were cold and our house didn't have decent heating. Because of that my joints and my nose are really sensitive to cold. In fact that is the main reason I later moved to south of China, to Shenzhen, which has tropical climate similar to Hawaii... it's very hot there most of the year and  never snow.

Before coming to Finland I didn't really know anything about Finland, except that it's a cold country. I also knew people speak Finnish and just the thought of it made me have a headache. Perhaps that is why we lived in Shenzhen for more than two years and never visited Finland before.

This year we came to Finland mostly to get married and then travel Europe for the honeymoon. The plan was to travel across Europe and find a nice place somewhere in the south of Europe and settle down there. But after the first month of traveling we found out I was pregnant! I started to have morning sickness and couldn't stand the restaurant food anymore. I was craving for my home cooking and you can't do that in a hotel. When the morning sickness started we were in France but neither of us speaks French and we don't know the way things go over there anyway. Because Jani knows Finland and speaks Finnish, suddenly living in Finland made a lot more sense. We then returned to Finland as soon as possible. An extra reason to stay in Finland was the free and high quality health care system, which makes it one of the best places in the world to have a baby. We decided to stay in Finland for one or two years and then see what we will do next.

During the past six months I have felt touched by many things in Finland. For example the air here is super clean, even compared to other European countries and especially compared to China. The air is a little chilly but it actually feels fresher and feels like it has more oxygen. Finland also has almost 200.000 lakes. It's almost like each family can have their own little lake! The water in the lakes is very clean, not at all polluted, which is different from China. There are also huge amounts of forests. The lakes and the trees together help to clean the air and control the humidity. Even when we're living on the seaside the air is surprisingly not too humid. In Shenzhen the air is always too humid, which feels uncomfortable. Not only that, it also is very easy to grow mold everywhere unless you use an A/C at all times to keep the indoors air dry.

I started to seriously feel I like Finland these days since the weather has been so perfect. The sky is blue and the sea is blue and all kinds of flowers everwhere... It's very nice and warm. Earlier in the summer it was sunny but quite chilly and rainy. During that time I heard in the news a lot of people died in central and southern Europe because of the extreme heat. I also read from somewhere that people will actually live longer and healthier in kind of cold temperature. I started to feel lucky living here. These days it has been about 25 degrees Celsius which is really a perfect temperature. You can wear light, like skirt or even bikini. It's not too hot and not too cold. There's no need for A/C. Just open the balcony door and let the nice natural wind come in. There is no need to worry about mosquitos - I have not seen a single mosquito yet! In Shenzhen you couldn't even open windows or doors simply because you would get thousands of mosquitos in almost instantly.

When you go lay down on the beach, the sunlight is not too hot. It gives a nice and warm feeling but it doesn't burn and it doesn't even make me sweat! It just feels good. You can go out almost any time of the day and it's never too hot or too cold. Most amazing thing is that this type of weather seems to last for at least one month. It's really like heaven - perfect weather and no mosquitos or bugs! In many other places the nice weather only lasts a couple days and then it goes too hot. I heard that further from the seaside in Finland it can be hotter, but at least it's been perfect here where I live!

Then about the winter. If I think carefully, actually most of the time I will be indoors. In Finland all the houses and apartments have been designed for cold winter so it's warm inside. They're the best designed houses I have ever seen! If you are warm and comfortable when you're indoors, you will not feel immediatelly so cold when you go outside. Plus eveyone is using a car and the cars have good heaters so actually you don't need to feel much cold during the winter.

Let me tell you about these best house designs I've ever seen. I feel everywhere in the world people should learn from this. Even if it's not cold this type of design is still better. All the houses have a small entrance room separated by another door which helps keeps the cold out. You can leave your shoes and outdoor clothes there and not bring in any dirt during the wet seasons. The windows mostly have three layers and between the layers there is something like 10cm... so the triple windows are almost as thick as the wall. Obviously that is gonna be warm enough! And in the summer it also helps keep it cool. The heaters are also good. Almost every family has central heating and sauna. The heating elements also have fresh air vents to help keep the air fresh. In the winter the incoming air obviously gets warmed up when it's flowing through the heating elements. Makes sense when it's freezing cold outside. The floor heater is also amazingly comfortable thing to have. At least in my experience from China, even if you have warm enough inside, the floor is still really cold, so my feet were always freezing.

Sauna. Sauna is originally from Finland. If you have never have sauna as part of your daily life you can never know how much it can change your life. I didn't used to think sauna is necessary at all. In Shenzhen when we built our house Jani insisted on having a sauna. Me and my family felt it's just crazy and unnecessary since it's already so hot and humid in Shenzhen. They even call it "sauna weather" as it's like in sauna most of the time. My dad even said it'll be enough to just go outside!

After we built the sauna in our house it actually really changed our life. Especially in the winter it feels cold inside the house in Shenzhen because there is no real heating inside. Most people don't even have A/C that can blow warm air. We fortunately had that type of A/C and we used it all the time but even then it was not enough. The house was big and the warm air coming from the A/C really can't make it warm everywhere. And the floor was super cold so you always had to use indoor shoes and still feel cold feet. You can just never keep the temperature warm enough.

Taking shower in that kind of condition is not comfortable at all, but when you have sauna it makes everything really super nice. You could say sauna practically saved our lives! Sauna is also really useful for drying clothes. We had a clothes dryer but it takes really long time to dry and also makes so much noice that I can't really handle listening to it. So using sauna is also so much better for dry some stuffs, too.

There is other important good point for sauna, which I started to realize after I got pregnant. At least in China, we have this superstition that during the first month after delivering a baby you are not allowed to wash your hair. The reason is probably because it's so hard to dry it, so you can easily get sick. You are basically adviced against using a hair dryer during pregnancy or immediatelly after it (well, it makes too much noise for my taste anyway) but sauna is so amazing: you go there, and a few minutes later your hair is dry. If it's not dry right away you can go out for a while and back in and repeat this until you're done. This works especially well for me because I don't sweat easily.

Also in those cold days when you are outside and freezing, you can go home and heat up the sauna. It makes you immediatelly feel nice and warm and comfortable. Some Finnish people even go from sauna to the freezing cold water and then back to sauna to warm up again, even in the heart of the winter! I guess it means when your body is fully warmed up you can much better handle the cold. That's why probably in the past half year I've many times almost caught cold but then I went to sauna and fully warmed up I completely healed immediatelly. So actually I have never been sick in Finland.

In sauna they also have this thing called "vihta" which is basically young branches of birch tree with the leaves still on. You use it in the heat of the sauna to beat your skin. It has a very good smell and it makes your skin clean and helps the blood circulation at the same time. I think it also can make you more fit! Actually if you every day turn on the sauna for about one hour, even when you turn it off it will still keep warm most of the day at something like 40 degrees. The sauna interior is made from wood so it doesn't get cold easily. It doesn't waste energy and it's easy to dry clothes there. I think later when the baby comes his clothes will be really convenient to dry there. I feel it's much more convenient than a dryer machine and it doesn't even make noise so you can use it 24h a day.

There are a lot of other good things in Finland. For example you can drink the tap water. This also means the shower water is also really clean and fresh. In China we have a saying from the old times that during the first month after delivery you are not allowed to touch unboiled water... so all the water you use for washing or drinking needs to be boiled first. That is really inconvenient and I think that's only because the water is not clean enough. In Finland the water taps give you cold and hot water and anything in between. The cold water is really cold, almost zero degrees and fresh so it tastes better than a bottled water straight from the fridge.

One more thing I almost forgot is the food here. The veggies, fruits and the meat and the other food products here are really safe. The regulations ban using all the unhealthy stuff used in many other countries. A lot of the produce is basically organic. Jani told me there are some Finnish people who only eat Finnish products. That also proves how good their stuff is. A little bit unfortunate is that I often miss some Chinese veggies which you can't get in the Finnish supermarkets. So I have to buy them from the Asian shops and of course those have been imported from Asian countries like China, so they are not as clean and healthly. So I often feel a little sorry for Jani's little baby who is growing inside me...

Finland probably still has more good sides but I can't think of them right now. Many things you get so used to that you don't even realize them anymore. When I remember more things I will write more!