Some Odds and Ends

(from Miia, again)

Currently at the library doing some research for upcoming travels. Yesterday bought our plane tickets from Tokyo to London, England for November 18th. Hopefully we'll spend a few days in London with some friends there before heading to Accra, Ghana, probably around November 21st. Am doing bookings for that second flight presently.

Chris' brother recommended possibly taking a ferry from China to Japan since they tend to run much cheaper than flights. One way tickets from Shanghai to Osaka can start at $189 Canadian (for a cabin with 36 passengers) so we're definitely considering this option. A 48 hour boat trip from China to Japan seems so far away from this small Northern city that I can hardly imagine it. I am beside myself with eagerness.

Our departure from Finland is just a few weeks away. We're headed still once more to Jyvaskyla to visit with my little cousin and my pa, then probably down to Helsinki for one last hurrah with some cousins and my aunt. Then on the ferry to Estonia where Chris has some contacts. Then to old PYCCNA (the N should be the other way around) i.e. Russia (if my Russian spelling is correct...). I'm coming along with the Russian, which is great fun, and will hopefully have some key phrases under my belt before we cross the border.

The Russian and Mongolian visas are ready. Hoping the Chinese one doesn't get held up.

We've been doing our fair bit of research on Ghana and West Africa, including reading up on-line, meeting with some folks on this end, and communicating via email with Ghanaian friends and colleagues. Which brings me to an interesting point of life. A short story to illustrate my point: On Saturday, Chris and I met up with an 18-yr-old rotary student from New Brunswick, living just 20 or so km from our cottage. Robyn is awesome and bright, funny, gentle and obviously adventurous to throw herself into a foreign culture and language for a year. Still, there was something very 18 about her, much like I was when I went to Italy on an exchange at the same age. Before going to Italy in 1995, I didn't read up on its history, its political economy, key personages. I didn't try to understand it at all in a more systemic way. Mostly I was keen to try some pasta, meet some hot Italian guys, and see some beautiful art and architecture. I said to Chris that isn't it funny how we are preparing ourselves with information and more information before leaving. I think this is a good sign, as we are then more responsive, more appropriate in our dealings with people, and maybe making the small effort to learn about the people we are hoping to live among. Funny sometimes to get these chances to look at how we grow as we age.

Chris has read to me the last three chapters of the book he's writing. I love it. I know that as his wife I can easily be dismissed as biased, but I think I am captivated by witnessing the creative process, the way snippets of my conversations with Chris appear in the dialogues and the way whatever Chris is reading also appears there in new and innovative ways. So fascinating to watch it all come together between characters, in the storyline, in the true-invented universe of a novel.

Books I've read since I finished my degree in April (before which every free moment was spent on school reading and work):
- Race Against Time by Stephen Lewis
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley
- Great Soviet Short Stories by various (all post WWII)
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
- Jäniksen Vuosi by Arvo Paasilinna
- Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality by Dines, Jensen and Russo
- African Politics in Comparative Perspective by Goran Hyden
- When Your Voice Tastes Like Home: Immigrant Women Write edited by Prabjot Parmar and Nila Somaia-Carten
- Time Machine by H. G. Wells
- Close Range collection of short stories by Annie Proulx
- Disability by Cris Mazza

Currently reading (I go back and forth between them):
- Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ by Nietzche
- The Dead Sea Scrolls in English by Goran Vermes
- Black Power by Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton

Sweet heavy rain all last night. The lake level actually went up. Chris and I curled up to watch Hollywood's remake of The Jackal and listened to the rain come down, drinking a glass of whiskey. I set out buckets to collect the rain and this morning washed up in the rain water. Better than anything L'Oreal could ever offer, I'm sure.

Chris' most recent idea for a movie is a couple lying in bed reading two different books and the movie would be a collection of snippets over their lifetimes as they look up from their books and make seemingly disjointed comments about what they're reading. This was us this morning as we lay in bed and I was reading Black Power and Chris was reading Destination Canada by Li, genuinely incredulous at the audacious predictions made by economists based on a seemingly infinite number of variables. We are quite the duo. I'd read half that same book about two years ago and Chris commented that the parts he would highlight have already been highlighted by the 2004 version of Miia. Sometimes I think we share the same brain.

As our time at the cottage is whittling away, I've made the decision to drink in the nature as much as possible. It's such a luxury to wake in the morning and smell the forest, wet with rain. Or to wake at 5am to have to pee and see the sun washing over the lake as it rises. Or to stand outside at night and marvel at the universe (literally) as I look up at the starts. Or to come out of the 95C sauna, steam rising off our bodies, and to stand naked in the lake and listen to the birds overhead. Chris said last night that he misses the city so. In some ways I do (and I probably would more if I thought we were staying at the cottage forever) but for now I am letting every moment with the fields and trees and lake and all of it just sink in to every pore. I drink of this cup knowing it may be some time yet until I have this unbridled, uninterrupted chance again.

Lastly, I'm afraid I may have come off as ungenerous about the Finns in some of my earlier posts. I think that though I grew up in a Finnish immigrant family in Canada, maybe I grew up more Canadian than I thought. There is also a sort of culture shock for me coming here, expectations and communications styles being different. In truth, we've had a lovely time and although it's always a bit cliche to characterize the Finns as reserved, I don't think it's entirely off the mark either. That of course doesn't mean that they are ungenerous or unkind or any other such thing. I think I had expected to easily fit in, speaking Finnish, having some history and contacts here, but the learning has had to come from myself too and how we communicate across cultures.

I find everyone has been so very good to us here but the Hyden book I read about politics and civil society in Africa did, in contrast, illustrate something of the character of Finns and other Scandinavians. Mostly that there is a firm belief in civil society and in anticipated roles and responsibilities, that everyone has their own part to play. I think this translates into public life and private life in similar ways where we don't necessarily cross boundaries that we do not see as our place to cross. That was a bit of what I was eluding to in my earlier post and I think it is also somewhat true for Canada. The problem of homelessness, for example, is relegated to politicians, civil servants, and non profits but is not the respomsibility of the private citizen. As such, we can end the day thinking that such issues are well in hand of those who are supposed to do something about them. This is, of course, only partially true since many people respond to the issues by making donations, for example, to my previous employer the United Way. In Finland, the culture of making donations barely exists and when we had those meetings in Jyvaskyla a couple of weeks ago, the concept of making tax deductions based on non-profit or charitable giving was completely foreign to them. Here individuals don't need to make charitable donations because it is the government's role to fund services. The role of the NGOs is comparatively small to Canada and doesn't receive nearly the same kind of support as the sector does in Canada. Of course the role of the NGO in Canada is again much smaller than it is in other places, like Nicaragua, where the government is either unwilling or unable to carry out social development and relies on foreign contributions to NGOs to do that same task. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that people are released from responsiblity when it is assumed that someone else will do it. This doesn't mean that Finns or Canadians are uncaring people, it just means that we don't need to become involved in the same way. That's all.

Thanks to everyone who emails, sends letters, posts comments on the blog. It's very good to stay in touch with you and I deeply appreciate all your care in reading our updates.

Much love to everyone out there and hope you're getting the most out of the last days of summer!
Miia