Snow balls and ice slabs

24th March 2012
Saturday

Becky from Michigan stood in for Outi at the kindergarten for a few days this week and brought her little kids with her.

There is a large Finnish population in Michigan where Becky is from and in fact she is third generation Fin. Her grandparents spoke Finnish but not her parents so she had to start from scratch when she arrived here three years ago. It's a tricky language but she is now fluent.

In fact she has most certainly gone bush. She even puts her little baby outside in the pram for her afternoon nap, just like the natives. As long as it's not below minus 10. The children sleep deeper. Probably like that Swedish man who hibernated in his car for over two months.

During the morning break time we are outside in the playground. There has been only one day that we haven't been out and that was when it was below minus 10, windy and foggy. It was spectacularly beautiful with the frost freezing on the twigs of the silver birch trees but too cold to play outside on that particular day.

We share our playground with a pre-school and after school care place. The kids are very curios about this new foreigner who has come to town. They whisper and point and snigger. It's almost like being in Gambia where I went to school or in Japan where foreigners really stand out.

We have started to say hello and they teach me their names. One of the bigger boys, Eero who is seven, makes a giant snowball and gives it to me like some kind of peace offering.

During one of the warmer days big puddles form around the edge of the playground. The kids now wear waterproofs on top of their ski wear like chest-high waders used by fly fishers. The pre- and after-schoolers break off big slabs of ice from around the edges of the puddles and lay them like stepping stones in the water.

By the afternoon, the slabs have melted but as the sun dips towards the horizon, the puddles have started to ice over and are solid again an hour after the sun has set.