At the beginning of the month a friend of mine has been visiting me. He is not that kind of friend which you hang out in the weekend or that you see every day, but that one you know since you were 3 years old, who you grew up together, and even if nowadays you have really nothing in common you will still be friends until the day of the unluckier one's funeral. You know, that kind of friend.

Well, of course I have been very happy to see him and it has been so beautyful, after four months, to be able to tell a joke instantly without stopping to think "how can I say that word?" or "ok, is this going to work if I translate it?" and loosing that precious, ephemeral moment in which the joke can be told. I know it sounds stupid but it is something you cannot really understand otherwise you have lived by your own for a while in a foreign country.

Then I held in three different places a presentation of my homecountry (well, actually it was 90% focused on my hometown). The audiences and the places were chronologically: the kids at Kaakkuri's IP, the workers in Byström and the collegues at the monthly team-meeting.
I talked, they listened and only the kids dared to ask some things. I just hope I wasn't boring for the adults.

I have also spent a day in Työ Elämään dressed as a waiter, waiting (that's what I call irony) for youngsters interested about the EVS. Unfortunately the really interested ones were very few, and I had the feeling that all the others (who were still few people) were just waiting for the free coffee they would have earned at the end of the explanation. But I distributed as many flyers as possible and maybe one day in the future they'll find a old crumpled piece of paper in the bottom of a drawer and think: "Well, why not join this wonderful European program and go abroad for a while?". Who knows.

Last but not least, just few days ago I found in Citymarket something I would have never ever expected to find here in Finland: Polenta. Polenta is something really traditional of Northern Italy, especially of Veneto, my homeregion. Here you can read that "The most common dish [in Veneto] is polenta".

I mean...It is so traditional I bet noone of you knew it existed before. Even if it is being sold right here, right now. I guess it's like for you going abroad, let's say in Greece, and find salmiakki being sold at the grocery store: completely unexpected.

- Matteo

A lot of time has passed since the last time I wrote here (my bad, actually) and quite many things happened meanwhile.
I feel I am becoming more self confident at the workplace, the kids are becoming less shy and more outgoing and, last but not least, I am starting "to chew" a bit of finnish language. Just a bit, but it's always better than nothing I guess.

And then there has been christmas time. Which has been a very particular christmas time: I have been, with some other EVS people, in a camping site called Piispala, at about 100km from Jyväskylä. And I have to say it, it has been really weird (in a good way of course) to spend the chrismas eve and christmas day playing bowling, swimming, doing archery and things like that. Usually it is just eating, talking and visiting relatives you never see during all of the year.
Something different  every once in a while is the perfect thing to both enjoy the new and unusual things and the old, familiar ones.

-Matteo