Helsinki City Girl

We just love to put the people we meet into these cute little boxes, don't we?

Oh, you know what I mean. 'This one has red hair, this one has blue eyes, this one is from Helsinki...' And nothing makes me happier than break down these boundaries most of us make.

You see, I got spend 5 days at a beautiful island with 3 other people, 2 horses, 4 dogs, one owl, million insects and hundrets of trees and plants. Apparently, my host & hostis, my boyfriend's aunt and uncle, who are close to him indeed, had little predjudice towards me. And why? Because I'm a Helsinki City Girl.

Well, they're right. I was born and raised in Helsinki, Finland's beautiful capital. But, unlike some Finns living in the capital, I have spent loads of time in the rural countryside. Yes, I have been feeding cows, helping making hay and weed the vegetable patch at my uncle's farm. Yes, I have been fishing with my father for hours. So fish bone don't scare me.

Naturally, not every 26-year-old woman from the capital knows as much things about the countryside as I do. There's a heart of a country woman inside this city woman. My dad is from Viitasaari, a city locaded in Middle-Finland and my mother is from Tervo. Both of them have grown far away from Helsinki, so they brought me up with old country values they had been brought up with.

I must admit... when summertime comes, I sometimes walk down on the memory lane to those days when my uncle still had cows at his farm and that when they were still making hay... It was fun to run to feed the calves with my cousins at 6am, sit on the top of the high hay truck and wish that I will not fall down... Those were the colden days. =)

Well, my ability to find happiness in tiny things has not vanished anywere. One of the best moments from the 5 days at the island comes from the 30 minutes, when a tiny butterfly with blue wings sat down on my finger, palm and hand. Just thinking about it makes me smile. What a blessing from God! And, what makes the moment even better is, that I had said to my boyfriend just moments earlier that how wonderful it would be if a butterfly would sit on my shoulder! It didn't take a long time for one to fulfill the wish; first one sat on my boyfriend's hand, then at mine.

Life is full of wonderful, little miracles. We just have to open our eyes, look around and we'll see them. =)