Terveisia,
I’ve been asked about food here in Finland – that however will be the subject for another blog. A few others have asked about our commute. We live in a small complex in a one bedroom apartment owned by UEF. The walk from home to work is about 1 mile away depending on the route we take.
The route has been quite slippery lately – and you can appreciate that there is quite a bit less snow now than when we first arrived. 
It’s fairly common to see some individuals use ski poles for additional support – but for the most part the locals just go – fast. Bikes are used often and they rely on studded snow tires as do the cars. We rely on ice grips on the worst days. One ubiquitous thing found on all of the sidewalks is coarse gravel. The locals said come Spring the gravel is collected and the area becomes inundated with dust.
Like NCSU the local architects at UEF enjoy using red brick. We arrived this morning just before sunrise which today came at 0918 and sunset today was at 1519 – we had nearly 6 hr of sun today. That is almost exactly one hour more than we had on New Year’s Day.
Hei hei,
Dave