But first, a few things I've been writing down on scraps of paper and want to remember to make note of:
- Professional driving. In Finland, in order to pass your driving test, you must be a stunt driver! [Okay not actually but when you see Juha park by purposely skidding around the parking lot, it sure seems that way.] When you do your driving test in the winter, you have to prove that you can handle whatever situation: skidding, ice, snow, etc... and when you take your test in the summer, they put soap on the track so you can skid around a bit. I'm actually pretty impressed. If it were harder to get your license in Canada, no one would get anywhere because too many people would fail. But maybe that wouldn't be ALL bad since we'd know how to handle our snow storm driving. I don't know... just a thought.
- There is a bomb shelter in the basement of our building. It doubles as a storage space but if need be, we simply need to lift the board in front of the big door that leads to the storage area and ta-da! you're safe from bombs. Did I mention our building is THREE [3] years old? Apparently this is the norm here. I guess a history full of Russian and Swedish invasion will do that to you...
There's also an air-raid alarm that is tested weekend on Monday at noon. But no one heard it this Monday... it was very strange. Juha was saying if they stopped doing it, people would worry that it wasn't working. I asked a few friends if anyone had heard if on Monday and it seems no one had... one of them did panic when she realized though!
So yes, back to the good story I have to tell. Yesterday, I went for lunch at Päivi's place [Juha's mom] to eat with Juha and Anna [his sister]. We had salad, sweet and regular mashed potatoes and fish. Now WHAT KIND OF FISH!? ... you may ask. Why it was Kuha fish. Like Juha, but with a 'k-'. The meal was fantastic, right up until the last bite; at which point I got a piece of little Kuha's remains stuck in my throat. I will tell you - it was a HOOT having that there for 9 hours. I tried eating some "Pieni Pyöreä - Monivilja"
to wash it down. It's basically a hard cracker/bread type of deal and it's really high in fiber. And I must have eating half a pack [which made it really uncomfortable to sit in the hospital waiting room 6 hours later].
Anyway, the doctor didn't manage to see it because I pushed it down with my finger [semi-by accident] at some point throughout the evening but he said it just sucked but it wasn't dangerous [I was more concerned about it sucking for 2 months like some poor bloke on the internet]. But anyway, he sent us home and suggested we come back tomorrow if it hasn't washed down yet. There was also the possibility that it had cut my throat on the inside and that the cuts just felt like it was still there when really it was long gone. But I was pretty sure that wasn't the case since the pain seemed to move around. So after waiting for 2 hours and going home empty handed [we'll see how much that'll cost...] we stopped at Mr. Chen's for some Chinese food. And at exactly MIDNIGHT last night, I swallowed the fish bone.
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