Hello there! I'm Emmette Driessen and I was on a 9 month trip around the world with my two trustworthy sidekicks, aka my parents. We've accomplished our mission, and right now I'm in my hometown, Asheville, NC. Throughout this blog I’m going to tell you about my experience in Kaustinen, Finland...On with the blog.
This blog will be a different type of blog...usually I talk about different places my parents and I go to, but this blog has a twist… Because of Covid-19, we really didn’t go anywhere. This blog will be mostly about my time in...quarantine.
The night we got to Finland, we had to drive from the Helsinki (HEL for short) airport to Kaustinen, which FYI, was a 5 hour drive. During the drive to the cabin we were staying at, there was a blizzard. The next day when we woke up there was about 2 inches of Snow, and I played in that snow all day. The next few days we went on hikes. The hikes were really fun because most of the paths were covered in ice and I could skate on them. It was really fun. I remember on one of our hikes we went with some of my dad's friends. (Don’t worry, we were 6 feet apart ;-D) It was a long hike...we probably walked 2-3 hours. On that hike, we ate wild berries, made snow angels, and had a small snowball fight. I also remember one other hike, and it was me and my dad that day there had been a lot of snow so we took a snow photoshoot.
Something that a lot of people in Finland do when they go on a hike is roast hotdogs. Once my parents and I went on a tiny hike with my dad's other friend. Once we arrived at the spot where we would roast hotdogs, we all sat down. While the adults started a fire the children played in the snow. Once the fire was ready, we roasted our hotdogs to the perfect crisp. After eating the hotdogs we packed up. On the way back we all started a big snowball fight, and although I was wearing boots almost up to my knees & 2 layers of socks, I somehow still managed to get snow in my socks.
Last but not least, I’m going to tell you about our cabin. The cabin had 2 levels. Downstairs had the bathroom, the kitchen, the living room, & the fireplace that we used to stay warm & roast marshmallows. The upstairs had the bedrooms, desk & balcony. To get upstairs you had to climb this weird ladder. The ladder had steps...sort of...I don't know how to explain it, but it was weird. The bathroom had a unique feature that you don't often see in American houses. Do you want to know what it was? Drum roll please............It was a sauna! If you don't know what a sauna is then I’ll tell you. A sauna is a room you go in and sweat. I don’t see the point of actually wanting to sweat but one thing I know for sure is that my parents LOVED IT!
I bet you're wondering “what did we do for fun?” Well, here is your answer. My dad would...edit videos and audio for his videos, play Finnish violin songs, or play Catan, a board game. My mom would play ukulele (which she had just learned to play), color Mandalas, work, bake bread, help me with home school, or go on walks/runs. I would...draw, do school work, sing, play in the snow, watch movies (to be specific ALL 8 harry potter movies, I L.O.V.E HARRY POTTER), binge watch Full & Fuller house, work on learning all 50 states (which I know all of now), read, and I taught myself a song on the violin. A couple things we did together were. . .play Catan, a very fun board game where you trade materials to build houses, roads and cities, and we also learned how to play croquet.
To wrap this all up I want to say this experience felt like home. We had homemade meals, a great house, & we were in the same timezone as our friends, so it made it easier to stay in touch. I finally felt good about being in one place. Around the end of being in Finland I said to myself “HOME SWEET HOME HERE I COME!”
𝔼𝕄𝕄𝔼𝕋𝕋𝔼 O𝕌𝕋
