Day 73.

Today Justin and Corey are going to school with Mai (Magnus and Nicola’s daughter).  I need to take a minute to explain languages and schools as best I can with what I learned.  Both Swedish and Finnish are official languages of Finland.  I think this dates back to when the Swedes occupied Finland for 500 years, before Russia occupied them for another hundred years, before Finland gained their independence on Dec 6, 1917.  

This distinction means that the Finnish government must offer public schools with Swedish as the primary language and other public schools with Finnish as the primary language.  Approximately 95% of people in Finland speak Finnish as their primary language while 5% speak Swedish as their primary language.  Magnus and Nicola speak Swedish as their primary language so the kids were raised with Swedish as the primary language as well.  

However, practically speaking you need to speak Finnish because activities outside of school and household (e.g. work, extra-curricular activities, etc) are typically Finnish reflecting the 95% mix.  However, you can also opt to send the kids to a school with English as a primary language.  So their son Max is Finnish but speaks Swedish in the household, went to a Swedish school in Finland where he also learned Finnish and now goes to a school with English as the primary language.  Are you still with me?

Their daughter Mai goes to 8th grade at a Swedish language school.  The students get free lunch at the school but apparently the Finnish government is not too keen on providing free lunch to visiting American students so Justin and Corey have to bring their own lunch.  I can’t even blame this one on Trump as I don’t think Canadians would get free lunch either. They head off to school with Mai, brown bags in hand.

Magnus and I spend the day hanging out and catching up.  Magnus started a fund that has bought four companies which he is merging and consolidating.  It was very interesting to hear about how he runs the business and how different it is managing and trying to motivate workers in Finland (tougher than the US).  We go to lunch which is outside on the waterfront. The weather has been absolutely incredible and Magnus assures me that we have brought the good weather and the four sunny days we’ve had are about all they get all year and it will start getting cold in a couple weeks.  The ROI on my massive time investment trying to determine our route for the optimal weather is definitely paying off.

The kids return from school. Justin and Corey really enjoyed the day and said it was great seeing how a school system in another country works. The courses they attended were Algebra, Finnish, Swedish and Spanish.   This setup clearly reflecting the emphasis on languages.  Mai speaks Swedish, Finnish, English and French and is learning Spanish and Chinese.  Magnus makes a mention of life in a bilingual country but by my math, I am thinking Mai is hexa-lingual.

Tonight, Magnus and Nicola are hosting a family dinner at their house.  Given there are 7 of us and 4 of them, it is already a respectable party size before anyone else shows up.  Various parents, siblings, cousins, godparents start to show up.  Since most people in Finland speak English, there is no language barrier and we have great conversations with everyone (good thing he wasn’t Russian or Hungarian as that might not have been the case).

Leanne has taken the other kids to an amusement park as we are trying to mix in fun alongside all the enriching educational experiences we plan each day and they head over to Magnus and Nicola’s house.

Prosciutto is being served and Magnus brings out a big machete looking knife that is used to open Champagne by giving it a huge swinging slice parallel with the bottle until it hits the cork and the cork and end of the bottle go exploding off.  Yes, there really is such a thing – it’s called a Champagne Saber.  Nicola was given it as a gift and has apparently bequeathed it to 10 year old Max who has become quite adept at it.  Max goes to work and each bottle gets successively better and smoother.  I manage a slow motion video of one.  I am thinking Max has a found a good thing here — it will look impressive on a college application is if he can become the World Champion of Champagne Saber Slicing.

The dinner is incredible and we still can’t thank our friends Magnus and Nicola enough for all their wonderful hospitality. Feeling so blessed to have been welcomed here in Finland with good friends, fabulous food and tons of fun.