This year I am going to have a total of three host families, so at New Year's Eve I moved from my first host family I had been with since my arrival in August to my second host family.
My first host sister's love baking so they made all sorts of different cupcakes for our last desert together. Some were mint chocolate, chocolate, or vanila.
Our last meal together was one of my favorite dishes; reindeer with lingon berries, and homemade mashed potatoes. It was delicous!
My first host family enjoying desert. From left to right; my host mom Marjatta, host dad Mika, and host sisters Helmi and Lotta.
All of the stuff packed up in my old room and ready to go. I came to Finland with two suitcases and a backpack in August, and by the end of December this is everything else I had acquired.
My second host family just lives down the street and was friends with my first host family so it wasn't a very hard move, and I had known them since my second day in Lahti which made it really nice.
All of my belongings moved into my new room. Lots of unpacking to do!
Since it was New Year's eve, we had sauna and then took part in the Finnish tradition of making fortune teller metal pieces. You get some metal, usually titatium and melt it down in the fireplace. When it is liquidy enough, you swosh it around and then throw it into a bucket of cold water. Going from hot to cold, turns it instantly back into a metal form.
The different metal forms are then analyzed as a sort of fortune to determine what you will have in the new year, such as love and money, etc. My figure looked kind of like a dragon sitting on a rock. It had some parts that looked like money on it, and symbolized adventure and travel and water too.
All of the different metal figures that everyone made. Some of them turned out really cool. One of them looked like a mermaid and another like an owl, and there was even a heart in one of them.
Closer to midnight, we went back over to my old host family's home and shot off fireworks in the backyard. There were fireworks going off all over the neighborhood and all around Lahti, so it was really cool to just be able to go outside and look at the sky and see all of the different colors in the sky.
When midnight struck we shot off the fireworks and all got a drink, juice for me, with the saying of Hyvää Uutta Vuotta!
It was also really nice, because I spent to night with just my two sets of host parents. My old ones (left) and my new ones (right). It was such an excellent time and a great way to usher in the new year!
We ended the night by roasting sausages in the outdoor fireplace and laughing together. Then at the end of the night, I went home with my new host parents to kick off the New Year in a new family.
Happy 2013 everyone!
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