Timmins

On Boxing Day we flew to Timmins, a city in Northern Ontario and the home town of our dear friends Matt and Renelle. Timmins reminded us of Kauhajoki, a small town with lots of forest and a river flowing through it. The population in Timmins is approximately 45.000 and the main industry is mining. Back in the days a lot of Finnish people moved to Timmins and still there is a huge population of second and third generation Finns. Timmins is also known as the home town of Shania Twain and she even has her own museum there.

We met some lovely people during our week, a lot of Matt's and Renelle's family and friends. Renelle's mom took us one day out for a walk on the trails. It was really cold that day, freezing -26C, but we were used to those temperatures and loved being in the snow. New Years Eve we celebrated with their friends at the French cultural center. The new year started with a 4 km walk home after the party, since there were no cabs available. We had a great week and we are definitely visiting Timmins again in the summer.

A random dog also wanted to be on the picture

The coffee shop at the McIntyre hockey rink

Poutine: French fries with gravy and cheese

Happy New Year 2012!

Canadian Christmas

We had a lovely Christmas, although we were far from our families. On Christmas Eve we were just the two of us. We made rice porridge in the morning and beef roast for dinner. All the shops were open and when we went for a walk, we accidentally found ourselves in some fashion stores and found two more Christmas presents for Juha.

On Christmas Day we packed for Timmins and Eileen picked us up to go to the farm. Kevin's mom had made a lovely dinner, which included a lot of Polish dishes and duck from the farm. We met some great people and went late to bed.

Merry Christmas from Toronto: Juha & Nuudia

Ugly X-mas sweater party

Like in Finland people are having pre-Christmas parties called "pikkujoulu", American and Canadian youth are throwing ugly x-mas sweater parties. Everyone who has seen the movie Bridget Jones, knows what I am talking about ;)

We went to several thrift stores in Toronto, but the sweaters seemed very popular and we couldn't find any. I ended up buying an ugly green sweater and sewed on a Christmas tree decoration. Our friends had bought an ugly sweater with huge shoulder pads for Juha. We had also found some funny stockings to wear and Juha had grown a moustache for the occasion.

Jessie, who hosted the night, had made tons of delicious food. We played Jenga, had very competitive matches on the Wii and Juha won the second prize for best outfit!

Here are some pictures of the night...

Even the dog was in Christmas spirit!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

A few pictures of our Christmas decoration. Most of the things I have made myself. The paper snow flakes are easy to make and they look nice on your window. You'll only need white paper and scissors. Every flake is different, you just need to try out different things.

The red star is made of paper as well. You can get instructions here.

I also couldn't find the right Christmas balls for our tree, so I made the red paper decorations myself and added a few golden balls. A quite simplistic tree, not like the most trees over here. Americans and Canadians are crazy about decorating and most of the trees are covered by so many balls and lights, that you can't see the three under it anymore. Although, I must say that I love the Christmas lights outside on our street. Every house has them; clear, blue, colored, everything you can imagine. Now we only wish for a bit of snow and our Christmas can begin.

We will spend Christmas eve at home with the two of us. We'll eat whatever we want this time, not the traditional Finnish Christmas food we have had to eat every year ;) It's good, but it's nice to eat something else sometimes as well.
On Christmas Day we'll go up to Kevin's farm. Kevin and Eileen play floorball with us and invited us to spend that day with them and Kev's family and friends. Kevin is half Polish, so we are having a lot of Polish food.
And then on Boxing Day we'll fly up North to Timmins, where we'll stay with Matt and Renelle for a week.