Happy Birthday Finland!

(This was yesterday's post which got lost in my slightly tipsy posting and then found today... sorry!)

Today is Finland's Independence Day! The sexy country is 93 today and seems to be going strong... slowly invading Orrefors, actually.  The Fins here have claimed that the party for Finland's Indy Day is the best party of the year... and tonight they had their night!  

We started out the evening with shots of vodka.  It was weirdly brownish/black which had me concerned but I was told not to worry...  It had been spiked with Turkish Peppers! Ew, black, salty licorice and vodka... BUT it was actually good!  We had a nice meal of Finnish foods, meat (they tried to say it was polar bear, then reindeer, then finally it was just ground meat) cooked with onions or something, some vegetables like cabbage and carrots cooked down to soft delights, mashed potatoes, rice pies (seen below) which were made in my apartment over the weekend so it I have been smelling them for a while, egg butter (hard boiled eggs mixed with butter which sort of tastes of egg salad and I feel like I am forgetting something... I don't know.  It was super good and wholesome and fulfilling.  I really wished I had my camera to take a picture of my plate for you.  But this is a rice pie with the egg butter on top and then we had some jam for it too, like red  jam but I am not sure what type of berry though...

After dinner Jukke gave us the history of Finland in shorthand.  Which for being such a young country took a while.  He was very in depth and precise, we had a drink when Finland wasn't controlled by Sweden and given to the Russians (one independence down) and then again when Finland made a pact with Russia to fight Germans to get their country (final independence achieved).  Also, I learned that the world's most deadly snipper in history is Finnish.  He got shot through the face and killed more then 700 people in 300 days of war or something, and didn't use a scope, just was a bad ass in general... The White Death I think he was called.  And, molotov cocktail was a Finnish invention, which I had previously believed to be Russian.  Then we all drank more of the vodka, listened to super intense Finnish war march songs and then finally it was time for a Finnish tradition...  The winner would win a trophy... Big surprise, this was the trophy:

MORE VODKA!

The competition was to run around the house in the snow.  The person who ran the most laps won... not too hard right?  Well, you had to run barefoot and if you wanted double points you ran fully naked around the house in the snow... still barefoot.  Ahhhh, Finlandia, the land of the naked people!  Everyone was a little daunted by this competition and needed a few more drinks to start.  So, we drank some more, then all of a sudden Jukke (the ring leader of the evening) was naked and standing in the apartment telling us it was time for the run.  Needless to say it was only the Fins which ran naked.  Bjorn did do a lap or two without his shoes on, but Jukke, Jenny and Melissa all ran naked a few times around the house.  Jukke and Melissa even rolled in the snow! Insanity.  At one point also a car drove down the road behind Melissa! It of course went around the block and came back for another look! haha great fun.  I left the party after the nakedness.  I figured it would only get more absurd after that and I wanted to be healthy enough in the morning to work in the hot shop!  All of the Fins had already said they would not be joining us in school in the morning.  Nick went on and on about standing in front of a glory hole sweating out all of the alcohol is the best hangover cure, not sure if I believe him.   Anyway, Happy Birthday Finland!

PS: Thank you for your many contributions to the world...  such as this:

Yes, the Nokia Transformer!  :-D