RARO.

THey say that home is where the heart is... I suppose that at the moment it's somewhere in Belgium... that is, somewhere between Northern Finland and and Catalunya. Lovely yet odd to be at home home.

Another panicky, strange and rediculously lucky stream of events lead me to finally land at Oulu airport at 7:30 this morning. (was it really this morning? I have already slept twice today!). A chilly cold weather welcomed me to my sweet old home town: -9 and windy. I laughed out loud when stepped out of the airoplane: The temperature seemed so ridiculously low and, well also because I was VERY tired. Only managed to sleep 30minutes during the whole night.

The trip started in a panick: Barbara thought I was leaving on thursday and was still preparing dinner 10minutes before the scheduled departure form our house with Julien's car. I had forgotten to pack my 2litre jugs of olive oil in my bag and started stuffing them there at the very last moment. Christian had printed instructions to get to the airport, still we somehow managed to cruise down the wrong way on the motorway. Poor Julien tried to keep the car on the road as we where loudly disputing about the next turn to take at 120km/h...

Got to the airport. Not a soul anywhere, except the odd cleading lady and security guard. the SAS counter was the only one with any personnel. Lifted my red suitcase on the scales: 28,5 kg. (the maximum on blue1 flights is 20kilos). hmmm. Smiled a lot and as nicely as I could.
hehee. The young man behind the desk looked at his supervisor. He looked at me ponderingly and then nodded back at his apprentice. Ok, we'll let it on the plane. pheeeew. "Feliz Navidad!" I uttered, impressed by what Christmas can do to airline personnel.

Plane left 15minutes late. I realised I would have to rush to my connecting flight to Oulu. I also realised I had forgotten to ask the two nice gentlemen that my bag would be checked all the way to Oulu. M**rd*. Once we landed I Rushed to the Oulu gate at Helsinki airport hoping for solutions. My plane was supposed to leave in 30minutes. The nice lady behind the desk said she would try to get my bag on the flight but it would probably come on a later plane. I Carefully asked about the overweight on the bag (It was my main concern: Smiling does Not help in Finland. If your bag weighs 8,5kilos too much, it weighs 8,5kilos too much no matter how white your teeth are. Y ya esta.) LUCKILY, the nice lady said, nooooo, it's fine. The weight doesn't matter now. We'll get your bag to Oulu.

As our plane had forgotten to fill petrol or something else weird, (which resulted in us the passengers sitting and waiting from 5:30 to 6:30 in a Boeing 575 or whatever, where even my knees had too little space) we headed for Oulu one hour late from schedule. Of course, a lucky b*st*rd as I am, this meant that the staff had indeed had time to find my cute luggage and let it travel with me.

Now I don't know what to do. Every time I wake up I first start using Spanish. Mum and dad haven't noticed it though, as my sayings in the mornings never make much sense anyway...
It is cold out, but I'm not cold. Did you know that genetic studies have shown that people in Northern Finland have a particular gene that helps us adapt to cold weather.
How about adapting to sudden cultural changes?

Besitos from the Arctic Region.