Global Balalaika Show
Aww, the Leningrad Cowboys are doing a show in Helsinki with the Red Army Choir, and I’m sure it will be great and wonderful and funny, but I won’t be there, yet. I might have been, but the travel agents told me I couldn’t go to Finland before going to Russia, although I can stay afterwards. That’s just the way a group fare ticket works.

But I did choose to stay after. This means that, for a small ticket change fee, I will spend a week of December in Finland. Not something, I suppose, that many people would want to do, but I’m not many people. I’m just me, and I made the ticket change before making sure I would have a place to stay.

Fortunately I reestablished contact with a Finnish friend who lived in my neighborhood and went to my school. Salla is now studying to be a doctor in Kuopio, and although she’ll be having exams during that week, she said I could come and visit her anyway. Sweet. 🙂

So the plan is to arrive in Finland on December 10, which is Wednesday, and leave on December 17, also Wednesday. On the weekend I hope to go and visit Salla, it’s not too long by train between Helsinki and Kuopio. Then there’s before and after the weekend, when I hope to spend time in Helsinki, because I never have, and visit my host family.

That’s where it gets a bit problematic. Salla said she had relatives and friends in Helsinki, and I think I could probably find some sort of AFS contacts there who would be willing to have a former exchange student sleep on their floor for two days. Visiting the host family, though.

They were going to move the fall after I left, because my host brother was going to go to a vocational school and be a pilot. But then he changed his mind after a semester, and I have no idea which city my host parents may be living in now. My host brother, I believe, is now serving his mandatory time in the army.

I tried calling the number I had for my host-mother’s cell, but a man answered who definitely was not her. And the number that was the home phone doesn’t connect. So, therefore, I have spent the past several weeks tormenting myself and finally this morning have finished composing and sent an email to last email address I had for my host brother. It was hard because we weren’t so friendly with each other. I mean, we never were openly hostile, but I don’t think we were ever particularly nice to each other, after the first few months. I did think it was all his fault, but after several years, I suppose I am not blameless either, and I merely hope that we are both older and more mature…

Unfortunately, the email has quickly come back as undeliverable. What if they’ve disappeared off the face of the earth? I think now my next course of action is to try and contact AFS Finland…