I've been in Finland for over 5 months now and I have definitely noticed a lot of differences between the USA and Finland. While I don't think there's been any gigantic or glaring differences there's been a lot of small things that I'd like to share.
The People:
While of course not every Finn is an accurate depiction of their stereotype, I've found that many Finns are somewhat shy and timid when you first meet them. I am just now getting to know some of the people I've been in school with for the past 5 1/2 months.
In the US, everyone is almost overly kind to people they first meet and go out of your way to make you feel comfortable. I've meet Finns like this but few, here you find your own comfort in your situation, you don't rely on others for it.
It took a while to feel truly like I truly belonged, but I now have a great group of people I hang out with and amazing friends.
(Anteeks suomalaiset jos teistä ei ole kuvia!)
Showers:
I recently mentioned this to one of my Finnish friends and he was actually very confused, 'How could our showers be that different?' They are.
As you can see, Finnish showers don't have a tub to catch all the water like we do in the USA. They just shower and let the water fall on the tile and into the drain. I find this very weird and kind of inconvenient, what you're supposed to do after your shower is use a squeegee to clean up all the water. I find that the squeegee isn't always very effective though and I've gotten many pairs of my socks wet while going into the bathroom due to leftover water.
Finland actually doesn't really have any bathtubs in everyday houses, the only place you'll find bathtubs is in hotels. I think this is because everyone has a sauna in their house and who needs a bathtub when you have a sauna.
The only thing that's kind of like a bathtub that they have is palju, it's kind of like a hot tub but it heated with wood. People will often go into palju when they get out of sauna.
Sauna
I actually really like sauna, but it took a very long time for me to actually feel comfortable with it.
Finns usually go to sauna naked with their families and that was a very weird concept to me. Although, they never mixed genders, so with my host family I would only go to sauna with my host mom and sister. Even though they are the same gender as me it still felt very weird at the beginning and I wore my swimsuit the first couple times. But after a while, you're the one who feels weird because you're the only one wearing a swimsuit, so I just stopped.
Sauna is also a big part of the party culture here. I don't think I've ever been to a party with my friends that didn't involve sauna at least one point in the night. Now with friends and since we mix genders at the parties everyone wears a swimsuit. Well, mostly everyone haha, let's just say I've gotten very comfortable with nudity here.
Overall, sauna is just really relaxing and can be really fun. With friends, we often blast music in sauna and all sing along to songs. Sometimes singing along can be a bit difficult when Finnish music comes on but I just pretend to know the words.
Don't know how I'm gonna survive without sauna in the states to be honest
Is there anything specific you want to know about Finland? Leave a comment, send me an email or message!
Emily Williams 🌎