Arto's Blog

I just published my 2008 Christmas and New Year card, available both in Finnish and in English. I wish you happy holidays of the end of the year and even better new year 2009! And for those readers who don't follow the Gregorian calendar or simply read this later, happy current year and new year whenever it comes! :-)

This was already the second year I didn't buy any commercially available Christmas cards. Still, it's nice to occasionally send and receive not only email greetings but also good old fashioned paper mail. Letters reach also those relatives and friends who don't read email. Therefore I selected some photos taken during the year 2008, had them printed and wrote something personal at the back side of each one before mailing them out.

I plan to spend the Christmas with my family, as usual. We'll go to meet my mother's father at Pyhtää tomorrow on Christmas eve, staying at his home in the countryside until the following day. On the 26th we'll drive to Hyvinkää to visit my other grandfather. That's very common in Finland: Christmas is a family event and New Year is more often spent partying with friends.

One thing will be different this year: My youngest brother Lari will be missing. He moved to Canada a few months ago to study at a film school and decided to spend his holidays traveling in the U.S. and Canada. It was fun to plan Lari's Christmas present together with my parents: we're giving him "A Day in New York" — consisting of five addresses where he'll have something interesting to see or do, all costs covered of course. Once again I got help from CouchSurfing members, this time in the form of hints rather than accommodation.