Exploring the languages and cooking

We met on 19th February at Jyväskylä University  We were supposed to stay in the café  but when we met, the café had just closed! Just our luck. We wondered a while where we should go and decided to go to the center of the city. We ended up going to Coffee House, since most of us hadn't been there yet. The café was very cozy, and everyone ordered something for themselves.

We sat around the table and started by chatting how everyone had been and enjoyed our foods. Today’s topic was Finnish and Japanese, and we had promised the girls we would help them with Finnish. I first showed Mayu and Rika our Japanese course books and they had fun looking at our kanji book.  Seems like the exercises brought back some memories maybe.

Both Mayu and Rika had brought their Finnish papers with them, and they had some questions for us. There were confused about some grammar, and we tried our best to help them. The Finnish word “noniin/no niin” was also a word which meaning Rika had been wondering about, since she had heard it a lot!

We sat in the café for few hours talking about Finnish language.

Next meeting was held on 5th March. We met on Mayu’s place, and this time Rika’s new friend Miki joined us too. She was currently visiting Jyväskylä. For this meeting we had chosen beforehand a Japanese dish and a Finnish dessert that we would make. We decided on rice balls with different kind of fillings and a pie, half apple half blueberry.

Everyone working to make the food

Funny looking mushrooms and other Japanese ingredients

Apple blueberry pie! We had also bought vanilla foam to go with the pie. It was really delicious and seems like everyone liked the pie and the foam a lot! I was happy to hear that.

Rice balls on their way to be done

All in all, we used 5 different fillings. They were all very tasty. I want to try making them sometime again.

We talked about various things like Finnish school system, travelling for example Lapland and how Miki had met the Santa Claus. We talked so much that I don't even remember anymore all the things we chatted about. I was also happy that I understood some parts of the things that Mayu and Rika talked with Miki in Japanese. There is still many words in Japanese that I don’t know, but if it’s simple Japanese, I can understand. I was very happy notice that. Maybe sometime I can gather up the courage and try to speak in Japanese with them a little bit! It was also nice meeting Miki and hearing her experiences in Finland and how she has liked being here. Maybe if I’ll get accepted to go to Japan for exchange, I can meet her in Japan too. I’m sure that would be fun. The evening was really relaxing, and I had really fun with everyone.

Until next time!