Kantele -- Dinner - Sauna -- Supper

 Today we had our first lesson on the Finnish Kantele.  There are several options and I chose the Kantele with 5 strings.
We learned how to play a couple of chords and a Finnish folk song.
This is something you will be seeing me actually play in the music classroom next year.  (Unlike the Balalaika from Russia).
Mr. Palella chose the 11 string Kantele.

Practice time, between dinner and supper (yes, they have both here in Finland).
The people I am with are from Australia and they wanted to play and sing American Folk Songs.







In between our dinner and supper was our time for the traditional Finnish sauna.  The sauna is a heated steam bath. The tradition is to sit in the hot room, occasionally tossing water on rocks to generate steam heat.  The sauna is following by a jump in the lake.  It was actually very relaxing and the jump in the lake was refreshing (the air temp was around 60 degrees tonight).

Note:  When I say 60 degrees, I mean fahrenheit.  Finland uses the metric system, so the air temperature is measured in celsius.    Yet another conversion one needs to make when traveling.  What would 60 degrees be in celsius?

We returned to have "supper" waiting for us (8:00PM).  My goodness, it seems like we are eating all of the time.  The food options for supper were:

Yogurt, cheese, cereal, rolls, lunch meat, pickles.

Side note:  Mr. Palella saw a snake on a walk, and took a photo.  We learned later that the snake was poisonous!  (Everyone is fine - including the snake sunning itself on the rock by the lake)

Time for sleep . . . . . .  (10:00PM here)