Many of you who end up reading this blog are going to wonder how in the world an American ended up in Finland of all places.
When you hear I'm married, the light bulb in your head will go off and you'll put 2 and 2 together and come to the conclusion that is how I came to be here.
However that is not entirely the case.
My fascination with Finland came long before my marriage, the marriage was kind of a happy "accident" if you will, and caught me abit by surprise.
The first time I ever heard about Finland, was way back in 1996 on the ever popular Napster file sharing network. I was chatting in one of the chatrooms Napster had when a fairly obnoxious guy was ranting on and on about how lazy black people were, and how much he hated them.
Eventually the question came up where this man was from, to which he responded Finland.
Needless to say, my first experience with Finland left a sour taste in my mouth.
It wouldn't be till 4 years later that this taste would be washed clean when I got involved with a little online game called Dransik.
Dransik was a MMORPG that had a very large community of finnish players, it was during this time that my romance with Finland began, so to speak.
During my time playing Dransik, I ran into alot of finns, and I found most all of them to be very helpful, funny and pleasant people. Always willing to help where they could, and never really asking anything in return.
This was also my first encounter with the finnish language itself, which added to my fascination of the country.
It was during this time that I met many of my friends here in Finland, and it is during this time I started my dream of one day visiting Finland, which later envolved into a dream of wanting to live there.
During the course of nearly 6 years I attempted to visit Finland, planning a trip every summer. It never saw fruitation, untill finally in the summer of 2006, it looked like all my effort would pay off...
It didn't, as that plan got shot out of the sky and died a horrible burning death. Finally, in the early months of 2007, I saw the plan through and visited Finland for the first time.
I'll try to cover some of the more intresting parts of this long process that was my first visit to Finland at some later point, but for now, this quick summary will have to suffice.
During my first visit to Finland, I stayed with many of my friends I had met from Dransik.
I toured almost the entire country, staying with a friend in a town for a night or two before getting on a train to go on to the next place. At the end of this tour, is when I met my wife to be for the first time, having known her for nearly 7 years at that point through Dransik.
Neither of us knew we would be getting married at this point, nor did we know we would like each other as much as we obviously did. But during my visit with her something kindled and we knew we had to see each other again.
When I returned to the States I immediately started saving again for a visit back to Finland ASAP, this time with the intention of staying with her.
After only a couple months, I had saved enough to visit again in July 2007.
We still didn't quite know what would happen at that point. We were playing it all by ear. One night while we were outside having a smoke she proposed me and I smoothly and calmly responded with "What! Are you serious?!"
After she assured me she was indeed serious, I told her to give it three months, and if she was still sure about it, I would come back again that November and we would get married.
And the rest is history.
So here I am in Finland.
Damn witch tricked me.
8.6.09
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