Horses!

Anyone who knows me at all probably knows that I love horses. The first time I went horse riding was when I was about five or six years old thanks to my Mum. Since then riding has been my favourite pastime and I even had a horse at one point, you know, because it's more fun than just burning all of your money. As an au pair that has been put to a hold although I have been in the saddle once thanks to Ollie and his lovely horse HP.

That doesn't mean I'm completely cut off from the horse world, quite the opposite. Here horses are everywhere!

help I've lost my jockey

The nearby racecourse is a very exotic place for a Finn.

I've been to the Huntingdon Racecourse once with Sarah, we got absolutely soaked and couldn't sadly stay until the pony races. It's only less than a ten minutes walk away.

It's not all horse racing here, they also have the tweed kind of horse riding and the normal disciplines like eventing. Sometimes these two overlap and what you get is Burghley Horse Trials, where the crowd wears the tweed and the apparently quite suicidal riders trust their horses to carry them over these massive scary jumps.

surely you must be mad to be do eventing

Ollie and his mum took me there and it was amazing. He also took me to Weird Great Yarmouth but we don't talk about that.

Differences Between Finland And England

I just realised yesterday it's been four months in England already. Four months! That's a long time. That's a third of a year. That's enough time to get a culture shock.

I didn't have the worst culture shock ever, but I definitely suffered some symptoms of it, like mild homesickness and turning into the most Finnish person ever. I could live on rye bread and Fazer chocolate. Ok, I kind of do already (sidenote to family: SEND ME CHOCOLATE k thanks bai x).

Culture shock is about living in a place different to where you're from and not adapting to the little differences as well as you'd hope. So I thought I'd list some differences between Finland and England that have confused, amused or slightly annoyed me. Usually all three at the same time, I'm trying not to offend anyone but I probably will.

1. The Weather
It's better in England. It's October, it's raining, and oh yes, it's better. 

2. The Doors
They open the wrong way! I still get confused whether I should push or pull. Yes I understand them opening inward in terraced houses, otherwise we'd be slamming someone in the face every time we leave the house but in a one square metre public restroom stall? Why

3. The Food
Binge and starve vs basically grazing. What do you mean you don't have a meal between the dinner and bedtime? Before coming to England I didn't even realise how crazy about dairy we Finns are. As a lactose intolerant I'm strongly in favour of the English way (but I do miss that chocolate oh it's so good hint hint mum, chocolate). I would have tea, crumpets and Nutella over rye bread every day of the week. 
The bread slices are bigger in England. They have boiled vegetables instead of cold salad. Everything is not coated with salt. Weird.

4. The People
So so lovely and friendly. And there are so many of them, people everywhere. Sorry about being so quiet all the time, but you see we don't even have a word for 'small talk' or 'uncomfortable silence' in the whole Finnish language.

5. The Shopping
Obviously a lot better here, I don't have to order everything online anymore! Except the food, you can get food online, delivered to your doorstep! I know! Shut up and take my money!! One thing that has baffled me is the amount of card shops, like places selling birthday cards and that kind of stuff. I think there's three card shops in Huntingdon plus some other places to buy cards e.g. Sainsbury's and WHSmith. I can only assume English people send a lot of cards. 

+ Tweed
Special mention to tweed. People actually wear it! Amazing. 

Despite sometimes having long rants about the weird things this country and its people do (don't get me started on the technology or spiders) I've loved every single minute of my four months in England. I'm just a moany sort of person.

Sorry about being such a lazy blogger! I've got some travel posts coming up, I'll probably do a compilation post or something. Lots of photos then and I'll show you all the amazing places I've seen.