Darkness

Before coming to Finland, a lot of people asked me how many hours of daylight we would have after moving to Helsinki.

I followed the sunrises and sunsets on the internet the week or two before leaving Chicago. At that time, sunrise at 9 a.m. and sunset at 4 p.m. didn't seem that different from home. 7 hours of light every day. No big deal.

Then I got here.

Here, darkness at 8 and 9 a.m. is, well....DARK. I guess I thought it would be sort of dusky rather than dark.

But it's dark.



Dog park outside our window at 8 a.m.

We walk the kids to school at 7:30 a.m. Did I mention it's dark out? The "bright" side is that they sleep a lot more!

The afternoon does truly feel like home and we are adding more light to our days every day (see the follow-up post to this one in June when I post about how stressed out I am because no one can sleep due to 19 hour days!)

So after a week of living here in Helsinki, I think we've all sort of taken the Finnish approach to darkness: carry on. I mean, what can you do?

What I haven't gotten used to yet, however, is this:



I'm embarrassed to say, I still need to figure out the time after 1 or 2 p.m. by counting on my fingers! (Or, I ask Joey who seems to have this clock figured out already.)