Finnish cooking class - Into Experiences - ENGLISH

Well, how to start? I met a lot of international people here in Kuopio and my blog-URL is mentioned in my whatsapp-status. Therefore, a lot of people have asked me to write a blogpost in English, so they could understand what I was talking about as well. I thought this was a nice idea, so I waited until an international-related activity, and here it is: my first English blogpost!

Today was a really good day. It started with two classes (Food Nutrition Policy and Infectious disease epidemiology) which were interesting. In between the lectures we had the best lunch ever. It was pasta with tomato/goatcheese sauce and it was super tasty! The side salad contained tomato, cucumber, olives and seeds. I love the fact that they offer these healthy seeds like sesamy seeds, sunflower seeds and linseed), eventough they are really expensive. :)

after the lectures I worked a bit on the project and I met some classmates which was really nice. I just love having all these nice people around!

Around 3 me and Ines started walking to our next into experience activity. This time, it would be a real finnish cooking class inside a traditional finnish house/cottage. After half an hour walk through a beautiful neighbourhood with traditional housed, covered in snow, we arrived at Tuuka's house, where he lives with his fiance/girlfriend/wife. Its sort of a studio, but with a seperate kitchen. The group today includes 12 Erasmus students, of which 11 are female. As always, girls run the world! :) We are from different countries; Austria, Germany, Poland, Italy, Belgium and ofcourse 5 from the Netherlands.
We divide into two groups of 6. At first we prepare the dough for our cinnamon rolls, because that needs to be in a warm place to rest and rise. We have a lot of fun making it and it turns out that both of the groups see it as a contest to make the best karelian pies/cinnamon rolls. We forgot to measure the milk, we just put it all in, while the other group used too little milk... We have so much fun, because in the end it turns out we just do something that feels right. A little bit sugar, little bit salt, a lot of extra flour.

The best thing about being in Tuuka's house, i haven't mentioned yet... They have a super super super cute dog named Kestu. He is around 9 months old, super active, super cute and super small. You really need to watch out where you put your feet since there can be a little black hairy thing running under you. It is so entertaining, just to see him running around and falling asleep on my lap. <3 <3 Happyhappyhappy!

After the dough for the cinnamon rolls we make the dough for the Karelian pies which is totally different. It works out really well and we can immediately start with making the pies. Rolling out the dough is easy. Making small circles with a champagne-glass is easy as well, but then... we put the rice-porrige in and then you need to fold the sides to eachother. It looks super easy but it is quite difficult. After 2 tries I give up and I just watch the others, while I make the circles from the dough.

We make a egg-butter, which is literally just boiled eggs with butter, super unhealthy.

We made the cinnamon rolls as a group of 6, while the other six divided their dough in 3 parts and made the rolls in couples. Our team spirit was great ;D.

The cinnamon rolls in the oven, the karelian pies in the oven and it started to smell like christmas! There was also gluhwein which tasted a bit different than I am used to, but still tasty.

We had a great night, stayed until half pas 8, everything tasted really great and everyone was full and satisfied. The evening was filled with laughter, good conversations, cuddles with the small dog and relaxing music. It was a really nice evening and I met a few new people which was nice as wel :)
Tuukka said we could go into the sauna, they have their own! But I was the only one who wanted to, so that was a pity. Me and Serafin went to take a look at the sauna, to get the real finnish-family feeling since everyone has a sauna here in Finland. :) It looked cute and cosy, warmed up by wood instead of... electricity?

Well, it was a great night and again I am so thankful to be here, do these kinds of activity, meet al these great people end see the beautiful nature. When I biked back home, I just smiled the whole time because it was so pretty and refreshing :)

Thank you guys for reading, I hope you liked it and hope to see you soon :)

ps; sorry for any mistakes, I will never be a native speaker ;)