After three years in Vietnam our family has now settled permanently back to Finland. Still most of our Christmas traditions, naturally, date back to Hanoi. Anni and Silva were so young when we moved to Vietnam that especially for Silva it is impossible to remember anything what was Christmas like before.

For Anni and Silva Christmas starts with baking ginger cookies. Questions "when is it time to bake ginger cookies" start already in late October, the same time when the word Christmas is first uttered aloud by the advertises. Eating the cookies is, however, not as popular as baking them (they rather prefer plain chocolate). We will also buy Christmas tree, as before. This year it is traditional Finnish spruce. All our Christmas decorations are bought from Hanoi Craft Link Christmas Basaar. The Christmas will be topped by the visit of real Santa Claus, bringing lots and lots of presents to Anni and Silva (they wish!). Surely Santa will find his way here in Helsinki when he did it all the way to Hanoi too. The girls have one very special wish: they would like to get wings like angels. Anni would then fly to Australia to see a real Koala, Silva would rather fly back home to Hanoi.

Early April was perfect time to come back to Finland. Spring and surprisingly warm summer with lots of light made it possible to settle down properly before dark and depressing winter came. Not all depressing, though. There has been many reasons to be greatfull too. One of the greatest has been to follow the nice schoolstart of Anni. She was really anxiously waiting to go to the real Finnish school. Luckily we have a very good one in our neighbourhood, only few hundres meters from our house. Anni seems to be at ease with her handicap, and her attitude makes it easy for the others to accept her as any of the other kid. What is very important, Anni has both a very good teacher and a personal assistant, and also the kids in her class are great. In the afternoons Anni goes to the nearby daycare center, which is almost better than school "because they don't give any homework".

Silva continues at the Ecole Francais d'Helsinki, despite the fact the school is quite far from us and it takes a long time to drive her there in the morning and back in the evening. But she enjoys very much being there, so that is often difficult to get her to leave home in the evening. Only the food is bad, says she. But where could we find a school that serves steamed Vietnamese rice every day, like Silva would like? Silva has become a real "petite mademoiselle" to whom nothing seems to be "elegant" enough.

After settling back home Petri already has had duty travels once to Vietnam, once to Bhutan and twice to Nicaraqua (did I mention them all?). It has not been excatly nice being home alone with the girls and at the same time trying to manage through my Internet- and multimedia course. But as you can see, I have not been there in vain: so I hope You enjoy these home made pages.

Peaceful Christmastime and all the best wishes for the new Millennium,

Tuija, Petri, Anni ja Silva

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