Filed under: New Hampshire
Apparently the power outge in New England has been making the news around the world. I wouldn’t have known because we have been in the midst of it since 9:45 Thursday evening, when we lost power without warning. We just got it back on a few hours ago and I tell you it’s wonderful.
Is there a page in the baby book for "Baby's first power outage"?
Our apartment complex handled things wonderfully. They provided generators to keep the heat and hot water in the buildings–alternating the buildings every 8 hours or so, though last night they must have gotten enough for every building to have one because we had been on a generator since yesterday evening. That’s a lot better than a lot of New Hampshirites have. It’s been extremely cold here as well and a building will quickly get down to 20 F without any heat. Brrr!
It was fun in a way; my husband and I have started a running list of things we need to survive without electricity and renewed our determination to have our future house be as much off the grid as possible. When we have the money, we’re going to buy an electric lantern, some tall white candles (these sold out first and the flashlight section of the store was picked clean) along with some candle holders. More matches would also be useful.
At any rate, I hope the rest of the state gets power back soon. I’ve heard it will be a up to a week in some places, possibly longer. You’d think we were in some third world country with those estimates, but I guess that’s what happens when you have a rough, tree covered terrain and small windy roads.
We arrived back home on Thursday evevning and man, what a trip it was.
Haakon did very well on the airplane rides and I learned that having a baby who is screaming is a great way to get through security without a second glance. Now I wish I had smuggled somesort of weaponry with me. In Helsinki on the way home, we accidently smuggled a bottle of water through and felt very rebellious. At any rate, Haakon slept through the plane rides and didn’t really seem to care much about them, which was a relief for us since no one spent the whole flight glaring at us.
Lasse got his first “I’m back in Finland” shock shortly after the plane landed and we went outside the airport to catch a bus. He asked a bus driver if this bus went to the train station and the bus driver’s curt reply: “Can’t you read?” He then refused to load our luggage on, so we had to do it ourselves. Once we reached the train station, he didn’t unload it either, so Lasse ended up doing that, too, for us and the other passengers. We managed to just barely catch our train, but since it was a Friday evening, all the seats were full and we had to spend the whole ride in the corridor by the doors. That was bad enough, but there was a drunk on the train, too. He was in business class at first, but the conductor kicked him out of there because he didn’t have a business class ticket, so guess where he went! Into the corridor, where we were. And he stayed there the whole train ride, hasseling my husband, the two kids also riding in the corridor and any other passenger that went through there. Now, while other countries may have thrown him off the train, the Finns didn’t. They either ignored him, glared at him, laughed at him or tried to calm him down so that a fight wouldn’t break out. Fun times.
In case I haven’t mentioned it on the blog before, Lasse didn’t tell his family that we were expecting a baby, or that the baby was born, or anything regarding having a child. So, aside from visiting home and burying his grandpa, this trip was planned to tell his family he had a kid. Great plan eh? His sister surprised us by meeting us at the train station and immediately jumped on Lasse and gave him a hug and started crying because she missed him so much, so she didn’t notice the baby in his sling. Then Lasse pointed him out and she still didn’t get it because he was pretty well bundled up. I think she realized a little later, but the reaction was fairly anti-climatic.
His parents’ reactions were better. I was changing his diaper and throwing the dirty one away in the kitchen when he’s parents came in and his dad walked into the kitchen first and went, “Uhh, uuh, oooh….(something in Finnish I didn’t understand.”
His mom wasn’t in the kitchen, so she had no idea what was going on, and asked, “Mitä? Mitä? (what? what?)” followed by something else in Finnish I couldn’t understand. Then his dad replied, “Blah blah blah lapsi blah blah!” (something in Finnish I couldn’t understand child followed by more stuff I couldn’t understand). And then she walked into the kitchen and saw him and I felt very embarrassed.
On the whole, their reactions were good ones. No one yelled, screamed, or had a heart attack and his mom was quite taken with him. So was Lasse’s dad, but his mom moreso. She always held him, played with him, spoke to him a lot in Finnish and that sort of thing. “I hope Lasse will speak much Finnish to him so he will learn it!” So do I because man, I doubt I’m going to be speaking Finnish any time soon.
Another goal of our trip was to register Haakon as a Finnish citizen. For this purpose, we brought along his New Hampshire birth certificate as required by law and headed down to the magistrate in the town where Lasse’s parents lived. They were friendly and took all the stuff while Lasse explained what we wanted to do…and we hit a brick wall. “This doesn’t have the Haague Apostille on it.”
“Erm, the ‘62 Haague Convention Apostille?” Lasse guessed.
“Yes, that one. We need it in order to process this.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that…every place requires something else.”
“Well, that’s alright, we’ll just keep the birth certificate and we should be able to register him and then you can come by tomorrow once everything is in the system and apply for a passport for him.” Sounds good, right? Wrong! We went home and then got a phone call. “Sorry, we can’t actually process the application because you aren’t a resident of Pori. Your last listed residence in Finland is in Turku, so you have to register him in Turku. We called the Turku Magistrate and asked them if we could just send the paperwork over to them, but they said they wouldn’t register him without the Haague Apostille.”
So we’re back at square one. We can’t register him without the Haague thingy saying that this is indeed the official stamp of Manchester, NH that is on his birth certificate, etc. What a pain in the ass. Oh well.
