:: Arizona, before the trip ::

This post starts a series of photostories about my two and a half month service period in the Native American Bahá'í Institute (www.nativeamericanbi.org) in Houck, Arizona. My trip started 9.1.2007 when I left my home in Rovaniemi to Helsinki. The service period ends when I leave NABI in the 28th of March 2007.

Written 10.1.2007, Dallas Airport, 19:04 local time.

So the long expected trip started. I flew to America. I left Rovaniemi on Tueday morning to spend time with my friends in Helsinki. Pate picked me up at the airport and while waiting for Mea's lecture to finish, we went to his grandmother. She lives in an amazing apartment from the 1920's, with a view to the Parliament House and parks! It was a very funny situation and we got a nice brunch and had a hard time eating everything on the table. Grannies... ;)

Tuesday was fun! We picked up Mea and went shopping for food. After that we went to Mea's apartment and made a lovely salmon-mushroom-paprika-onion-and-other-random-stuff pie! It was de.lici.ous! We also made a huge bowl full of fruit salad and cream to go with it, and we had a hard time (again) eating it... even offering it to other residents of Mea's student house didn't help :D. Stiina's arrival solved the problem, and after washing the dishes we went to Stiina's dad's and stepmom's place. It's a b-e-a-utiful, old bohemian house in Käpylä, very near the Bahá'í-Center, and we got to see some proper artist/bohemian family life. The kids, Ilmari and Olli, were totally different from each other, but both very much fun in their own ways.

After visiting the Kallius family we headed to the Bahá'í Center and met up with Änisa and Taneli. We played a wonderful Moomin-game, honestly, it's got to be the best roll-the-dice-and-move game in the world. And even better, I WON! I also received a very beautiful card, handmade by Pate (a native american cut into paper) and signed by all the friends in Helsinki.

We had a lovely midnight-prayer moment. Then everyone left. While saying good-bye, I suddenly realised these were the last familiar people I was gonna see for three months. I suddenly felt the excitement and anxiety of leaving everything familiar... I said good bye to everyone and Taneli's words about spiritual developement through service really woke me up to what it was that I was going to do in Arizona. I have to confess, after the door was closed, I cried a few tears... maybe tears of insecurity, because the trip on the following day was going to be very long (29 hours!) and complicated, and I would be all alone. I talked with Änisa for a moment and the fright passed.