Alright guys, let's talk about the 800 pound goril......uh.....naked man in the room

So I will continue with my koli story shortly, but for now I just wanted to quickly blog about a unique experience I recently had in the Finnish sauna. First off, in Finland there is something like 3 million saunas for a population of 5 million people. The sauna is very simply an integral part of the culture here. If I'm not mistaken, sauna is originally a Finnish word that the rest of the world just adopted. So these people are the sauna original baby!

That being explained, in the housing arrangements they have a sauna that can be used at certain times of the month and week. You can either go to the housing people and pay 8 euros to reserve the sauna 1 hour out of every week, or just go to the sauna when it is regularly opened on Wednesdays. Now usually on Wednesdays in my living arrangement, girls can go from 6-8 and guys from 8-10. They separate girls and guys because Finnish people go to the sauna straight up naked. I suppose it kinda makes sense, I guess if I wanna relax to the full extent, course I gotta be naked? Well either way, to most exchange students that idea seems pretty daunting. Just keep your eyes looking above eye level!! some of them say. Sometimes I ask other exchange students if they go naked and they're just like whoa no way!!

So today(wednesday) I was invited to the sauna by my fellow American and also exchange student, Weston. He said that him and some exchange students would be doing a mixed sauna(clothes on, obviously) at 8pm and wanted to know if I would like to come along. I said well, sure why not. I hadn't yet been to the sauna in the housing arrangements, and I wanted to start going regularly since it's relaxing when there aren't a bunch of crazy water fiends in there. But in the back of my mind I thought, wait, isn't today Wednesday? Isn't the sauna open for -men- from 8-10? Well I just said eh they do this regularly and went along with it, cause apparently they do actually every wednesday try to have a mixed sauna.

So I go, it's quite nice. It was seriously nothing like the one I checked out when I went ice swimming. There was a small opening near the bottom of the doorway that allowed heat to actually escape if shit got real. When I entered it was more like a really really really warm room, no hyperventilating. It was this cold in part because the people were playing and throwing water on each other and opening and closing the door. Some people went and brought snow from outside and started spraying people with it just for the shock effect. But after a minute everyone calmed down and had nice sauna again. We threw some water on the  coals, a nice amount. It was very good, I like the sauna a lot. So we sit there a bit longer and have nice conversation with a few intervals of people getting crazy with the snow again but it's nothing as bad as crazy water fiends. I managed to stay peaceful the entire time.

So at one point we all are just sitting there talking and sweating when I see someone pass by the door out of the corner of my eye. Uh oh. In pops in a naked Finnish guy, our age too. He just kinda looks in with this slightly confused look on his face, then just goes for it and sits down. Now there is a lot of people in this sauna and it's not a big sauna. We had to make room for him whenever he came in. Even more over, I knew the guy!

One of the first weekends I got here and did not know the bus system, he and I both got left at the bus stop. We had a nice conversation and decided to just walk back together since we had discovered we lived in the same building from our pleasant conversation. It's an hour walk back, so we got to know each other pretty well. Since then we've had a couple more nice conversations on the bus and at bus stops. This guy was now naked sitting beside me in the sauna, and definitely feeling awkward because of a lot of male and female clothed exchange students.

It was also really funny, and really kinda not funny at the same time because I was sitting beside him on one of the benches in the sauna. Thing was that the benches in the sauna face each other. So I was having quite the fun time in my head watching peoples eyes as they were trying to have conversations. People would be talking then randomly glance down, I guess it's just in peoples nature I don't know why. It's not like these people were trying to sneak a peak, I feel like they all looked in spite of themselves. Girls, guys whoever hahaha. I mean I guess you just can't help it.

I tried to talk to him and get into a nice convo with him as not to make him feel so strange, but you know, we were the ones who should have felt strange. We were out of line, not him. How awful to make someone feel embarrassed within their own culture! So eventually everyone wanted to take a break and go out for a second, but I stayed in there with him. He expressed his embarrassment for being the only naked one at that point. I knew what I had to do. I just said here goes nothing, and got naked as well. Now good thing was the girls definitely weren't coming back in at this point, they decided they were done with one naked man I think. But the guys slowly trickled back in. Kinda strange also because I was with a group of people that I hadn't really formally met yet, because my friend just invited me to come with his friend group. Kind of a strange first impression. So they would come back in and you could see in their face the thought crossing their mind "Wait, what?!?! Two naked guys now?!"

So I just sat there naked with my bus stop friend and eventually I think the other guys caught on and then also got naked. It was actually better. Not nearly as bad as one would think. Surely it's difficult for us to rid ourselves of our cultural perceptions of what it means to be naked and what that implies, but by gosh, after just being in there with a few guys for 15 minutes.....it feels so....normal. That does it, I'm a nudest. Till next time, peace!