Cimorene

"Is there anyone who would like to raise their hand and tell a reason they have why Cim is so nice?"

• "Because she helped us find pants for Barbie when we were playing Barbies"


• "Because I like her"


• "... I forget"


• "Because she's a good friend"


• "... Yes, Child Who Forgot Before?" "Mine was the same"


• "Because she's just nice"


• "Mine was the same too"


• "Me too"


• "Because she helped me and Aaro clean up the Legos from the floor"


• "Because she never has nail polish." "Oh? But she has nail polish on now." "That's what I've got."

ADULT: Girls, now it's time to clean up. Yesterday you didn't clean up very quickly and I had to come help you, so I hope that doesn't happen today. The whole room has to be clean before we go outside so they can clean the floors, so when I come back in five minutes, I hope the room looks really tidy!

[SHE GOES AWAY AND THE THREE GIRLS CONTINUE PLAYING, GIGGLING, SHRIEKING AND THROWING BARBIES]

[A COUPLE MINUTES PASS]

FOUR-YEAR-OLD: WAIT! We were supposed to be cleaning!!

4YO #2: GASP!

4YO #1: Hey! Let's clean up as cats!

4YO #2-3: YAAAAAAAAY!

4YO #1: MEOW!!! [FLINGS HANDFUL OF BARBIE CLOTHES INTO THE BIN]

4YOs: MEOW! MEOW!

[THEY CRAWL AROUND ON HANDS AND KNEES SHOUTING 'MEOW' & THROWING BARBIES INTO THE BIN]

"Let's pretend your car falls in love with me, but I don't love it. Okay?"

CHILD: Welcome to our store - come buy some stuff.
ME: Okay, what do I owe you?
CHILD: Well, how bout you pay, like... 22 spiders.

LAPSI 1: Sä olet ihan lapsi!
AIKUINEN: Mikä sinä sitten olet? Aikuinen?
LAPSI 1: Mä olen melkein aikuinen.
LAPSI 2: Ei, ku sä olet lapsi. [MIETII] Sä olet IHAN lapsi.


And here's a few things that do translate:

CHILD 1: We can't do this. We need help.
CHILD 2: We need help from people [IN A WAY WHICH IMPLIES THEY ARE NOT PEOPLE]

.

CHILD: Hair styling is also my hobby! Everything is my hobby!

.

CHILD: How old are you anyway, 40?
ADULT: 26.
CHILD: That's almost 40. My mom is 50 and you're almost that old.

8:20 walk to work. Load dishwasher. Dress children.
9:30 walk with 2-yo by the hand over railway overpass to elementary school.
10. Undress children. Running-around-time in socks in a very cold, tiny, wood-floored gym. Dress children again.
11. Back to daycare. Undress children again. Unload the dishwasher.
11:30 Lunch. Load the dishwasher.
12-13. Do all the dishes from the daycare's bigger building using the industrial dishwasher.
13. Break... sort of... during which I had to put away the lunch dishes. (I sat down long enough to fix and drink two cups of tea in between doing stuff.)
13:45 Setting up snack for the big building.
14. Back to little building, talking 2-year-olds through diaper removal and dressing themselves.
14:30 My coworkers in the little building prefer to prepare snack themselves even though it's technically my job. Snacktime.
15. Chilling on the floor and occasionally saying things like "Come out of there" and "Don't throw that".

My work day technically ends at 15:45 but my coworkers tend to release me half an hour early, which I find reasonable because a) they don't need the extra pair of hands especially once kids start leaving and b) I don't get a real break during the day.

There's a windstorm warning and the wind was already blowing hard enough on my way to work this morning that it held me immobile with one foot in the air as I leaned into it trying to walk across the street. When I went outside again in the afternoon the sidewalk, road and park are littered with fallen branches, including several longer than I am tall. The children can't go outside this afternoon because of the big trees in the yard.

CHILD: Cim Cim Cim Cim
ME: What?
CHILD: Wasps aren't eaten.
ME: That's true. We don't eat wasps. It isn't a good idea.

SAME CHILD: Where did the siren car go?
ME: Right past us. Somewhere else, where there's probably an emergency.
SAME CHILD: Yes, somewhere far away. I saw a siren car and then a helicopter came and they arrested a monster.
ME: Wow... whoa, a monster?
SAME CHILD: Yes, a big monster. REALLY big. It was this big [Indicates a height of 3']

ADULT: Okay, we've got horses in the barn now, so what animal should live there next? Maybe a cow, or pig?
CHILD: BEAR!

CHILD, to me: Why do you always wear jeans?
ME: Um - I guess because I like jeans, but -
CHILD: Yeah but sometimes they should be taken off and washed though.
ME: Er, that's right. And that's why I do that. I have more than one pair of jeans.
CHILD: I have some jeans but my favorite pair are pink and they have a zipper AND a button.

CHILD, entering the room: AHHH, LOOK! LOOK WHAT THE NEW ADULT IS DOING! SHE'S DRAWING ON HER PHOOOONNNNNE!
ME: Hello.
CHILD: Why are you drawing on your phone?
ME: I like to draw.
CHILD, losing interest: Anyway here's my butt!
OTHER CHILD: And mine!
FIRST CHILD: HAHAHHA! EVERYBODY POINT TO YOUR BUTTS!

So there's a Finnish word for "boo-boo" (which is pipi and that's a whole other story in terms of English-speaker associations lol) but I didn't know it. I'm now learning bits of babytalk at this daycare which I can use in Finnish, even though when I speak English I can't really make myself use that kind of language because I was only exposed to parental contempt for it as a small child and never used it myself at that age.

But when I first got here I didn't know and a few days in the two-year-old who constantly demands adult attention was like:

CHILD (in a trembly little voice): I'M BLEEDING
Me: Oh yeah, I see, do you have a small wound on your lip?

Well, she picked that up from me - the somewhat situationally inappropriate "wound", I mean (babytalk aside, it's not really a word that makes you think of a tiny scratch with a single drop of blood welling up, hence my attempt to modify it with 'small'). And ever since then she's been talking about the wounds she has (and once she told me that I had a wound on my face - it was a healing zit). These have included another split lip from the playground, a bruise, a scrape, a hangnail and a papercut. It always goes

CHILD: Look! Look, I have a wound!!

It's very cute because she's really really tiny and can't completely form the words correctly yet but she says it super super solemnly, all 0.0

I got so much appreciation for overacted death-by-poisonings from some preschoolers today that they got overexcited and started throwing the plastic insects at me instead of "biting" me with them and I had to ultimately say,

"Girls - GIRLS! NO! - You know you aren't allowed to throw - DON'T THROW - STOP IT. No throwing toys and - STOP no pulling my clothes! Tugging on people's clothes isn't allowed!"

I didn't even get to use more than a tiny fraction of the potential overacted death impressions available to me, and apparently this activity is about as safe and sane for 4-year-old ingestion as a whole bag of Halloween candy all at once, so I suppose I won't be able to go back to it. Their tiny bodies just can't handle that amount of excitement I guess.

Last time on bureaucracy fail theatre, I had a Bosslady who wanted to take me as an intern in the "work practice" program (employer accepts unqualified workers for on-the-job training & doesn't have to pay them, the government gives the workers unemployment). I went to the unemplyment office with all the necessary paperwork, having been cautioned by Bosslady that depending on who I talked to, they might be difficult.

That was more than a month ago. Obviously at the height of Finland's biggest memorable unemployment crisis, it's important that people who have already found work practice positions should have to wait as long as people who need actual help.

The purpose of work practice is either

1. As explained by the "No U Cant Has Job" camp: to find out whether you want a particular job, sort of like a test drive, so you can't have work practice for your former employers: you have already driven that car!


or


2. According to the website, the other camp, and logic: to find out whether a particular career or field is right for you, so that whether you can work somewhere depends on the commonsense difference between the case where a factory lays off its janitor and then wants to hire her back as a "work practice" gig, and the case where an adult who has worked as a substitute, oh, like, in some DAYCARE, is considering a permanent career change and wants more than a couple of weeks' experience on which to base the decision.

I had an argument prepared, but the caseworker didn't listen. In fact, she cut me off. Finnish people: they don't beat around the bush. So after a month of anxiety and depression I find my anxiety and depression... completely justified because I really can't go back to my dream job. Bosslady can't afford to hire another employee.

The caseworker was brisk and helpful about all kinds of other stuff, like the 20 pages I have to fill out to elaborate on the fact that I do freelance work but it does not exceed the minumum income for which you get taxed; the 20 pages to elaborate on how I am no longer in school because I QUIT; what kind of work I was thinking about (eg, the job that I have explained was the entire reason I went there); and whether I wanted to try work practice (idk, it's only the entire reason I came). And since I am interested in work practice - great! All I have to do is find a daycare to do the work practice at, that's fine (so it's fine for me to practice the exact job description, as long as I'm working for a different boss. AKA, you can work anywhere where they don't want you! That was the only English daycare in town.)

Aside from soliciting positions in Swedish daycares, she thinks my first item of business should be to learn Finnish (except this time hopefully it will stick! Maybe it will be for more than 1 hour a week and the teacher won't hate all students, thus inspiring in me a Pavlovian anxiety-response to the act of studying Finnish - you think? It could happen). The unemployment bureau offers their own, in-house Finnish courses! And even though they have a long waiting list they have no idea when the next one will be... but you can't take one from an alternate source that might have an actual schedule without your hypothetical unemployment benefits being cut off (mine don't start for 7 months anyway).

ETA: Besides not having the two twenty-page questionnaires available in English even though she is in the International Office (...), they don't even have them in Swedish, which is actually illegal in Finland. Two official languages? Hi, Finland! I'm the Swedish language! You contain 200,000 native speakers of me! You might recognise me because I've been in these parts SINCE BEFORE OLD GERMANIC TURNED INTO OLD NORSE.