Lapland is the combined North of Finland, Sweden and Norway. We were in the Finnish part obviously although we did cross the Swedish border on the way back home. We were headed to a town named Levi which is most famous for it's world cup slope. We were heading to Lapland with Julia's mum Pirkko and her partner Jukka. Levi is about a 12 hour drive from Helsinki so on Saturday is was an early start. By 6am we were on our way. It was important that we arrived before dark as the risk of hitting a Moose or an Elk is greater at night and Jukka had just bought a brand new Mercedes which he wanted to keep Moose free. The drive was relatively dull. Long straight roads and although Finland's scenery is fantastic it is also very flat which means in a car you spend 12 hours looking at the bottom of pine tree forests which are actually all covered in snow. Occasionally you would start to go up a little, catch a glimpse of a large mountain in the distance and then you would descend once again and be looking at the snow on the side of the road. We did stop at Santa's village though which is located right on the arctic circle. Surprise, surprise he wasn't there. Everything was closed up and Santa was probably in the north pole where he belongs. The Finns will actually try to convince you that Santa is from Finland. It is a Finn that delivers presents to every child in the world in one night and eats all your cookies and drinks all your milk. I think this is a very large claim to make. It is just as serious claim as ''America staged the moon landing'' or that ''Chapel Corby smuggled marijuana into Bali''. They are all things that require a large amount of evidence before  discussed publicly. Can you imagine if tomorrow, Australia turned around and said ''O yea, didn't you know? The tooth fairy lives in Darwin, shes been a resident for years. She's a registered voter and Part of the Neighbourhood watch program''.  It would be an outrage, it is not something you can just claim to have.  

When we arrived it was just getting dark. We drove through the main area of Levi which reminded me of a small, clean Vegas. Not because most people were carrying skis and snowboards but because Many of them were clearly drunk which is not totally abnormal in Finland. It was all lit up with  the many bars and restaurants. They were quite small buildings in width but all were at least 2 stories high. Although they were clearly new buildings they had still been built in the traditional log cabin shapes which made the place look quite nice. We had a bit of trouble locating our cabin which was around 10 minutes out of the center. Eventually we found it though. It was a 3 bedroom, 2 story cottage equipped with a fire place, laundry, drying closet and a Sauna. It was all wooden and backed onto a pine forest. I have not smoked a cigarette in over a year now but occasionally I get a brief urge for a smoke. Normally when I see someone  relaxing in the sun smoking or drinking a coffee and reading the paper, cigarette in hand  I think I would also like to do that. The balcony in this cottage gave me the same urge. It made me want to sit out on the deck on a wooden chair watching the snow and the tree's, just... relaxing. Fortunately I am one of Finland's poorest residents and cant afford to smoke and it was a brisk -6 degrees which made it just about impossible to even light a smoke, let or lone smoke one.    

It was a week of early starts and late nights. Finnish snowboarding goes like this: Wake up early and eat a huge breakfast which will take you roughly an hour to get through. Catch the ski bus to the slopes and ski or snowboard. After a couple of hours take a break and eat 1 Munkki (Finnish doughnut) and one Coffee or Hot chocolate (Kahvi tai kaakao). Continue  snowboarding for a few hours and then go back for more Munkki, Kaakao tai Kahvi. In total I was eating roughly 3 deep fried doughnuts per day, a bit more in coffee and on top of that maybe a serving or French fries with a gallon of Heinz tomato sauce... Heinz sauce is Aussie isn't it? It was great. Once you get home it is straight into the Sauna for an hour or so with some optional naked snow rolling if the mood is right, dinner and bed. Only to repeat it all the next morning.

After the second day Julia and I were super sore and decided to take a day off the slopes to check out Levi. Pirkko and Jukka had been cross country skiing each day too so Pirkko decided to join us on the relax day. We headed to a little cafe which was a 4Kilometer walk from the center. We met some Reindeer who were tied to trees. Most of them didn't like me much but I found one that enjoyed my company and like the taste of my coat so we exchanged details and will catch up again soon. We (not the Reindeer) ate more Munkkis and drank more coffee in a cafe that was a derelict old cabin. It was close to collapsing and had all sorts of strange things on the wall. Stuffed wolverines and birds, Moose heads, old clothes and signs. Not in an offensive way though, it was a great little cafe and had a real homey feel to it. I wanted to do some filming from the top of the mountain so we caught a cab to the south side of the slopes where there was a Gondola ride to the top. The views are stunning from the top and from a height the flatness of the land works as a benefit. Julia and I then headed to the half pipe and jump section to do some more filming and Pirkko headed back to the cottage.

The next 3 days were flat out snowboarding. We spent the last day riding through the the forests. Riding in the forests is great fun as the trees grow very close together so it is quite difficult to navigate your way through. The other benefit is that no one else rides there so the snow is all fresh powder and absolutely dreamy to ride on. Hardly anyone was riding on the last day so we had the place almost entirely to ourselves.

That night we all went out to dinner together. We went to a place that for the purposes of this blog I will call the 'Tango Bistro''.... Because that is what it is called. In a restaurant where you are made to wait half an hour for a table with 4 seats even though you are surrounded by tables with 6 seats, a restaurant with dim lights and expensive paintings on the wall, and a restaurant that advertises itself as fine dining on it's website you would think the would have more than one vegetarian dish on the menu. Further more you would think that if a vegetarian who did not want to eat pizza requested a pasta dish without meat they would be able to oblige. If you were to ask if they could simply cook a bowl of pasta and put some vegetables in it you don't expect the answer ''the sauce would take to long for the chef to make''. It was even to difficult for the chef to make a bowl of pasta with vegetables in it without a sauce. A steak dish with vegetables, ''can I have this without the steak?'', ''No, I'm sorry. The chef was very strict about it.'' I believe that when you go to a restaurant you should have some choice in what you order. If the waiter pointed at a dish and said ''you can only have this one, NOTHING else'' you would tell him to insert the food item rectally and you would leave. This is what I did. I was nice to the waiter, it isn't his fault the chef is a lazy prick who is only good for re-heating pre made food stuffs in the microwave. Julia and I headed to the restaurant next door which for the purposes of this blog I will call the ''Hockey bar... Because I cant remember it's name. Easy to find though, next to the Tango bar and it has a Fosters sign out the front of it. By far the BEST nachos I have ever eaten, great tortillas, nice, comfortable venue and very friendly, helpful staff. 

The next morning was the pack, clean and leave mission that is the most dreaded part of any holiday. This is made 10 fold in Finland. Some things in this country make me wonder. I quite often find myself asking, ''what exactly does this person get paid to do?'' Take shopping for example. In Australia, England, Canada and yes, even America (maybe not  good role models but I will use them anyway) if you were to buy some vegetables you would take your 5 tomatoes, put them in a bag or basket, take them to the counter where the checkout chick would weigh them and put them in another bag. Not in Finland, o no. Check out chicks in Finland are far to busy doing important things like making fun of the way I speak Finnish. In Finland you would take your 5 tomatoes, put them in a bag, walk over to a set of electronic scales, press the correlating numbered button which would print out a price and weight of your goods. Then you would take them along with your nail clippers, anti dandruff shampoo and dolly magazine to the counter where they would be promptly scanned and hurled down to the other end of the counter. It is up to you after you have paid to pack your stuff into your bags and assess the damage that has been done to your eggs when they were sent to the end of the counter at warp speed. Meanwhile the checkout chick sits watching you pack all the things into bags with not a thing in the world to do. So if you think about it, what does she do? She scans the bar coded items and takes your money. Now I am not a well trained check out person but I would of thought that if the fat cats who own ''Alepa'' super markets are already making me weigh my food and put it in bags they may as well get me to scan the items too. I could then pay with my card and the payed staff are now completely redundant which will save quite a bit of money for the company.  In Australia, England, Canada and yes, even America if you were to pay a large sum of money to spend a week in holiday accommodation, I believe you would expect some things to be taken care of for you. I would always wash the dishes before I left and I would probably even take the sheets off the bed. I would pick up food scraps in the kitchen and put them in the bin and then I would leave. Not in Finland, o no. All the cleaners are far to busy being paid to do nothing in a supermarket. In Finland, YOU are the cleaner. It is up to you to sweep, vacuume and mop. You must clean the toilets, basins, mirrors and showers. It is upon you to take the rugs outside and beat the dust out of them. For the last 3 hours of your holiday you are forced into work that back home you would be getting paid to do. If you didn't do it the next family would arrive, complain and you would be charged extra! All that being said, It was a great week other than incompetent chefs and forced labor. One of the best weeks of my life and I will certainly be returning  to Lapland in the future.

I will leave you with some jokes I created during our 12 hour car trip and of course photos of the adventure. On the video page you will find a new link to a Lapland video. Enjoy!

1. Whats the difference between an ant and a bull ant? One is hornier than the other.
2. Whats the difference between a guinea pig and a new guinea pig? One is younger than the other.
3. What is the difference between an Elk and a Moose? Only one is a vegetarian option.
4. What is the difference between a Beaver and a Platypus? A platypus will always come with a bill at the end.
5. Whats the worst part of being a skier? Telling your parents your gay.
                      Ok, I stole the last one. The jokes seemed funnier after 8 hours of travel.

To see all the photos visit my face book page. CLICK HERE!

Where to begin? I have to start doing these more often because I am struggling to remember what has been happening. On Tuesday I had V.P.K training again. This week we did basic breathing apparatus training. Maintenance, general use, storing, wearing and some basic smoke diving practices. It was great for me. I was supposed to do the B.A course with C.F.S this year but for obvious reasons I wasn't able to. Although this wasn't as in depth or hardcore it was still good to go over the basics.

Wednesday I played Mario on Nintendo. Then I played Gran  turismo  on Play Station. Julia and I also visited her friend Anna who was a very nice person with some very nice dogs. Both dogs were rescued as strays in Russia and brought to Finland. One of them wouldn't come out of hiding the whole time I was in the house. The other was crazy and was up and down the whole time. He also had one brown eye and one blue/white eye which reminded me of Marilyn Manson. We took the dogs for a walk and then headed home.

 I have been applying for a lot of work. I went into a work agency on Thursday to try and get some help. The job agency is designed for Europeans (other than Finns). Seeing as I have a British passport I am as good as European on paper so theoretically they could help. I took my number and waited over an hour in a big empty room. I met a funny fella from England and had a bit of a chat with him. He was a bit of a thug, hip hop gangstar who had been up to ''some dodgey deals, ya know wha' I mean ya' '' but had come back to Finland to be with his family after 8 years in London. My number was finally called and I headed into room 16 and was confronted by a woman in maybe her 30's. She stared at me blankly for some time as if to say ''well! What is it that was so important you had to interrupt me from my Woman's day magazine?'' I explained that I had just moved over from Australia and was holding a British passport and was after some help looking for work. She asked me if I had a social security number. I don't because in order to get a social security number you need a job. Apparently without the number she couldn't help me at all and I should go and take a long walk off of a short pier. She didn't say that but I could tell that she was thinking it. So basically the lady in charge of helping foreigners find work couldn't help them unless they had a Social Security Number. The only foreigners with social security numbers had jobs. So basically her job was to sit in a tiny dog box of a room all day making Aussies feel crappy about themselves and read Woman's day. I asked how she got a job like that but she couldn't tell me until I had the job.... I don't know.

Today Julia and I did a few hours of filing for a video we are making together. It was a bit of fun and we gave the public a few laughs as they wandered past us in the streets. I had a meeting with a lady named Kaarina at 3 O'clock. Kaarina works for Suomen luonnonsuojeluliitto which I suppose is Finland's conservation society. I have been speaking to her via e-mail for a few months about possible work with the Saimannorpaa. It was great to meet with her and talk things through. I have been given a small project to do with creating international awareness about the seal and although the cant guarantee me paid work it feels great to be helping out and hopefully it will lead to more later down the track.

Tomorrow I leave for Lapland for a week of snowboarding. I'm pretty excited to see the area. I am told it is visually stunning with epically long ski runs. I wont be bringing the computer with me so don't expect an update of any sort but when I get back I will fill in the gaps.

I have a new video on the video blogs page. I have already been in Finland for a month now. The time has flown past. Enjoy!

I have gotten some very exciting news today. I received an e-mail from a lady named Paapi who had found my blog via face book. Last week she was skiing in Lapland and bumped into a bloke named Juha. Juha makes documentaries and is currently working on one focused on twin Saimaannorppa pups which is incredibly rare in any seal species. Paapi mentioned me and my wishes to see and work with the seal and Juha, apparently was very excited to help me seeing as I had traveled so far to see them. Paapi forwarded my details to him and vice versa. I have sent him an e-mail today and am very excited to hear back from him. Thank you so much to Paapi for thinking of me when it was needed. It really was a really nice thing to do.

Today Julia and I walked. A lot. We walked a long the sea side and even on the sea seeing as it is ice and all. Why not? We went to a cafe and ate cake and bumped into Julia's sister and her family who all seem like really nice people. We walked them to the city and then went our own way. We checked out the new super market which is selling Kangaroo, ''made in Belguim'' and bear meat which is €200 a kilo! We had planned to go to the Botanic gardens but when it began to snow we made up all sort of excuses not to go like, it's snowing.

Julia just made a cake which tasted great even though it looks like death and now I think we are going to watch clockwork orange.

I have been so busy... doing nothing. I had another training night at V.P.K on Tuesday night. We did a night of water rescue practices. As you can imaging, water rescue in Finland is slightly different to water rescue in Australia. People in Finland face risks such as falling through ice, floating out to sea on a loose block of ice or falling over in the street, unconscious in a puddle. In Australia we (and when I say we I really mean they) have surf rescue. Big waves with big rips and of course more agreeable water temperatures. I had a new fella translating the theory stuff for me and he was very good at it. It made things a lot easier for me to get a grip on. Once the practical started it all began to go downhill. We were first given basic instructions on how to use a 'rescue suit'. The suit is made of rubber and is totally enclosed and air tight. Once you are in the suit it can be inflated and deflated to allow you to 'bob' across the surface of the water to your victim. The suite cannot be used to dive in because it really is full of air. It is like being a big balloon. The plan was to take the suit out to an empty ice area and practice general rescue techniques. I didn't mention this in my first V.P.K entry but I feel the need to now because I find it slightly humorous. When Perttu (the brigade captain) was first showing me around the station, we reached the shed that the trucks are kept in. We were talking about them in general. How much water it carries, how quickly it uses the water, the equipment on board, amount of personal in the truck. The usual stuff. Before we moved on I felt obliged to point out that the front tyre was as flat as a tack. He looked slightly embarrassed but these things happen and I didn't think anything of it. I came from C.F.S where you had to unplug the fridge before taking the truck out in an emergency because the cord ran right in front of the truck. Anyway, last Tuesday the tyre was pumped up and we all jumped in a truck. V.P.K  has 3 appliances. The number one is the one I jumped in. It carries 2000 litres of water and can pump it all out in around 2 minutes. The second appliance I believe, is the same but it is used as a backup vehicle. Both trucks have been lowered considerably because they are kept underground and the ramp they have to drive up is very narrow and has a very low roof. The third unit is used for animal rescue and people transportation and is really just a van but with a really cool paint job. So, like I said, I had jumped in the first appliance. This is the number one truck to be called out to an incident. While we were sitting I was given a bit of a run around of what is where and saw some nifty little gadgets that I have never seen before. We let the other truck go first, then the van left. We sat, and sat some more. Eventually I noticed a fellow wheeling a battery charger over to the truck and sure enough hooked us up. Seemed to me that the starter motor was not so good and then he finally blew a fuse in the charger. We weren't going anywhere. We did our drills inside and all was well. It struck me as strange though that both dealings I have had with the number 1 vehicle at the station have both shown that it is not really fit for attending an emergency. I suppose that is why you have a back up vehicle.

On Thursday Julia and I visited the Zoological museum to check out all the dead animals of Finland. I saw my first Saimaannorppa. He was in a glass box though but still great to see. I also saw my first Elk/Moose. I haven't decide which one Finland has yet. They are incredibly huge. I had no idea how big they really are. We checked out the bones room which was full of well... bones. I saw some crazy looking birds too and a big, stuffed elephant.

Today I took a bus tour around Helsinki. I had seen most of the sights before but it was good to be driven around and get the history of a lot of it. My favourite stop was the Temppeliaukio Kirkko (Rock Church) which is built inside a big block of granite. It is the only church of it's kind in Europe in the sense that the walls were blasted from the inside. The most incredible thing about this church though is the roof. It is made of 20kilometers (13miles) of copper wire all spiralling from the middle of the roof to the outside walls. When we arrived there was a symphony playing inside. The church is often used for concerts because of the acoustics. In the ''corner'' was a big golden organ and on the other ''side'' was a big candle stand where you could light a candle for a mere 1€. From the outside all you can really see is an upside down saucer which is the roof surrounded by a big pile of rocks. If I was walking down the street, I probably would have walked straight past it. The other thing we stopped to see which was just as cool as the church was the Sibelius monument. It was built as a dedication to a Finnish composer named Jean Sibelius. It is a truly bizarre cluster of stainless steel pipes all set at different heights to one another. In total it has 600 pipes and to me it looks like a floating organ. Although it looks more like an organ the artist, Eila Hiltunen said that it was actually inspired by the forests of Finland. Whatever it was, it created one of the coolest things I have ever seen. I am not an arty farty person and quite frankly all this new age art that seems to require absolutely zero talent makes me feel a bit queezy. It is almost as if people are afraid to hurt the artists feelings. I have seen paitings for instance that look as though they have been painted with a coat hanger yet sell for thousands. Instead of people saying ''look mate, this is shit... Sorry'' they say 'oooo, you must be some kind of 'special' genius''. It irritates me. People making big money and receiving praise by being lousy at something irritates me. Anyway, the monument was quite agreeable. For 2 hours crammed inside a bus with a bunch of American tourists I quite enjoyed it. Afterwards I went to a cafe, drank coffee and ate cake. The Finns can sure make cake! In the afternoon I went to the Kontula skate hall with Knuutti and spent a couple of hours trying to land a kickflip. Knuutti on the other hand was tearing the place up with huge ollies and steezy heelflips. We went to a gig later that night. A friend of a friend of a dogs brothers girlfriend was the drummer or something like that. The pub was cool. It reminded me of the Crown and Anchor back home where I used to drink away my time. The band was not bad, not good but not bad. Julia and I were watching a girl sitting at the other end of table struck by how similar to a pug dog she looked. She was talking to the lead singer of the band who was crouched down beside her. Some drunk fella walked on past and managed to spill half a pint of beer all over the head of the singer and another quarter of the pint in the lap of pug girl. After a bit of talk between the 3 and a very drunk apology it was over. About half an hour later the same drunk fellow walked past the girl who was now talking with her friend with a fresh pint of beer. He seemed to get stuck between two groups of people and like a pinball bounced between them about 6 times before pouring another half a pint on the same girl. Right down the side of the dress this time. I almost wet my pants I thought it was so funny. The whole thing was panning out like a Monty Python sketch. The friend and the girl hadn't even had a chance to yell at the guy before he pulled a €10 and put it in front of the girls face. She looked a bit stunned and said something that I imagine was along the lines of  ''is that going to dry my dress?!?'' He put the note back in his pocket and went and bought another beer. When he returned the girls were knee deep in napkins working to contain the flash flood that was all over the table and chairs. The girl suggested that instead of giving her €10 perhaps he could buy them both a drink. He didn't like this. Strange that he was so willing to give them a €10 note but he actually argued about buying €7 worth of beer. He was persuaded in the end. Now I know what your thinking. The same thing as I was thinking. Wouldn't it be funny if he spilled the 'make up beer' on her too. Well... The fella comes stumbling over to the table and I kid you not the glass tilted just enough that the girl was splashed. Not soaked like before but she clearly felt some kind of wetness land on her because quick as lighting, fast as a tiger and with the skills of a ninja she pushed the guy away from her. He let go of the glass which flew across the floor smashing everywhere and of course spilling beer all over the shop. I could hardly breath, I was searching frantically for the hidden cameras but they didn't exist. The guy really was that stupid. Sure enough he was escorted out and the ladies were gifted a free beer and a shot each not to mention a square kilometer of Tasmania in the form of napkins.

If this blog entry was any longer the keyboard would likely burst into flames so I am going to stop now.

The weekend before I left for Finland we had some magazine fella's come out to take some photos of us skating. When they heard that I was traveling to Europe for some races and just some general skating we started talking. I have just become the first 'featured rider' in the magazine with more to come. 'Free style revolution' has offered to do regular updates on my skating adventures in Europe and keep tabs on the general happenings.

You can find the website at www.freestylerevolution.net.au
You will find my articles by clicking on the 'Blog' and the 'FSR Featured riders' pages on the top of the web page.

Enjoy!

It has been a week of ups and down. Unfortunately it was outweighed by the downs. On Thursday I fell ill with some nasty virus. I spent the day in the house feeling very average and then the night tossing, turning and vomiting. I couldn't get a wink of sleep because I was stressed. I had somehow got it into my head that I had received what was meant to be an order of skateboards. Instead I got a large quantity of cardboard. I needed to assemble the cardboard into things like furniture and sell it. I spent the night trying to work out how I would market and sell cardboard furniture. It wasn't until morning when I asked Julia what to do with all this cardboard that I realised it was a ridiculous notion and must have been the virus talking.

I spent most of Friday and Friday night sleeping. On Saturday I felt a bit better and planned to go out and film a bit of Helsinki. While I was getting ready I began to feel ill again and spent the rest of the day inside kicking Julia's ass at Monopoly. The game lasted something like 4 hours and by the end of it I felt a lot better.

On Sunday Julia, Elina, Liisa, Essi and I visited Noux National Park. We had to catch the train to Espo and jump on the bus from there to the park. We waited at the bus stop with some strange tourist bloke who was constantly laughing at nothing. Well nothing I knew of anyway. We would all be standing around talking and then hear this strange fellow cracking up next to us. We were on the bus for maybe 20 minutes when it pulled over. The driver yelled something out to us, Julia stood up and left the bus so we followed. She later told us she didn't hear what the driver had said and just panicked and left. Luckily we were in the right spot. We had to walk for 25 odd minutes down the road to actually reach the park. The whole time we were followed by the manic, laughing tourist who was finding walking down a road in the middle of nowhere most amusing. We managed to ditch the joker and spent the day walking through the park. The park is really just a large pine forest. It was maybe a meter and a half under snow so it looked like something out of a fairy tale book to me. We didn't see any wildlife although we heard a few birds chirping in the background letting us know that Spring is on it's way. Elina, Liisa and Essi were apparently trying to set some kind of land speed record on foot through the park and were always miles ahead scouting out the area for us. Julia and I walked fairly slowly. I tried to walk ahead of Julia because every time we go walking anywhere she insists on wearing the worlds noisiest pants. Every time she takes a step the pants rub together at the ankles and you end up with a sound similar to a zip going up and down for 4 hours.  Not exactly the serene sounds you would expect in a National Park.

Every now and then we would reach a sheltered area with a fire going. The Finns were prepared with a huge bag of the nastiest looking marshmallows I have ever seen. Fluro colours covered in sugar and all in very strange shapes. They were so sweet normally they really had to be set on fire in order to enjoy them. We ate a lot of marshmallows. When we arrived at the fire a family was already barbecuing sausages. They had about 5 kids who were all under the age of 10. There eyeballs almost fell out of there skulls when they saw the bag of marshmallows. Lucky for them we couldn't eat them all, because we had already eaten so many marshmallows.... No, I kid. We gave the bag of spongy, sugar coated gluten to the kids and left.

When we left  we only had half an hour to get back to the bus stop and if we missed  this one we would be waiting another hour and a half for the next. The speed walkers decided to run the whole way but I still wasn't feeling 100% and Julia was so full of marshmallows and hot chocolate that neither of us could run. I stuck out my thumb as a Mercedes drove past and managed to get us both a ride. When we reached the bus stop we found a lost German girl with one very wet foot (from falling through some ice) who was trying to flag down the same car for a ride that we were just getting out of. Turned out she was heading the same way we were so she stuck with us on the rest of the way to the train station.

Elina, Liisa and Essi all ended up at our place and we made vege. burgers and chips for dinner. When they all left Julia was saying she felt a bit sick from eating so much. Being Sunday it was Sauna night so we thought that might help a bit. It didn't. She spent the whole Sauna time sleeping on a bench on the outside of the Sauna while I sat and stewed in my own juices like a piece of marinating lamb. After an hour or so we headed back up stairs and went to bed. Julia spent the night tossing, turning, vomiting and making strange noises in her sleep. She may have also been hallucinating about cardboard furniture and skateboards.... Or not. 

(This trip I decided to see how the video camera goes taking photos. Suffice to say, I will use the still camera for photos next time....)  

Tuesday night I was back at V.P.K for more training. We spent the night doing first aid stuff. C.P.R, bandaging, rolling people onto there sides. All the fun stuff. Any situation where you get to make out with a plastic doll on the floor in front or your peers is OK by me. The first part of the lecture was all theory and of course in Finnish. I quite enjoy attending classes spoken in Finnish because it forces me to listen out for the few words I know and put the pieces together. I try to write down as much as I can while I am there to. That way I can look over it all at home and try to grasp a bit more. Well that's the plan anyway.

I spent today at the Moola studio. They are renovating and wanting to put down a wooden floor so first the old flooring has to be ripped up. It was just Juka and I today with the two kids and the dog (for the people at home, Fins pronounce a J as  Y so phonetically his name is said You-ka) . Juka is the husband of Reetta who owns Moola. It felt good to actually do something. I think I am due back on Tuesday to continue the floors.

We went out for lunch and ate Nepalese and now I am at home wondering what to do. I had planned to start learning to count in Finnish and learn the names for the days of the week so I might start that now. 

So, my third weekend has just passed. The temperature has risen dramatically since the last post. This weekend we reached a maximum of +2 degrees! It may not seem like much but when you have a city covered in snow and ice an the the temperature goes to +.... Everything melts. What was a winter wonderland is now a big, wet, slushy puddle. Never mind though because we went back down to -5 again today and it has been snowing all day so the winter wonderland is on it's way back.

On Friday night Julia and I went to see a movie. Dr. Parnasis or something odd. The moral of the nights story was, never to let Julia pick the movie again. It was an exhausting movie and I actually left the theatre out of breath! The highlight of the night was after the movie though. Finland got smashed in the ice hockey by the Yanky doodles..... No, that's not funny. That was terrible, bad luck Finland. You'll get em' next time. The funny thing was at the public ice rink near the train station. The ice rink is outside so you can see everyone skating from the footpath. I quite like watching people, who aren't me fall over so we stopped for a while to watch. A group of Asian girls caught my attention as they stumbled around the rink, spending more time on there asses than there skates. After about 10 minutes of this one girl in particular falling over a small child, maybe 5 years old skated over to her. For those who have never ice skated, most rinks have these devices which are basically walking frames on skates. Beginners can use them to hold onto and push around the place. So, the small girl skated over to our tumbling friend, stopped, put the frame in front of her, turned it so she could grab the handles , smiled and skated away. The poor Asian girl who was maybe 25 years old looked horrified as all of her friends stood around, pissing themselves with laughter. If you are 25 and a 5 year old tells that you can't skate, it's time to go home.

Saturday was an early start. We were due to go away to some place I don't know for a weekend with all the people who work at Moola. Moola is the shop I will be starting work in this month. The shop will be brand new but they have been a Yoga studio for years now so they have quite a few staff already. Anywho, it was meant to be a meet and greet slash official meeting thing. We were due to arrive on the Saturday, stay the night in the hotel and then leave on the Sunday. So we got up at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning. I am not a morning person. Nothing good has EVER happened in the morning. All the good stuff happens from 11 O'clock onwards. It was a frantic start to the day. Julia trying to get everything done and me trying to sneak back to bed every chance I got. We finally got out of the house and when Julia turned on her phone she had a message from the boss. ''Sorry, the family and I are all really sick so the weekend is off''. GREAT! Did I mention it was early morning? Did I mention that I don't like mornings? ESPECIALLY when they are at a temperature of +2!! We went to a German cafe. I had a cappuccino and a croissant. Very German of me. Julia hadn't had a day off in ages so we decided we would do nothing in particular that day. Apparently we didn't because I cannot remember for the life of me what we did. We did go to the Helsinki tourist information office. I thought maybe they could tell me the best way to see the Finish seal's, Saimaannorppa. We went in, I asked the guy behind the counter if he spoke English, he did. I asked ''what would be the best way to see Saimaannorppa?'', a pretty straight forward question I thought. You know when you whistle and hum at the same time so it makes a buzzing noise? If you do it within ear shot of a dog it will look at you, prick it's ears and tilt it's head to one side. You can see exactly what it is thinking... ''What the hell is wrong with you? Are you on day release?''. That, is exactly what this fella behind the counter did to me, he tilted his fat head, pricked his ears and said ''see what?'', ''Saimaannorppa'', ''Saimaan.... huh?'', ''the seal, Finland's seal'', ''seal?'' ''YES! Saimaannorppa!''. I know that it wasn't me. I have said Saimaannorppa to plenty of Finns in the past and they all knew what I was saying. Julia said something in Finish to him. She got the same reaction. He looked at me again and said ''what is it you want to see?'' I was pretty angry by now and I imagine my face would have been as red as his would be when I leapt over the counter and rung his neck. ''Saimaannorppa!'' I said one last time and then clapping my hands together I made the classic seal noise you hear when you think of a seal with a ball on it's nose a a zoo. ''You mean a seal'' he said ''I said a seal, I want to see Finland's freshwater seal, Saimaannorppa!'' ''In Helsinki?!?'' he said. I could have screamed, the guy was clearly a moron. Julia ended up getting a phone number from him for another tourist information place closer to where the seals live. If you were in South Australia and asked me what the best way to see Tasmania, the great barrier reef or Ayers rock was. I wouldn't say ''what? In Adelaide!'' I would give you a company name that runs tours, or a phone number or a map or something. We left the 'information' place and Julia had to put up with an hour of my rantings about what an incompetent prat he was and how I had a good mind to write a letter to the company (which I couldn't anyway because I cant write in Finnish). 

We went to the city hall and looked at some photo's taken of Finland by diplomats who are working in the country. A great idea I thought, a shame most of the photos were taken of brick buildings on a mobile phone. I got a new map of Helsinki because I had lost my old one and we looked at a crazy Russian thing. It was made of giant plastic fingers in the 70's because Russia had to many giant plastic fingers laying around the place or something. They were linked together like chain. It only stood about 5 meters tall but it had a mirror above and below it so when you looked up or down, the finger chain seemed to go on forever. It wasn't pretty that's for sure but I quite liked it anyway.

That night we went to a pub with a couple of friends. Played some pool, told some stories. Nothing special really happened. It was a good night. Everything went to plan. We ate at a kebab place and I had maybe the best felaffel (how do you spell it?) ever made. We met up with some other friends at a pub next door and talked utter nonsense for the night. I learned some new Finnish words that I cant remember anymore and we headed home when the bar staff started flashing the lights in a bid for us to leave.

Sunday we went to visit Julia's cousin Maria and her crazy rottweilers. We took them for a walk through a pine forest. I have never been in a real pine forest before, especially on that is a meter deep in snow. It was quite a nice walk with a half assed snowball fight at the end. I found that it is much more efficient to push someone in the snow rather than throw a ball of it. If you throw a snowball you hit an area maybe 10cm's big but if you push them in a pile of snow they get covered from head to toe in the stuff.  Julia and Maria made soup and Apple Crumble which we ate for lunch and then we headed back home. (I just remembered the left overs in the fridge, YEA!) Sauna night on Sunday's at 8 and then bed. Another fun filled Finland day.