My first Sauna

My first Sauna! Erik you were right, it's pronounced Sauna (just like you say) . . . but I only give you half points because it's really pronounced saunaoski (or soemthing like that, forgive me for not having perfected it yet! haha.

Thankfully there was no co-ed nudity required. I was the only one when I went to enjoy 93 degree celsious relaxation method. I could only stay 20 min. because it was so hot. Being the silly person that I am, I took my keys and my glasses with me, which burned my hands when I tried to leave because they were so hot, Hot, HOT! haha.

Great time all in all, looking forward to many more saunas!

Arktikum

This was my first "trip" I really went on. I went to the Arktikum (a giant museum of all things finish/rovenemi - ish) with Karen Schwartz (my Canadian supervisor) last weekend. It was kinda cool, the architecture of the building was really quite amazing. We watched a show on the Aurora Borealis (the Northern Lights) and saw some really cool looking Sami clothing and stuff from back in the day. I also caused an avalanche (although it was purely virtual) and got to touch real ice. I wanted a picture with a large stuffed moose I have decided to call Eddy, but unfortunatly, there were no pictures allowed inside the museum . . . . so that's it for today.

pictures for the road

Lately I have been accused of not corresponding ;) so I'm putting the first of my pictures up today. I will aim to put up one or so everyday this weekend to keep you entertained and to keep myself from being stoned by the accusers ;)

This pic was taken in Helsinki with two of my dear friends (random people that didn't move when I was taking the picture), it's at the main town square near the train station, where I spent most of my two days in Helsinki!

McDonalds

I did it, I sucumbed to going to McDonalds. Let's face it, it's the only thing that I can realistically afford here! haha. Before you ask - yes - all of these pictures were taken at the McDonalds. . . it seems that fur pelts are the premium wall decor here, to tell the truth, it bothers me in the grocery store. Now I can say that I have been to the world's northest McDonalds! ;) (I think they might have made that word up, northest).

The world is full of stupid things . . .

Like for instance, somehow my homepage has changed from google.ca to google.fi. Is this google's attempt to teach me finish? Although the page looks familiar, the buttons feature words like google-haku . . . no I don't want to write a haku! I just want to search for some documents and interesting things to distract my brain. Then there is also Kokeilen Onneani, I'm guessing that means "I'm feeling lucky", but how should I figure this out, walk up to some random stranger and say it? On second thought, maybe I will just assume that my assumption is correct and not test that theory.

AND another thing . . . SKYMALL . . . I have wanted to do this entry for a while but needed to wait until I had enough time and a secure connection. In honour of my favorite writer, Paul Jury, I would like to take a look at what people where thinking when they came up with these inventions featured only when people are half asleep and crazy from being on a plane for 12 hours to buy them!

For example the voice activated R2D2 who on earth needs a robot that can play tag with them?! Someone with $120 US dollars too many in their bank account! Although, I guess if you are an only child, it might be better than trying to play tag with yourself. What kind of child has that kind of money?

I guess the child that has that kindof money, would also have the touchscreen atm toy not only does this toy teach children money management it also allows deposits of real coins!

For our grand finale of the day . . . the wall map mural which I actually thought was cool, it would be awesome to put up and keep track of where I have been and stuff. Until I realized the dimensions of this thing! It literally takes an entire wall!! And worse, it's dry-erase. So imagine, you move in to your new place, put up your wall map and all of your other things in their places and you invite your friends over for a housewarming party. Next thing you know all your friends have dry erase marker on their clothes from leaning on the wall AND worse the entire world is in a state of chaos because you have blurred the borders of several countries!

Ah the wonders of skymall . . .

Thoughts on the Train

I realise that my last entry may have given some a bad image of Helsinki. I’m sitting on the train reflecting on the experience and it certainly was not all bad. In fact, the people were very very nice! I had a purse returned to me (although it was not mine . . . I didn’t actually lose my purse, thank goodness!), and someone advised me not to pay to use the man’s water closet at the train station. Thank you mysterious stranger. The city is incredibly clean, and no one ever seems to be in a hurry. I actually saw a train with 26 cars stop when someone was running after it (and I was at the train station ALL day and only saw one person running!) This is a crazy crazy place.

Since everyone thinks I’m finish (in fact, there is one old lady on the train that speaks English but refuses to talk to me in English, because she thinks that I’m trying to trick her – not kidding), I have actually picked up a few words.

Hey – means hello
Yo – means yes
Saippuakivikauppias – means soapstone salesman (also the longest palindrome)

Well it’s 11:00 pm here, and the sun is just starting to set – it is beautiful. Finland looks a lot like Canada, only more trees. I will post some pictures as soon as I get to a hostel where I can plug my camera in! One update before posting – the sun started setting at 11 pm, from 11 – 2:30 you could not really tell whether it was a sunset or a sunrise because the whole sky was pink, gorgeous. Then at 3:00 am the sun started to glare like it was midday. Really astonishing and beautiful – just a little hard to sleep though!

Arrival in HELsinki

Someone on the plane told me that they don’t call it HELsinki for nothing. I agree! My first plane was delayed 2 hours, after a sprint through the JFK airport, I successfully caught my connection, only upon boarding to find out it would also be delayed 2 hours, due to rain in New York. Yay! Must be my lucky day. Haha. The airport in Helsinki was wonderful and all the people I have met have been extremely helpful and nice. Other than they all assume that I am finish, and speak to me in finish!

But this is where it gets interesting. I made it down to the city centre, and went to check in at the hostel (running on 24 hours without sleep so far) only to find that the hostel was fully booked. So, I managed to make my way further into the city to find a motel . . .it was also booked. I went to the train station because they have a hotel booking service, only to find out EVERY motel/hotel/hostel was booked in Helsinki. I ended up taking a train 45 min. to Kerava and spending the night at the hotel Cosmopoli. Now you would think that sounds like an upscale martini bar, but let me assure you, it is not. I checked in at Cosmopoli Sports Bar at 3pm, and told the lady I was going to sleep, and she said, you better, because the kareokee starts at 9:30 and you won’t sleep then.

I woke up at 5 pm to the sound of a woman moaning . . again at 5:30 and a man at 5:45, at 6 the cleaner came to clean the room, because the couple had checked out. I went out and got some groceries, tried to connect and chat with some of you (although, the people at the sportsbar gave me the wrong password, so that did not work out) and then went to sleep. I woke up again at 9 to drunken finish men butchering Hotel California, and did not get back to sleep until after 4 am when the bar closed (which was more like 4:30)!

Took the train back to Helsinki, now there are no rooms for tonight, they told me to go back to Cosmopoli and I said NO! haha. So, I’m taking the 7:30 train to Rovenemi tonight and checking into the Rudolph hostel in the morning. I hope Rudolph is friendlier than Cosmopoli was!

Creepers

For all you creepers out there, it's official, I'm leaving Canada today! My flight is leaving the Toronto Airport at 2 pm. I have set up a tracking system that you can watch me as I fly across the ocean and over to Finland. . . this footage is sure to include memorable moments such as sleep and drooling, nose picking and talking to strangers. Click here to watch now!

Ok, so it's not mother theresa

This was kinda how I felt after spending thousands of dollars this week on equipment and tickets to go to finland. I'm suddenly nervous about this adventure. BUT finding this pretzal (even though it's not a mother theresa face, it is a pretzel making the same face I was when I spent all my money) made my day. Now I'm looking forward to the plane trip on Tuesday!

Let the countdown begin.

I'm not going to lie to you (a phrase that is said all too often in our Canadian culture, I mean come'on everyone knows Canadians don't lie) . . . but I just realized today that there is only ONE week left until I go to Finland, eek. I'm a little bit nervous about this as I haven't located my passport as of yet, there will be some reshuffling and repacking of things still, I am sure.

Today was the most glorious day ever! After hanging out with a friend (who will remain nameless due to the embarrassing story to follow) I was able to go to the tulip festival and takes some of these beautiful photos, with my dear friend Andrea (it's ok to say her name, because she didn't do anything silly).

So, on to the story, I agreed to meet friend at a specific place and at a specific time, and when I arrived at this place at this time, apparently there was a "fire drill" and 4 dashing firefighters where on hand to save the damsels in distress. I guess this is one 'goodbye' present that can't be topped . . . thanks Hilary! oops, didn't mean to put your name there, sorry about that.

Here is one of the cheesy photos Andrea and I took of the tulip festival (apparently today was the senior citizen and teenager discount day, as we appeared to be the only two who did not fit those categories), and one of the reasons I'm beginning to think that Ottawa is one of the prettiest cities in the world. (posting pictures on blogger apparently really sucks, public opinion, should I stick to the notes page in facebook, or keep blogging away?)

Happy Mothers Day

Mom,

You know I’m not much into mushy poems
And I know that neither are you . . . .
But it’s mothers day, and it has to be said
THANK YOU

I want to thank you for berthing me.
Thanks for dating Dad, a process that eventually lead to my conception.
Thanks for making the same mistake twice, which lead to my brother.
I guess you must have learned that fool me once is shame on me, fool me twice shame on you, fool me three times, and I woulda had a sister and there would have been more than 700 pairs of shoes in our beloved ‘boot room’!

Thank you for being there when I needed you most, which we can probably agree was when BJ started to grow and began trying to fight back.
But it may have also been teaching me accounting and paying my brother 1% of the net profit from the lemonade stand we ran was also an essential skill that you taught me while young.
Leaving me out a can of soup and specific instructions when the three of you went fishing for corpses, I don’t know how I would have survived without that.
Perhaps I needed you most in one of the several moves that you helped me carry my stuff (from Collingwood to Ottawa and back again!)
Although I’m not sure when I needed you most, you were always there for me when I needed you mom, so thank you.

And Happy Mothers Day!

Be Prepared :)

Ok, this is a shameless teaser for my upcoming entry - an Ode to Mom (I'm still working on it though). And just a reminder for anyone reading this - Mothers day is May 11.

We demand entertainment

Yes, I know my public demands entertainment and here it is!

pork the one you love! just in case facebook pokes were getting you down, now you can send porks to those you love. For your reference though, I don't particularily enjoy pork unless it comes in the form of black forest ham on rye with cheese.

Revival of the Blog

Hello all of you out there in cyber space!

My old blog (sweetgirljess.blogspot.com) seems to have died. I don't know why but I can't access it any longer. I decided that with more regular internet access and an upcoming trip (to FINLAND) it was time to update the ol blog and keep everyone informed of the events of my life, and this time, I will try to make it a little more entertaining.

I decided to start posting today, as today was a very special day . . . the most expensive day of my life. I have officially booked my ticket to Finland and paid my tuition. I don't even want to tell you how much it cost, because I might cry a little bit.

All right, well I'm off now, going to try and take some cool pictures to put on here and make this look all jazzy and nice :) but I'll leave you with this thought,

Friendship is like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get the warm feeling that it brings.