Dear Kuorinka beach

I had seen it so many times, but didn't have the courage to approach it until last Saturday with 12 friends. After biking in the excruciating heat for one hour, I could finally see it in my eyes; Kuorinka lake and beach.

And oh my was it crowded!!

We chose a place next to a tree providing some shade, then left our stuff there and decided to go to swim. Unfortunately the water was so cold I backed off immediately.

But after some time it got so hot that I HAD to refresh myself a bit :) The lake is famous for its crystal clear water, so I could see the bottom of the lake all the time.

The beach was also so shallow that it was possible just to walk couple hundred meters and enjoy the small cool waves.

After 4 hours of swimming, standing in the water, eating (Taiwanese snacks are the best!!) and talking, I headed back home with Juha and Barun. Other TRUE beach lions still wanted to stay there although the water bottles started to be empty! Luckily there was a kiosk where it was possible to buy coffee, tea, ice cream and stuff like that.

The ride back home (about 15 km) went smoothly and of course we had to take photos next to the Joensuu sign ;) After a day in Liperi, it was nice to come back to good old Joensuu!

I'm lucky because my skin tone is yellowish and I didn't burn at all (of course the sun screen helped me with that), but Juha was completely red and he said it still hurts a bit to touch those reddened zones! Poor Juha.

Lai's photos can be found from here :)

Taina on the road, part 2.

After juhannus it was time to head to Espoo because of my cousin's confirmation celebrations. The car was packed with mom, her husband, grandmother, Moona (my brother's daughter) and me. Although it was quite hot, it was nice to travel south with them. Moona was drawing lots of pictures in her note book.

She was asking all the time what she should draw and I said car, rainbow and raindrops...

...and a pirate with his ship!

Moona has also been practising writing, on the front page you could find this text:

which means "Nea is stupid sometimes, Moona is sometimes stupid" :D

Then it was party time. I didn't take any photos of my celebrating cousin Otso :D He was surrounded by people all the time, so it was kind of impossible. It was very nice to meet all my relatives, especially all four cousins! And of course the food (always the best thing in all parties!) was excellent and vegetarian choices were plenty.

Going to the church is of course the main thing in the confirmation party, but I skipped it, because being in the church is so boring. Instead I was decorating cakes with my cousins and before Vili head back to the army, we took this group photo.

Taina 30, Vili 20, Valdis 19, Emmis 16.

The next day we (me + Juha) woke up early to get to the ferry to Tallinn. It was quite difficult to wake up because we were listening to the Foo Fighters gig until 23 o'clock in my aunts flat, where you could recognise the songs even if all the doors and windows were shut :D

In Ruoholahti we met Emmis and walked to the terminal of Eckerö Line. The boat was full of people and we found places from the pub, where we could play card games and listen to karaoke..........

After 3 hours of karaoke we were exhausted, but finally in Tallinn. We visited mostly shops like Pull and Bear, Terranova and Mango, but after a while our legs were hurting so much that we decided to visit African Kitchen!

I visited this restaurant last summer for the first time and fell in love with the atmosphere, music and cheap vegetarian foods :) This time was no different, we ordered yummy juices and the foods were excellent as well. So I can recommend this place for anyone visiting Tallinn!

After 5 hours it was time to get back to the ferry (M/S Nordlandia). It was quite full already, so we found the only free places from the pub again, even closer to the karaoke stage. And this was the result.

Barely alive we landed back to Helsinki again.

Next day we went to Korea House for a lunch with my aunt. Bibimbap with lots of kimchi, seaweed and barley tea! Then some puerh tea from Stockmann and the train back home.

There are so many things you can see during a one week trip! So I wonder how much I can see when I'm heading to Korea & Japan for 3 months :)

It's July.

We have a visitor. His name is Kassu and the happy owner of him is Tuula, who's living in the building next to us. She went to help her daughter with moving, so we eagerly welcomed Kassu to stay a couple of days with us.

He's already taken over this place by sleeping in every corner of this flat! He also came to wake me up at 5am, 6am, 7am and finally at 8am I woke and gave up. He also escaped once from the balcony, but he's a shy boy and was waiting for us to carry him inside just outside the balcony ;)

I found this book called A Journey in Search of Korea's Beauty by Bae Yong Joon (2010) from huuto.net (Finnish web auction site) and paid only 2,5 euros for it. I found the original price sticker (22,000 won = about 15 euros) from the back cover of the book so I saved quite a lot of money!

The travel book consists of stories, poems and beautiful photos from Korea and Japan at the same time as it provides information about Korean culture and customs. These hot days are perfect for reading this book, marvelling at the pictures while drinking some tea :)

And dreaming about kimchi like this.

Taina on the road, part 1.

First cute cats, Kiki & Lissu.

After cat-overload it's time to think what really happened during the week when I was away from home. Fireworks? Explosions? Something really awesome? Not exactly, but lots of great time with the best of people :)

Thursday morning at 7 o'clock. Nea & Moona were awake, I was not.

My visits to Kuopio always include a short trip to Siilinjärvi, because my brother and his family as well as my grandparents are living there. I really love my grandparents and it's interesting to talk with them, but they surely know nothing about vegetarian food. Last time I was offered salami pizza ("but isn't it vegetarian?") and this time pizza with minced meat, shrimps and tuna ("this is supposed to be vegetarian for sure!"). Nothing beats the local hamburger place (which serves vegetarian hamburgers) after the visit to my grandparents house ;)

Kiki was using her laser gaze to shoo off the intruders. So we decided it's better to leave Kuopio behind and head to Syvänniemi.

Syvänniemi is a big yellow old house. With lots of flying things like mosquitos, wasps and frisbees. There were some nice catches...

...and misses as well.

One morning we all (me, Juha & Arash) woke up quickly because there was a huge wasp in the room. We all ran downstairs (Juha first!), but after gathering enough courage Arash was brave enough to go back and annihilate the wasp.

Our juhannus consisted of smoke sauna, cooking food and pancakes, raising the flag, seeing the bonfire and while other were already sleeping, I was watching CSI. And I drove a car in the morning for the first time in 3 years!!

Arash concentrating on pancake making, it's a hard work!

At 18 o'clock it was time to raise the flag. My grandmother and Tuula took care of that :) When my grandfather was still alive, we used to sing "Siniristilippumme" (our blue cross flag) when we got the flag up in the pole, but now we skipped the song. In my opinion the song is way too patriotic and I don't want to die for the flag of our country as it says in the lyrics!

"WTF just happened here!"

We also had two dogs spending the time with us. Luppa is an old lady, who can't hear much, so she occasionally barks in a very loud voice. Onni is a small boy, who pees in a girl style. Both are friends of everyone :)

Being on the countryside is fun for a while, but it's hard to imagine living there all the time. When I was small, I used to go to the neighbours cowhouse to take care of the animals twice every day and those times were the highlights of my childhood! But there are no cows anymore, no cats, no dogs.

These days Syvänniemi means peace for me, endless board games, old Finnish songs on the radio, sleeping easily in the quiet room, TV programs meant for elderly, sauna every day and MOSQUITOS!!

We also played the best game ever in Syvänniemi, like we play every time we spend time there. It's called "Treffipalvelu" (Dating service) and the main goal in the game is to try to pair men and women. The higher their heart beat is together, the better points the dating services are going to get. This time the most challenging thing was not to get good pairs, but to help Arash with the Finnish words of the game! It must be nice to play something where you don't understand the words you're supposed to use... It was lots of fun anyway :D

Part 2, where Taina travels to Espoo, Helsinki and Tallinn, is coming later.

Midsummer stuff

Have a nice juhannus everyone! I'm heading to the cottage and spending the midsummer's fest with my grandmother, friends and 2 dogs. See you next week :)

Snow, Jyväskylä and Japan

Last week was warm. Or should I say hot (+30). So I decided to play some mini golf, read a good book on the beach and then have a cider or two with my friends.

There were noisy middle aged slightly drunk people playing mini golf as well. They were funny and red. I finished 3rd, I'm just not lucky with the stick :D

This book was pure excellency. I've read other books from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and she's one of my favourite authors. "The thing around your neck" consisted of short stories, which are short enough for sunny summer days :)

Jokiasema was so full of people there were no seats left for us and we (me + Merja + Arash) had to sit on the pier. We were talking about all kinds of stuff (especially politics?!?) and the weather was quite hot even at 23 o'clock... But it was not too hot for some snow:

We were even throwing snowballs. And it was +23. And almost midnight.

After talking some more politics and going to sleep at 6.30, I was ready to go to Jyväskylä. Which is a dangerous place for engineers, but luckily I'm a humanist.

I have been playing quite a lot of Space Alert, our awesome board game. Juha's friends have lots of nice board games in Jyväskylä and we tried two of them, Puerto Rico (which I accidentally won by reading magazines while others were thinking for tens of minutes how they're going to play and which are the good moves...) and Betrayal at the House on the Hill.

We played this game twice and both times I played a very fast and strong girl (who was a bit stupid though), who was just using her spear/axe in a skilled way. I hate horror movies, but horror games = so nice!!

And something completely different? Juha is going to Japan in the end of July for one year! He's going to teach in a local school(s?) and visit all our Japanese and Korean friends. As I have already collected enough money for the plane ticket to Seoul, now I'm only thinking about how LONG I want to stay there :)

Let's go!

That time of the year

Eating a cake is always fun, especially if you have interesting company while eating! Yesterday we devoured our cake bits in a local cafe called Houkutus. At the same time we celebrated Lai's birthday, welcome to the 30s!

I decided to buy a summer card for aerobic. I don't have the money of course, but mental health = priceless. After sweating for one hour it was time to go and hug someone on the railway station...

Anxiously waiting...

Inside the train was Hyunsik, who came back after one week of travelling around in Great Britain. I forgot to take photos, because I was hugging him tightly! And of course his bike was stolen from the railway station :( But we were thinking, how lucky it was that the bike was stolen on his last evening in Joensuu and not the first!

Today it was the first time to ride a bike to the airport! They even had bike stands there, I was amazed!

Say hello to group photos ->

This is always the thing to do on your last moments together; take as many group/friend photos as possible. Because you never know if you can ever meet again. But if everything works out, next time we'll meet in Korea!

I had almost tears in my eyes when I tried to explain how Korea has a special place in my heart and how it was so special to spend time with the only Korean in Joensuu :) Maybe all these spring goodbyes during the years have affected me and I don't get so emotional anymore. But still...

This was the last and happy sight of Hyunsik when he waved at us :) 안녕히가세요 현식!

The plane was small and the sound was horrible AND it took off to the wrong direction and I failed to take other photos.

Näkemiin is Finnish and it means goodbye or farewell or see you later. I prefer the latter one :)