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 :)

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.

Everywhere you are

Birds are singing outside and finally a tiny amount of sunshine. Maybe the warm weathers are waiting for my holidays to begin in July?

I had a fastish weekend in Helsinki. Both of my older cousins graduated from the same high school at the same time and of course I wanted to be there :) Meet Vili and Valdís (and me)!



I've always disliked Helsinki a lot. I don't feel comfortable there, too many people and the atmosphere makes me feel sad everytime. Or in fact it must be just the atmosphere, because I felt extremely comfortable in the 3rd biggest city in the world, Seoul :)

But this time I went to Seurasaari just for a walk and it was special! It was so amazing that I forgot the time and missed my train back to Joensuu...Too bad I forgot to take my camera with me, I saw lots of birds, a girl fishing, old houses, sunshine, green shades, nice small paths, tourists, the most expensive cafe ever (tea 4 euros??? wtf?????) and interesting "art".

I want to thank Mika for letting us to stay at his tiny place for the weekend. First time to meet him and he feels like a close friend already :)

New friends, old friends. Saori, Sora, Chiaki and Hyeonjae left. I miss you all!



These summer nights are the ones I'm waiting for. This summer with Minttu, because Juha is leaving for Canada for 2 months :) I truly hope he's going to bring me lots and lots and lots of tea when he comes back in August!

No stories without a camera

There's nothing to say without nice photos.

Plain text is boring.


Lately:

*I've been teaching young and old people how to write their names in Korean, Japanese and Russian. I got lots of help from my friends, my Persian and Chinese skills are not so well developed yet...

*I was in Helsinki and attended Batmud gala. Photos can be found from here, I represent myself in a couple of them. In the party I met another LIBRARIAN MUDDER! I was so surprised! I also got to know many people RL, who I've only known in the game before. I really liked all of them :)

*My love goes out to Ivan and Jon, they brought me amazing teas and maple syrup stuff from Canada.

*Now I feel like I'm getting sick. Maybe it has something to do with yesterday taxi line, I was standing in the rain for over 1 hour after 3 am. I'll try to fight!

This month in pictures

Press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to begin.

First there was no snow and it was warm. So much rain and no minus degrees! There was a forgotten shovel on the yard one morning when I went to pick up the mail.

Then I was going to Jyväskylä to have a small xmas party with my mudder friends. This weird fellow traveller wanted to show off in a bus stop.

In Jyväskylä we spent our time with Rock Band, when I got the microphone I didn't want to give it to anyone else. I also learnt to play the drums. Also sauna, extremely powerful versions of Enter Sandman and big scary guys.

I went back to work, it was finally sunny and got colder. Sunshiiiiiine! Beautiful trees around the library.

We had an amazing console game day in the library, 100 people visited and almost everyone was happy. I liked especially ski jumping but also Guitar Hero and Buzz :)

It was "a bit" crowded next to the doors, luckily only one backpack got mixed with someone elses and we took care of the problem.

Last weekend was time for our own pikkujoulut (xmas party) and I baked these gingerbreads for the event. I also made potato and carrot casseroles and rosolli (traditional finnish christmas salad). Thank you guests for your company and foods!

This week it got colder, around -20 celsius every day. I heard so much complaining, but I was feeling so great. Finally real winter, white trees, freezing nose and stars at night. The most beautiful time of the year :)

Thursday morning I had my last shift in the mobile library, it was so cold that my breath came out as a white steam. All my photos looked like this :D

The view from the front seat is nice and I liked to wave at the other bus or truck drivers :)

Today, cold wind. We had 2 Korean friends (Kitak & Hejin) staying at our place for one week and today we all woke up before 1pm and decided to go to the shop. Notice red faces and ultimate protection!

I want to wish everyone a happy xmas and see you next year :) I'm going to spend my xmas in Kuopio and have my last work week before New Year's eve. Then it's time to just wait for our flight to the land of hangeul and kamsahamnida!

Multiculture!

Last Saturday was the farewell party for Yuki. We had invited quite a lot of people and almost everyone came to our place :) The good thing when you invite many people is that people form groups and just talk with each other. There was Shanghai group (photo above), Korean drama group and Fallout 3 group :D The guests came from 10 different countries -> Finland, Poland, USA, Russia, Korea, China, Japan, Nepal, Iran and Vietnam. The person who says that people from different cultures can't get along is totally wrong! We baked Karjalanpiirakka again, I also made laskiaispulla and rye-lingonberry porridge to celebrate the Finnish culture day, which happened to be in the same day.





Thank you Yuki, Minhye, Hyejin, Sejin, Kitak, Anton, Shahram, Daniel, Marko, Teemu, Monika, Barun, Merja, Anh, Liang and Maho for coming! I hope we can have another evening soon :)