It seems that we're starting to get the hang of our Finnish life. .

The other night, we went to our nearby ice rink, and it was really nice to skate in the evening. We had to share the space with three somewhat aggressive young boys who were playing hockey. They were also intent on showing us how much more proficient their skating was than ours (well, mine in particular). (For whatever reason I just can't skate backwards, even though I feel comfortable skating fast and even turning sharply.) They skated backwards in circles around us just to rub it in.. ..and oh yeah, I forgot to mention that one of them was maybe 6 years old.

Yesterday, Kate started her Finnish language course and we're both starting to practice our basic conversational Finnish. Its still impossible to understand the locals because they speak so rapidly and their words and sentences just seem so long! But we can embarrass ourselves by forcing them to slow down and by communicating with them about prices and other simple things. According to the university orientation, Finnish people are impressed when a foreigner takes the time to at least attempt their language.. I don't know how literally they meant that.

More importantly we also had our first private sauna break yesterday.. and it really is... something. We were using the sauna during a public hour. So naturally we locked the door and hoped no one would come knocking. It seems bizarre to imagine sharing such an unusual experience with strangers.. ..especially nude. It was truly a refreshing (I don't know if that's really a reasonable word for it..) experience after spending hours in the cold.

We also had our first homemade Salmon dinner, which was a little too fish-y for Kate's tastes. We'll get more ingredients for a marinade next time. I personally thought it was great, and ate probably two or three servings of fish and risotto.

So, as you can see, we're acclimating!

We're taking a Ryanair flight to Riga, Latvia in a little over a week! It's exciting that there is so much history, culture, and awesome architecture around us.


This is one of the nearby skating rinks.. we walk past this every single day here.

This is the path to our (less popular and more private) rink.

Yeah, this is the one:
This is a picture of me in the sauna (Kate insisted that I upload it..)!

..and just down at the end of our street is our local secret military UFO storage hanger.
(Well, we can't think of anything else it could be.)


Hyvää Yötä!
Nähdään!