| From: "Bron Gondwana" <brong@brong.net> Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 04:55:15 +1000 (EST) |
Another late start (well, a little after 10am actually) - it's really hard to keep to normal 'days' here, since it doesn't get dark as such. We packed and cleaned up (forgot to grab some of our food, but that's OK, because we ate some of the food there too). Kati had a _lot_ of cousins, over 200 in fact, due to both her mother and father coming from families with lots of siblings, and each of them also having lots of kids. This means that the summer house gets plenty of use, so we don't need to worry about the food being wasted. We left our red herrings behind though (herrings in tomato sauce). On the way back, I got to drive! I was quite strange sitting in the wrong side of the car, and even trickier driving on the wrong side of the road. Luckily most of it was just open road, but I did have to overtake a few times (youths of 15 are allowed to drive tractors on the open road, but not cars. In wet weather, they frequently drive the tractor down the road rather than riding their bikes!) The T-intersections were messy though, I kept trying to look over my shoulder while turning left - oops. I was getting better by the end though. We stopped for icecreams on the way, and looked at the beach. There are some very nice beaches in Finland (and lots of bikini clad blonde scandanavian women of course!) Also saw a couple of large wind turbines. Finland has quite a lot of wind and hydro power (though they also have 5 nuclear power plants). Another stop was to look at a nice white-water river. Unfortunately the water level is a little low for rafting, though I'm hoping to find some rafting further north. Kati and Mikko have a small apartment (one bedroom, loungroom with fold out couch, kitchen, and of course sauna!) We were set up in the loungeroom, and promptly put all our clothes in the washing machine. Kati and Mikko had both been away for a few days as well so we had a lot of washing to do! After dinner (another traditional fish dish), Mikko took us to the education department building where he studies, and we internetted (hence the new 'Places' link you'll see on the web site, I realised that we needed it because not all the places are linked from the calendar. We drank lots of different spirits - there's a blue drink called 'Diesel' (it actually does look like diesel too!), and I tried a couple of very strange rums and brandies. |
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