Visiting Saarijärvi

This past weekend I went to Saarijärvi to visit some friends of mine from Iisalmen lyseo back in the day. From left to right, Heini, Tarja, me, and Tiina. These are some of my girls that I used to have wild fun times with when I was here with Rotary. Heini came to the states the year after I'd been in Finland, and she was randomly placed in Ohio about 3 hours from where I live, so I was able to see her more recently than Tarja or Tiina, but it was still awesome to see everyone. I was also able to meet a lot of cool new people in Heini's life- her boyfriend Janne, and her friends Antti, Tuomas and Tinia.

Here's me and Tinia trying to figure out what Tarja is grabbing so firmly. Apparently it's round, but that's all I know.




And here are the guys- Tuomas, Janne, Antti, me.

So the weekend went sorta like this:

-Thursday night I had a meeting for a special program organized by the Erasmus Student Network at the Helsinki University and Helsinki University of Technology Student Unions. The point of it is to make mixed groups of internationals and finns so we can all hang out together and so everyone knows at least a few people on a smaller scale. The group I'm with is pretty awesome, so it'll be nice to see what we end up doing. So far we've got an appointment each Thursday to meet up before the ESN night at the bar I mentioned before. Last week was a good time. The music was pretty bad... really bad actually... but I did get to hear me and KJs song, K-Maro "Femme like you." It was a special moment. I missed the last tram home and had to walk a bit of the way in some pretty bad weather, so that was unfortunate. I need to figure out the night trains I think, since there's no night bus here.

Friday I got up early (6am!!) to catch the train to go see the ladies. I had only gone to bed at 3, so I wasn't well rested, nor recovered from the previous night. I dragged myself across the bridge to the railway station and bought my ticket. The train was running late, they announced after I'd stood 15 minutes on the freezing platform, so i went back in for a bit. They announced the trains arrival again, so I went back to the platform, but the train that came was the wrong one. I was only wearing tennis shoes, so my feet were absolutely untolerably cold. (It got to -37 this weekend in Jyväskylä!). After doing this a few times I went back to the ticket clerk and asked what was up. He said the train had already come and gone, which was news to me, but he graciously exchanged my ticket for the next train. I decided to use the two hours in between to get a decent pair of warm shoes. Unfortuantely this meant I had to trek back to my place. Now normally I'm an advocate of whoever it was that said when you start worrying about comfort over fashion you're just getting old, but ultimately I had to realize that it would be much more stylish to wear my boots than to loose my toes to stupidity.

Eventually I got on the train, and the rest of the trip there was pretty mundane. When I arrived in Saarijärvi, it was to a surprised Tarja (Heini and I agreed it would be best not to tell her I was planning on coming). It was SO GREAT to see them again! We went to the store for food, then headed back to Heini's place to cook it. We spent the time catching up while Heini did the dishes and Tarja cooked. After we ate Heini wanted to go swimming, and after a little convincing I agreed. The swim hall was quite nice, and as it was my first time in a sauna since coming back to Finland, that was pretty awesome as well. It's such an amazing experience, and one that deserves a post of its own later on down the road. Also remind me to mention how the sauna culture makes Finns much more comfortable and healthy with their bodies. We ended up crashing at Janne's place that night because none of us wanted to go back out in the cold. Honestly, can you blame us?

Saturday we slept in. Tiina came a little later on in the day, after we'd run a few errands and such. Saturday night, however, was reserved for partying and a trip to the local "bar." (I use the term very loosely- though great fun, this place isn't exactly a club as I am used to.) After a visit to Heini's sauna, and a few moments outside in the -37 degree weather wearing nothing but a towel (:-D so much fun because you steam like a piece of meat taken off the grill and held in the freezer- plus, look at those muscles!!), we got the party started. It was mainly just a bunch of the normal party craziness, topped off by a drinking game in which Heini made a rule that you couldn't use any variation of the first person pronoun- so in English no I/my/mine and in Finnish no minä/minun/minua/minut/minuun/minutta/minuna/minulla/minulle/minulta/minusta/minussa/minuksi/and so on. This is a much easier feat in Finnish, since verbs function just as well without the minä in a normal sentence. Minä olen mies means I'm a man. Olen mies means I'm a man. Sadly you can't just say "am a man" in english and expect people to know what you're talking about. If anyone got drunk this night, that rule would surely be the reason why.... of course... The time at the bar started off in an amazing way. After that... well it was still fun anyway, just not quite as prime as it started out.

As is often the case, Sunday was a day for everyone to recover from the previous night's festivities, so we just kept things low key, watched some tv, chatted about life, and hung out as such. Sunday the weather thankfully began to thaw, but it was still less warm than one would like it to be. While hanging out at Janne's place again, we got the camera out once more, but this time for video. Below is an awesome video of heini and tarja demonstrating their awesome english skills. (actually they're just being silly and the speak english better than I do, but still it's soon to be a classic watched in classrooms across the globe (when finnish becomes required study everywhere), so you should take your chance for a sneak peak).



I hope you enjoy!!!

Monday was nothing more than the bus/train trip home, classes week two, and a meeting showcasing many of the international groups at the university. This morning I was running late for class, so there was no filming going on when I walked by the windows. shucks! My registration was finally processed today, so I was able to get library and computer network access (score!), so now I have to do some real work (damn). Oh, and to all of you at Brown- I have 6 candles burning right now, and it's not gonna cost me $600 if the inspector comes round:-P

This week's forecast: Thursday an innercity rivalry: Jokerit vs. HiFK in the Finnish national hockey league. It's gonna be awesome. Headed there with the Behm's (my second host family) and my/their friend Jukka. Friday we're all then gonna drive up to Iisalmi to see the town. I'm sure there'll be the faint sound of Madonna's "this used to be my playground" playing as we drive through the town and I see all my old friends. Unfortunately not everyone I want to see will be there this weekend, so I'm going to take the train there next weekend. It'll be great to be there so much, but the trip is a pretty long one. Nonetheless, it's gonna be such an amazing thing to head there both times! And of course you'll hear all about it right here, in a vivid multi-media experience.