Kuva!

Marjaanalle:

Midsummer festival

We're off to Dada's house in the Sutelansaari (Wolfies island). Lots of sisters, some relatives, HUGE bonfire, sauna, swimming and eating bbq. Sounds like total summer vacation in 3 days.

Hyvää juhannusta kaikille! Happy midsummerfest to all living creatures!

Time for some parti parti...

Well... We had some cake and all. And new dress and great smile. And punch which makes you happy.

All's well, I enjoyed, get drunk - naturally - and finally end up to the floor of our living room.

Perfect evening, huh?

This is Helsinki!

Been there done that.

Well what has happened?

I've been in Latvia (yep!) more exactly in Valmiera and Valka - beautiful village of Valka opened it's history slowly to me and I really fell in love with the athmosphere. It was like time captured in past decades. Anyway, I need to go there back most probably I plan for short visit to Border festival in August. Uhh, there was even pensionar who was ready to marry me! Finally I found Latvian groom ;)

Since that I met my whole family - relatives at Pappa's funeral. It was a beautiful, warm remembering moment. Most of the people thought cried when they played my granpa singing... It still makes my eyes go sore.

In the end of May I celebrated a bit early my graduation. My sister graduated as Master of Technics - Diploma Engineer, I finally got graded my MA-thesis. I got cum laude approbatur - those who know Latin, they will know that it is an average grade and I am proud of it after that long winter of too much bad happening. Today I returned an application (in Finland, you need to apply for your papers) to declair one as an MA.

From 4th of June I've been working as congress coordinator. Job is variegated and I am happy to work there. We're making two big congresses this year: EABCT and Psychology, both doing a lot of things with psychotherapists.

Plans for the future are more or less variegated as well. I'm going to be operated in October, but before that I will most probably spend 3 weeks in USA. Where exactly is still unclear, but hopefully NYC and NOLA will be my visiting places.

Huh, on this Saturday I invited all my friends in Helsinki to join for a party. Some nice cloudberry-goose cheese cake will be offered as well as salad, rhubarb pie and baquettes (And while we're in Finland, don't forget punch-booli which will be some sangria this time).

If you have some time, be my guest!

And yeah, Helsinki summer has started fabulously - lots of energy, time and good weather (for me - who loves around 20 Celsius)

Museums

I've had inconsistent week. I've got sad news, but also good news. And own life is better than average.

Anyway, our loved grandad - pappa Pauli passed away on Tuesday evening, alone in the hospital room in Mikkeli. He was old, 87 yrs, and had various old people's diseases. Though it wasn't predictable, somehow it's relieving - thank you Pappa for all the things in life.

Tuesday was also my father's 55th birthday - that made the day even more inconsistent. I got congratulated my dad in late afternoon, and early evening Dad delivered the sad news to me.

More good news came with right to make "maturity exam", which is the last exam the finnish university student will do before graduating. I did it also on Tuesday. Yesterday was also fun, I was substitute teacher in school, music classes, it was just good: youngsters and I were training for Spring Festival (last school day 31th of May). The song was Let it be. We had drums, 2 synthesizer (violins) , 2 pianos and singer. All the kids more or less disabled. Sounded good once again.

Today I'm meeting my dear auntie (mom's sister) who is going to be 60 soon. She is still active in finance field, though she is retired. She has some meeting during morning and later on we will spend a nice day in the city, tomorrow more relaxing day in the city.

We will visit most probably museums: Amos Anderson museum has an exhibition about Pompeiji - its called Domus Pompeiana. Then there is possibilities to visit Museum of Cultures, where is an exhibition about Karelia:

"The extensive exhibition presents people living across Finland’s eastern border and the Finns’ relationship with them in the tumultuous 20th century. The history of the multicultural area and the destinies and identities of minorities continue to be topical issues in East Karelia as anywhere else in the world."

My friends has also suggested to visit The Finnish Museum of Photography. There is a exhibition of newspaper photos. Here is a good exemple what to wait.

Anyway, now I'm off to those places. Hopefully I get at least to some museum, not shopping all day.

Visiting doctor

It has been beautiful (+10degrees) days here in Helsinki. I've been much out of house, mainly walking around streets, getting lost in the neighbourhood. I've got nice brownish colour on my face, yeah, we all know: summer is slinking towards us here in the northern side of this fabulous globe.

Swimming, works and reading has took my days, I'm really enjoying life.

Today I went for my nose-throat-ear doctor (which is really nice woman, best ear-nose-throat doctor i've had). She showed me a good quality CT-scan pictures from my maxillary sinuses and frontal sinuses. Pics were nice though, showed that I don't have any air in there, which is normal case. Even left frontal sinus is full of something. So I am going under the knife. Which is good, because - at least I hope - it will take off the shitty pain from the face.

This is good news. I'm off again, sun's shining so I'll be out for some time.

Seems like

I've done lots of things since last post. I've been working (oh yeah) and dancing my legs off.

Me and my friend Marianna, went to the western classical music tradition (classical music) - concert, organized by state of Estonia. Estonian country celebrates it's 90th year of existence, not necessarily the independence, but existence over easier and more difficult years. The concert was full of feelings, different ones, and the best thing was high class orchestra with great pieces of compositions. There was of course music of great composers like Arvo Pärt and Jaan Rääts as well as some newer composers like Helena Tulve.

During the week we also had our sauna club -meeting, we have formed a group of women, who likes sauna evenings, the sauna part, not the drinking part. Normally we hook up together once in a month to explore public sauna's in Helsinki. We went to Arlan Sauna, which is quite similar to Kotiharjun (Harjun) Sauna also located in Kallio area. The steam was this time quite cool, but somehow perfect, we could sit in the sauna like hour or so, dipping in the middle with cold water, and then going back there again.

On our sauna club, there is about 5 members only: couple years back in time we spend Juhannus - Midsummer Fest in one members cottage, we had lots of food and some beer, good music from Radio Suomi (this one is full with music for all age, a bit from 50's-90's and a hint of this century). During that juhannus we warmed the sauna up at 16:00 and spend all the evening on the sauna cottage - sleeping around 3:00 (AM). It took lots of logs to burn, but it was just the best thing to do.

Later on this week I've been acting as a teacher, I made kids learn about Biology (we got through fungus and moss) and Physics (there we learn (me too!) about colours, how they work with different kind of filters and how the colours are full of energy - red colour is low energetic than others). There was also English lesson, where we had "After School" - words - like run, walk, watch TV, crispies and so on.

I took part to motor functions lesson: what is a lesson where the kids are tought for use their body more useful, as you might remember, I work with disabled kids, which means - some of them cannot control their body autonomously. It was interesting to see that even though they make small things daily (like trying to turn themselves from supine to one's side) during one year or even some months they can do it autonomously. It's a huge success for next years, whent they can try to learn some other thing to do.

Today I'm having free day. I'm going to eat lunch with Aura - we want to check out new thai-restaurant's lunch counter. Maybe we also plan for new trips (what we want to do all the time) and talk about coming weeks.

Weekend will be full of works - again. But its ok, I'm having too much free time now :)