Christmas Adventure

Happy Christmas everyone! ♡

I made it home for Christmas this year! It wasn't quite as easy as it might sound to you. Surprisingly, we didn't have any problems with any of our three flights. Instead the domestic travel caused more problems.

Christmas tree at Aberdeen Airport.

After arriving in Finland, I spent a couple of days in Helsinki with a friend while Laura was visiting her family Hyvinkää. After that the great journey to Loimaa started. And I have to say that this was not the first time, I've travelled from Helsinki to Loimaa by train. It should be fairly straight forward: just change trains in Toijala and you won't accidentally end up in Tampere. What could possibly go wrong?

Well here's a little map I drew you using Google Maps, so that it's easier to follow my story.

Green line is our train route and the red arrow is a little taxi "short cut".

Okay, when I was still considering which train I should buy my ticket to, a friend invited me for coffee in Vantaa. It's on the way, great! ... So I went to see him in Vantaa. I had an hour. Unfortunately, I spent half of it in a forest with a coffee machine and a huge broken suitcase. I had a coffee machine, because my friend had lent it to me so that we could use it at my mum's 50th birthday party and my friend Tiia's graduation party. And something unfortunate had happened to my 25 kg suitcase and it only had one tiny little wheel left. And no, I didn't mean to end up in a forest, but instead of taking the tunnel that lead to the parking lot where my friend was waiting for me, I had taken the tunnel to a forest. So instead of an hour's calm coffee drinking we ended up downing a 4-minute speed coffee from a kiosk while standing at the station.

After I safely back on train, I nicely placed all of my luggage on the shelves I can barely reach and found a good spot for my suitcase to stand up. The train was fairly full but I had found good seats for me and Laura, who was meant to get on at Hyvinkää. She got on put her stuff away and take-away pizza out of her suitcase.

Dinnertime!!!

Oh, but that would be way too straightforward wouldn't it? Soon we realised that everyone else was getting off, and we were just sitting there eating pizza. Well, of course we were sitting in the only coach that was going to be left behind at Riihimäki and that we had approximately 1-minute to get all of our stuff and to run to one of the coaches that would carry on with the rest of the train. Laura lost a bottle of Fanta in the process. It was tragic.

After finding new seats and the train was moving again, we thought that we could just sit on the train and eat. Finally. We were very happy about this and I was telling Laura about my forest adventure and she was talking about meeting her family.

Then I asked Laura when exactly we would need to change trains again. And at the same time the conductor walked in saying:

"Tickets from Toijala?"

Oh, yes, of course we had just driven past our stop while chatting. Fortunately, there was a nice couple on the train who were getting off at the next stop at Viiala and they helped us phone a taxi. Fortunately there was some extra time, and we arrived back in Toijala 5 minutes before our train arrived there. But hey, let's look at the positive side! We didn't have to stand in freezing rain waiting for the train - instead we got to see Viiala.

Back in Toijala!

I think it's quite funny how many things we managed to fail during this 2-hour journey... But in the end we made it home for Christmas!

But was it a white Christmas? Well... It was raining, but because we are ninjas at getting lost and then finding things, we found a little pile of snow!

How was your Christmas?

Does photo quality matter?

I've been getting really stressed out about cameras recently. 

I've always enjoyed taking photos. When I was in primary school, I had a film camera. I was able to take 24 photos － sometimes 25 or even 26 if I was lucky! － before I had to take them to the photo shop to get them developed. In 2004, I got my first Nokia camera phone as confirmation gift. I used it to take some cat photos and random selfies that I could put on IRC-galleria, the online site the Finns used to use before Facebook. But I still took all holiday photos with my lovely film camera. After I got back from a language course in Oxford I took 8 film rolls to the photo shop. The lady who worked thought it was a lot. The times have changed. Imagine if almost 200 photos from an adventure-filled holiday was still a lot!

We visited Paris on the way home from Oxford.

In 2007 I got my first digital camera as a present. I still used my film camera a lot though, and normally took both of them with me when I went somewhere. I have several albums filled with photographs from all of my adventures. But nowadays all of my photos (well not all but some of the best ones) just get uploaded on Facebook. That's the only place where I have some of them, thanks to Microsoft Support that deleted them from my hard drive.

Fitting room mirrors have been handy whether I've been using a film camera or a camera phone.

But I really love taking photographs. They help me remember all the fun things I've done and amazing people I've met. I feel like photographs keep me together. My memory has been very bad recently and it has really helped that I'm able to look back in time in form of photographs, and that way being able to remember things that I would have otherwise forgotten. I might be a completely different person if I hadn't had a camera all of those times, because I wouldn't be able to remember them!

I've used a digital camera i.a. at Avebury, Aberdeen University and Stirling Castle.

  

What's the point of going on a holiday if you can't take photos to remind you of the sunny days when you sit at home and it's raining outside?

It's almost Christmas!

Today I woke up. (Well yeah, that alone is quite an achievement for me...)

And I realised that there's only a couple of days left until I'll be trying to fly to Snowland for Christmas. And I have't even eaten all the chocolates in my advent calendar! Also, the snow is not guaranteed. Thank you global warming. But I wish there will be snow!

I have spent the three most recent Christmases in Scotland. But this year it's time to do some crazy flying around Europe and sleeping at airports to get to the Finnish Christmas Wonderland.

Finland, the land of trees and snow.

I have bad experience of flights being delayed, cancelled, diverted and whatever other things could happen to them. So I never really expect to get where I am trying to fly. You can read about it more in my post "About unexpected situations!". From past experience I am flying via Scandinavia, because they are more prepared for snow and will not close the airports like the rest of the Europe tends to do. And when I say Scandinavia, I really mean Scandinavia. First we're flying from Aberdeen to Stavanger, Norway. From there we fly to Copenhagen, Denmark. And from Denmark we fly to Helsinki!

Helsinki Cathedral. Or the "Church of Doom" as the Finns like to call it.

I quite look forward to spending Christmas in Finland this year. I'm taking Laura with me and we'll see where we end up spending it. We've been invited to three different households on Christmas Eve. Fortunately all of them are in the same town.

But Christmas in Finland is fun! Teletubbies even made an episode of it.

That's exactly what it used to be like in my childhood! I'm not sure what I'm going to wear this Christmas, now when I don't have an elf costume.

Loimaa, the little town in Proper Finland where we're going to spend Christmas, is not that bad either. As long as there is Christmas food, Christmas tree and my cat. It might even be enjoyable. It's a small town - most of which is agricultural field or forest. It's name basically means "countryside". The greatest landmark is the grain elevator - the huge building for storing the crops. They even put fancy lights on it.

Loimaa! Photo by 16valve at taloforum.fi.

But what! I didn't realise it was almost flying time already! I better get on with doing laundry and packing. I can't really do laundry without emptying my suitcase that I currently use as a laundry basket. And I can't pack anything because I am almost out of clean clothes. And if I start doing things with it I could just start piling Christmas presents in it already. Tomorrow I'm also going to meet a friend I haven't seen since first year, do the rest of the Christmas shopping and then go to our Japanese society's Christmas meal! Where having hot pot. I'm so bad at eating hot pot, but thankfully there will be skillful people there to help me.

Icy Tampere.

Can you feel the Christmas approaching?

Birthday time!

Hi!

There's this thing that happens every year that is a good excuse to have a fun day. It's when we finally get to tell people how old we actually are. And then for the rest of the year you are expect to round down to that number. Last Sunday I finally reached the age of 24,00 years, and many people wished me to have a fun day and and a wonderful year. It was amazing to see so many people write on my Facebook wall just to wish me a happy birthday! And to get some text messages and cards too.

So, I thought I'd tell you how I spent that day!

This picture is not foggy, it's just demonstrating how sleepy we felt on the bus.

Obviously, the day started by getting woken up by a beautiful girl to realise that it was my birthday and that I was wearing a ball dress. That's how birthday's should start right? No need to do anything to your face because, magically, your make-up is already on, and a fairy godmother enchanted you into a fabulous dress.

Well, okay, I had come home from a Dance Festival's after party 5 hours earlier and fallen asleep on the sofa in full gear. That's what three glasses of vodka sometimes does to you.

But it was all okay, and I had a shower and got ready, and then Laura and I jumped on a bus and headed to cinema to watch Nativity 2: Danger in Manger!.

It has two of my favourite actors in it: David Tennant and Joanna Page.

Just watching David Tennant makes me happy, but adding Joanna Page, cute kids singing funny Christmas songs and a real donkey made it absolutely worth it to get up early and go see it at 10am.

Cinema!

After watching the film about a bunch of kids travelling to Wales, we headed to an Irish pub in town. I had booked a table, but we had some confusion with the name it was under. But after we realised that instead of Tia-Maria, the table was reserved for Tia Mallo - we found our table. Because obviously many people want to book a table in an Irish pub at the opening time on a Sunday.

I got some presents! It was very exciting.

What is round and has a trunk? I bet you'll never guess what this is.

There's also this film clip of me looking at a present. I tried to add some subtitles too, because the pub was a bit noisy. I hope the video works.

I've never tried to edit an video, because I've always thought it's very difficult, and haven't even tried because I've been too scared of embarrassing myself. Maybe I'll try one day, if I get a camera I can film with.

I got a text message from a mystery person, letting me know that he couldn't make it.

Then there was food! Laura and I had half a burger each, because we had taken our breakfast to the cinema and weren't super-hungry yet. But Liz was hungrier.

The Ultimate Burger.

She ordered an Ultimate Burger. This is what you get in pubs when you feel very hungry. It has everything you can order in a pub in one burger.

But no one knows how it's meant to be eaten.

After lunch we went ice skating, but unfortunately there's no pictures from there, because everyone was silly enough to leave our camera phones in the car. But it was fun to get on ice again! I would like to go there again soon. Would anyone like to come with me? I'll try and take some pictures next time too!

It was a fun day! It wasn't a super-amazing party, but I got to eat a lot, and I got lots of eating related things as a present: frying pan, pancake mix, maple syrup, bowls and chopsticks! I also got to spend time with awesome people and to laugh and practise my favourite sport! 
And by favourite, I mean the only one I like.

Love confessions

Oh look, it's December!

It's time to open our advent calendars! Mine is a Hello Kitty one. Yesterday I was telling my girlfriend about my nightmares and about how I probably would get nightmares if I ever had to enter a house of someone who is obsessed with Hello Kitty. Then I was trying to light candles, dropped the burning match and nearly set the carpet and my leopard patterned blanket on fire. In the end it was all okay, except my finger that now has a Hello Kitty plaster on it. Don't play with matches or this might happen to you.

To celebrate the start of this crazy party month, I thought it would be time for some self-examining "...and that's who I am" picture therapy. For me. But you can do this too if you haven't already!  In the meantime you're just welcome to learn more about my secrets.

This time I'm going to tell you about things I love. Except I find love as a very strong word and almost never use it. It makes me sound too passionate. And I'm not a passionate person! Or maybe I am, but just don't want to show people that I am? To be honest, I'm just overly worried about people finding out what things I really like or even love. Because then they'll know how to hurt me most. And it will leave me in a really vulnerable position. By telling people that I generally like many things but nothing in general will leave them in a lot less clueless position and then they can just mock me about things I don't really care about! But then only those, who I will tell my secrets to, will really know anything about me. But maybe it's time to change that.

Would you like to hear confessions about my feelings?