Christmas Time!

I am back home in Hamburg. The Christmas time is over and it has been a good one! A. and I were in Finland with her family. However, since it took me three days to write the previous three sentences I decided now on the fourth day to just let the pictures speak and not write more than the annotations. So, enjoy!

Calm Finnish landscape

A. driving for the first time in a long time. We were coming home from the dentist, who had to fix something in my mouth.

Simply beautiful and relaxing

Getting the Christmas tree

Taking an evening stroll through the snow

A. learning from her mother how to make traditional Karelian pierogies

Putting the star on top of the Christmas tree

Wrapping the last presents

 The awesome Christmas dinner

A. with her niece N.

A. with her Christmas present

Christmas storm aftermath

N. having a morning nap

Little L. with the bear A. and I gave to her two years ago when she was born.

The women fixing the lunch

Playing with the kids - loving it!

~M~

Packed and Ready!

Everything is packed and ready. I did the dishes, brought the couch in order and made the bed. Today the postman again brought good news; for her birthday in September I gave A. a gift voucher for tickets for the musical The Lion King. We finally decided on a date and ordered them two days ago, today they arrived. Now I am just waiting for time to pass to finally hit the road... or rather the metro to go to the airport.

At the airport I will meet A. who is at work at the moment. She has our tickets and I hope she take me with her to Finland. We will go the wrong direction first, though. We will fly from Hamburg to Frankfurt and from there to Helsinki. What a waste!

Anyways, A's dad will pick us up. I will not take my laptop with me, wont need it. So folks, for now that will be my last post before Christmas, I guess. I hope you have a good one and may all your wishes come true.

 

Merry Christmas!

~M~

Christmas Cards!

Our post man brought two more Christmas cards today from A's friend K., who is working on the Canary Islands at the moment and from my aunty from Aachen. So nice that everybody is thinking about us; I reckon that's how it goes once you live together. We however were very bad with sending cards. In fact we did not send a single card!

Anyways, in the afternoon I went to pick up A. from work, but when I came to the office the whole crew was sitting together and invited me to join for a glass of sparkling. After some time sitting together we went together to the Christmas market for a Glühwein. Later also A's colleague's boyfriend A. joined our small group, which was very nice.

When we came back home we ate the lasagna that I had been cooking during the day and started packing for our Christmas holiday in Finland. Tomorrow evening we leave. A. will come straight from work and I will start the journey from home. I can't wait to be back there and see the whole family again. I haven't been there for 1 1/2 years and really miss them all. It will be a great time!

~M~

Back in HH!

After visiting my parents on the weekend I am back home in Hamburg. Today I am totally useless and not doing anything. I will go to pick up A. from work later on and we will go to the Christmas market. Tonight I will start packing for the Christmas holiday in Finland. I really can't wait to go there!

Christmas eve 2009!

~M~

Everyday life!

Today was a normal day. The alarm was ringing way too early as usual and then A. went to work, the first time in a week. However after half a day she already came back home, since she was not as fit as she thought she was. Anyways, I went to the shops and then prepared our lunch. Later I did the dishes, nothing special there.

Now A. and I are sitting in the living room doing this and that. We made it nice and christmassy with candles and music and all. I really can't wait to be in Finland again, to see all the people and spend the holidays with them. Most of all I am looking forward to the good food and the sauna evenings; really missing that!

~M~

Being productive!

Yesterday after writing on my blog I decided not to go out anymore. I went to the shop and bought some food to cook dinner. After eating I was so tired from the working week that I nearly fell asleep in my armchair. I was watching some episodes of How I met you mother and went to bed quite early.

Today is a good day so far! I was very productive after a good night sleep I did a lot. I got up fresh and happy somehow. Although the weather wasn't that good in the morning I fixed myself after breakfast and talking to A. over Skype and went out.

I went to the city to look for a birthday present for A. She said, that I should not buy anything, since I am coming there for her birthday, but I would feel bad coming with empty hands. So I bought something small for her!When the weather got worse and it actually started raining I decided not to go out again, but stay in and finally write my report about my year abroad. Since there was no real deadline for it I totally forgot it, got a reminder by my university and forgot it again. Now came the second reminder and I put an alarm into my cellphone to write it this weekend.

Since I do not have a real desk here in my room and didn't wanted to write the whole bloody report with my laptop on my knees I took one of the shelves and used it as a table. It's actually pretty good and now I totally buried my plans of buying a desk for the room.I wrote and wrote and suddenly I realized, that it was already quite late. I had written the whole report at once and wrote about 5 pages about my life in Helsinki. It was good to recap the year and to write down important things to consider. It is amazing how much I would have been able to tell. I was already keeping it as short but informative as possible. Crazy how many impressions and experiences I had during this year in Finland!

Anyways, writing made me hungry and so I warmed up the rest from yesterday evening. I am always making so much more, than I can eat at once. Its hard to cook for just one person somehow and I really miss the time in Kannelmäki, where we were mostly cooking together!

Now I will relax a bit more, bring some order into all my stuff here in the room and maybe put the laundry on. There are no plans for this evening, so I will see, what the next hours will bring!

~M~

Back from Sherwood Forest

Yesterday after the morning tour to the hotel I went back home, to have breakfast and to get my camera. As I mentioned before I bought a new camera and was pretty eager to finally use it.

So I took it to the hotel to be with A. a little more and to test it. I have to say, it is amazing and a lot of fun taking pictures. Here are some few impressions.

First picture taken with the camera.

Without zoom

With half zoom

With full zoom (God, I love it!)

I love the depth (she will kill me for putting this picture up) Btw. this picture was take with full zoom and flash from about 10m distance, the flash is super!

Just possible with a DSLR!

A. with her new Jopo-bike

After this two hour photo-tour through the hotel we went home. A. went to sleep three hours, since she didn't feel too good the whole day and she wanted to be fit for the evening. The reason, that she wanted to be fit was, that we had tickets for the Raseborg summer theater. This theater is an open air stage next to the Raseborg castle ruin, where I went earlier with the bike.

This year they were playing Robin Hood and had a really nice and creative stage for this play. The cast are all amateurs, who act just for fun. However, the play was really well staged and the songs were nice and extremely well sung. Since it was the first day with the new camera, I took some picture.

I have to say, that I am already super satisfied with the camera and when I get not more into the camera and have time to try different settings and stuff, then it will be a lot of fun taking pictures and even more fun looking at them.

No I have to stop writing, the laundry is ready, I have to hang it, that it dries until tomorrow. After that I have to start packing my clothes and things, since I am leaving Finland tomorrow evening! It's weird and exciting!

~M~

Early Morning!

This day started early for my; At 8:45 a.m. A. called me from work asking me to come. She did not feel good and felt close to fainting. So I went there to help a bit and mainly to ease her mind, to give her the feeling, that if something would happen I would be there. When she felt a bit better, I went back home.

Now I am going to have breakfast and then going to make my new camera ready for use. I can't wait to see the pictures this evening on the PC. I reckon they are going to be amazing! I guess I will show some of them tonight in a post! Now breakfast!

~M~

Oh Happy Day!

Today was a super nice day, with a lot of stuff to do and a lot of nice happenings.

It started off with pretty long sleeping, which was nice, since A. was all the time before getting up around 5 o'clock, for work. Anyways, we were then having morning coffee, talking and preparing sandwiches and snacks. We were about to go to Högsand, a for Finland pretty long and wide beach close to Ekenäs. We took A's small niece with us, since she really enjoys spending time with A.

When we were picking her up, she was already eagerly waiting for us with loads of stuff, like a frisbee, and inflatable boat and so on. She couldn't wait to leave.We spent a really nice couple of hours at the beach and enjoyed the weather and the sea. This beach is actually really nice, since you can walk far in, just having the water up to the ankle.

Then when we came back and were taking the post out of the post box the good news arrived. I ordered a couple of days ago a new camera. It's Canon EOS 1000D with a Tamron 18-200mm Lens. I was waiting for it already a couple of days and hoped, that it would arrive before I would leave Finland. In the postbox was just a notification, that I could pick up the package at the post office.It was weird though, since there were three of these notifications. A and I thought that the company might sent the Lens and the Camera and something else in separate boxes. Anyways, I made my way to the post office and A went to the shower, since we wanted to go later still to her brother's summer cottage.

When I came there I gave the women at the counter the papers and she was doing her stuff on the PC, putting in something and went to the back. When she came back, I was slightly shocked, since she was bringing two huge packages. The one I could not see what it was, but the other one was clearly a bike.

A. had been participating a couple of weeks ago in a competition of Fanta and she had gotten a notification, that she had been a week's winner and the price was a Jopo-bike. She had been waiting for it for ages and actually did not really expected it to come in the next time. Now it was there and when I came home, she was totally happy and kinda speechless.We both got things, we had been waiting for for a long time and now these things were finally there. It was like Christmas.

However, we didn't have enough time to enjoy it. We were heading to Öby, a village close by, where the family of her sister in law has their summer cottages. A. had been telling about this place a lot and I wanted to see it before I leave Finland. So we basically invited ourselves for a nice barbecue.

When we came home, we fixed the Jopo-bike, A. took a test-ride and then I quickly changed and we biked to the beach, where I took an evening swim.It was such an amazing day, that it makes me sad to know that I am soon leaving and we wont have any more of these days. I really like it here now, which is mainly because of A. and it will be hard to leave. But you have to move on in life, it just goes on and on!

~M~

Oslo here I come!

Finally, after more than three weeks of "nerve-war" my university finally approved my internship and I ask my self: "Was it really THAT hard?"

Anyways, I am going to Oslo. Basically next week. I will be starting in 8 days. When I got the confirmation from the company, that I could start the internship, I thought, that I would get everything sorted out with out stress. Now I have one week left to organize everything.

Anyways, I was so happy after the positive answer from my university today, was looking for apartments right away and went then with A. for an evening swim to Österby beach. After such a warm day the right thing to do.

Now I am going to fix myself and will cycle with A. to town. Not to watch the world cup final, but to meet up with M., the girl A. went to Australia with. She is soon going to NYC to do her internship, she is studying to become a fashion designer.

I am more than happy, that my life can go on as planned, even tho it means some stress to find a place to stay and flights and so on. In the worst case I will go couch surfing until I find a flat!

~M~

Sunday!

Today is a super summery Sunday! I dont exactly know what I am going to do! I am still waiting for my university to answer, but since it is weekend there is nothing to come.

DONE!

Today will be again a chilled day. However, I am lately getting fed up with doing nothing. I really need an occupation again. I also can't really go around with the bike anymore, since A's father took his bike with him on the two week trip with the boat. The only thing I have left is A's old bike, which weights like two tonnes and seems to use sand instead of oil for lubrication. No fun to ride, whatsoever.

Anyways, I just remembered, that we will meet up with M. a good friend of A. for a beer or three tonight. It will be good to see some people and to be out again. I reckon this is what I miss most here in Ekenäs, the crowds of people when you go somewhere. I am really a big city person and need to have people, wherever I go. I really miss that!

~M~