make sure that Maxime has a fantabulously superrific first trip to Europe in August 2009!

I won’t start translating the whole thing. Because 23 pages is a lot!!!

But I will provide a link to another website for those who would like to read it in French though. If anyone’s interested.

So, I’m marking this goal as done. It’s a total success, thanks to Emilia, Tiina, Antti, Juho, Laura, Sanna and Gemma!

Woah!!! I shiver only to think about those past three weeks, and how they were fantastic! And to think about all the great people I’ve met there, Juho, Antti, Tiina, Sanna, Laura, and my sweet little sister that I love more than anyone else! Not to forget Gemma in London, we had a lot of fun!

I have to catch up on everything now, the coming back is quite hectic so far! I think pretty much everyone knows that I always read everything my subscribers write about, but now I haven’t read anything for 23 days! But I’ll do my best to catch up in the next few days, just give me a chance. :)

For those who wonder how the trip back home was, here’s the little story! Emilia already wrote about the moment when we were at the airport, so I’ll start from there.

I had a flight from Helsinki to New York, which lasted for almost 9 hours, which seemed so long. Especially that for once, I didn’t succeed sleeping on the plane. So I watched a movie (Aliens vs. Monsters), 6 episodes of the Simpsons and 4 episodes of Family Guy, plus totally rocking a History Trivia game, and watching Greenland from the sky. SO IMPRESSIVE!!! There’s like not even a kilometre of land, and then only massive ice! And even in the sea, only glaciers and icebergs! I think it’s a pretty cool thing to be able to say “I’ve seen Greenland”. :P

When I arrived in New York, I had to do very quick because I had only one hour and 15 minutes to catch the other plane. I passed the customs, they made it fast for me because I was only transiting, which was nice because I know that Americans tend to take an awful lot of time when it comes to security in airports. I picked up my luggage, which came in the first ones fortunately, and headed to the American Airlines kiosk to register it for the next flight.

Then come the problems. I had to go through the security checkpoint, and I’m not kidding… There were at least 400 people waiting in line there, and there were only 4 agents checking our things! It took an eternity to go through this place, so long that I ended up missing my flight. I was totally pissed off! I went to the gate where the flight had just left and talked to the guy working for American Airlines. Fortunately, this guy was very kind and helpful and succeeded in finding a seat for me on the next flight to Montreal, and even if it was 5 hours later, at least I wasn’t stuck in New York! So I just waited there, explored the airport and wrote in my trip journal. Oh, and the plane taking me to Montreal was a funny one! It was a 42 seats plane, so small! :P

I finally landed in Montreal around 23:00. It took something like 45 minutes to go through customs and borders, but fortunately it wasn’t long to find my luggage, who had flown a few hours before me. Once I got out of the airport, my uncle was waiting for me and he took me to his place for sleeping. I woke up around 8 in the next morning, had breakfast and hit the road shortly after that. I was eager to get back home. The drive home went pretty well, I arrived around 16:00 and it was really nice to drive my car again (I had not driven for over 3 weeks!!).

Yesterday night, my parents, brother and I went through the pictures of the first memory card I had. We might see the rest tonight. I was very tired and went to bed early. This morning I started working again, and it’s hard to start working again after three weeks off!

Now I have a few goals to mark as done, and a lot of entries to write. I won’t mark this goal as done yet, because like I said, I kept a journal of the trip and I’ll try to translate it to English and post it under this goal, so that you can have some kind of little summary of the trip. :)

Monday 10th. We left Karvia in the morning and my mother drove us to Tampere. But first we made stops at my sister’s flower nursery again and then we also visited Jämi, a (nature) activity centre in Jämijärvi.
In Tampere we quickly had dinner at a Chinese restaurant before hopping on the train to Helsinki, Juho came to see us off.
We got to Helsinki in the evening and met up with Laura. :) We took our stuff to her place and then explored some areas of the city before heading to bed. We had so much fun at one little playground, oh lord. :D

Tuesday 11th. Laura came to escort us to the harbour in the morning and Maxime and I got on the boat to Tallinn. We had about seven hours to spend in the Estonian capital city and we used those hours very well. We explored the old town thoroughly and saw many wonderful places, houses, towers and things. Our day in Tallinn was a really good one, we had very nice weather as well.
In the evening we got back to Helsinki.

Wednesday 12th. This was Laura’s day, but since the weather wasn’t very nice, we decided to start our activities later. So we got to sleep late, after which we made our way to the Finnish national museum. That place was very interesting, I hadn’t been there before. :) After some hours in the museum we headed to the centre of the city, visited one mall, had dinner at a restaurant, visited Laura’s work place and explored new areas. In the evening we went to the movies (Brüno) and after that we walked back to Laura’s place, Maxime sprinting like a half a kilometre ahead of us.

Thursday 13th. Sanna’s day in Helsinki, she met up with us around noon and we went to see the big tourist attractions that we couldn’t see the previous day with Laura because of the bad weather. After eyeing the places around Senaatintori and Kauppatori, we took a ferry to Suomenlinna. Suomenlinna is an old fortification on a little island on the coast and it’s a World Heritage Site. I hadn’t been there before and I truly enjoyed the place, as did Maxime. We walked around, found more cannons, explored tunnels and caves, admired the pretty scenery etc. Very impressive place. We happened to have wonderful weather, too.
Once we got back to the mainland we continued to explore some more new areas and we also had a bite to eat in a little sandwich bar. In the evening we said big thanks and bye to Sanna and headed to Laura’s place.
Maxime had a great time in Helsinki, he really loved that city. It was his favorite place. He even bought a “I ♥ Helsinki” T-shirt, heh.

This morning I travelled to the Helsinki-Vantaa airport with Maxime and we bid farewell around noon with smiles on our faces, no tears were shed this time. :) So he’s on his way back home as we speak, he might already have left New York (where he changed flights). You’ll be hearing from him in the following week, I bet!

I was granted the permission to mark this goal as achieved, I succeeded in being a good Finnish tour guide. Maxime had an awesome time here, we saw lots of different places, experienced tons, had fun. Max even said that the time he spent here might have been the best three weeks of his life. :) And that’s all I needed to hear; that he had enjoyed this trip. That makes me very happy.

We had a bit of a change of plans happening here while Maxime was in Jyväskylä; Juho and I schemed together and now we’re taking Maxime to see Turku and Naantali tomorrow! :) Maxime was fortunately very happy about this surprise. He’ll get to see one more significant Finnish city before he heads back home on Sunday.

So today was Max’s last day in Tampere. I whipped up some plans for us and we ended up exploring the indoor market place Kauppahalli, we visited the Moominvalley museum (and I’m glad that Max liked that place too, ‘cause I just love it there) and then we met up with Tiina and Antti and went walking around in Pispala, another part of the city. We had a fun day and the weather was great again.
This evening we’ve cooked at my place and went through tons and tons of photos. :P

Almost time for good-byes now! Uh-oh!
^{Didn’t have time this week to post about our adventures, but I’ll get back to you on that later, for sure.}

Ok where to start…On the first evening in Jyväskylä we had a little walk in Lutakko. And then we found this old building there, and I didn’t know what was it, and it kinda looked haunted :D After that someone had written 666 Route on the road so that definitely made the place really scary :P Oh and it looked like it had been written with blood :D _{The sun was setting which really made the effect.}

Yesterday we continued exploring the city. We went to Harju, which is a hill in the middle of the city. In top of it, is a viewing tower where you can see pretty much the whole city. Luckily the weather was really good too. And then we went to Natural History Museum, which is in the same building. There was a moose, which tried to attack Maxime, but luckily Maxime won and the moose is still dead :P _{Sure there where other dead stuffed animals, but I think the moose was the best :D}

Then we had a walk to University. We tried to find the Museum of University, but we weren’t lucky. _{Eh, the place probably wouldn’t be worth of visiting.} Then we continued to the other campus area and went to the other side of the Jyväsjärvi. There is this huge sculpture, which is pretty ugly. Maxime said that it looked like huge wrapped piece of aluminum folio and I think he’s right :D We walked around the lake and then went back to my place. After having the dinner we went playing minigolf and Maxime won. Rest of the evening we just took it easy and I showed Maxime the internet comic called Ctrl+Alt+Del which was so funny that he just ended up reading it rest of the evening :D _{Yeah, Maxime is easy to entertain :P}

Today we had a walk again. This time to the other lake, Tuomiojärvi. I really like the place myself and it seems that Maxime liked it as well :) We tried to find swans cos Maxime hasn’t ever seen one and in the museum we only saw a dead one. But we weren’t lucky :( We even went to bird watching tower. Then it looked that it would start to rain so we walked back to my place. I introduced Maxime to Carassonne. _{I can’t believe there’s people who hasn’t played it!}

Tomorrow we are heading back to Tampere, in the afternoon I think. Maxime thinks that Jyväskylä is quite peaceful and relaxing city and I am happy that he has liked it here :)

Maxime left to Jyväskylä with Tiina today and he’ll come back to Tampere on Thursday. I hope he’ll have a great time there. :) But I have no doubts about Tiina’s skills as an entertaining hostess.
^{In the meanwhile, I’ll have my bit of a (well-earned) holiday over here. I need to work out next semester’s curriculum, my course choices etc. I’ll try to write about last week’s adventures here at some point as well.}

‘Ello! At what time would everyone like to go to the amusement park Särkänniemi on Saturday? The park opens at 12 and closes at 20. Maybe we should go already at noon?
They’re predicting very nice weather for Saturday, as well. :) Looking forward to it already!

Yesterday we left Karvia and went to Jämijärvi, the town where I was born. My cousin Saana had her confirmation party and we spent most of the day there, in my childhood home (their family bought our old house when we had to let it go), surrounded by my family and cute animals. I was worried that Max wouldn’t have a nice time, because he didn’t know any people there etc, but everything went nicely and he enjoyed himself. :) And there were a lot of ‘first’s for him! He had never before seen sheep, now he has; he had never before seen a pig, now he has; he had never before petted a ferret, now he has; he had never before touched a horse, now he has; etc! :D Yes, my aunt’s family has a lot of animals. I had a great time there as well, I just love getting to spend time with my family. ♥
After the party we went to visit a little beach where I always swam at as a kid. From there we went to visit Uhrilähde, the Sacrifice Spring, where the sand bubbles underneath the surface of the water. It’s really cool and Maxime was excited about the phenomenon, determined to learn what causes it, heh.
And then Maxime and I rowed and walked to Lehtisaari, my family’s island. That’s one of my favorite places in the whole wide world and I was happy to hear that it was actually probably Maxime’s favorite place in Finland so far. That place really is magical and I’m so glad I got to show it to Maxime. People who visit Lehtisaari tend to fall in love with the place. :) We explored most of the island and also played a bit with the horses and the sheep.

When we got back to Karvia we had some dinner after having observed the drama between my mother, Jari and the grill (which ended up going into the trash bins, eh). I baked us a chocolate cake, it was Max’s belated birthday present. :)

Today we’re first heading back to Tampere, then to Helsinki and this week will be mostly spent in Helsinki and Tallinn!

^{Maxime insisted that we use this picture here as the main photo of the day. My mum gave us bananas in a park in Pori, took my camera and said “two little monkeys”, and Maxime did that. I think the look on my face is pretty expressive of the situation. :P}

To start off the tale of today, Maxime said that today was the most tiring day of the trip so far. That’s because we sat in the car a lot and it was really really warm today, too. We might have been sunburned a bit as well. We saw a lot of places, and even though we all got somewhat tired, we had fun too. Maxime’s favorite place was the city of Pori, he liked it a lot. It is a very beautiful city.
Before going to Pori, though, we first took a bit of a tour of Karvia’s centre and ran some errands. Then we started our road trip and visited Kankaanpää, Reposaari (♥), the beach Yyteri and then the city centre of Pori.
It’s a real shame that I couldn’t go swimming today, there were so many beautiful swimming places especially in Pori. But we’ll try to go swimming next week.