Back in Africa

Hello to all me friends and family around the world...

I arrived back in South Africa on Tuesday, unfortunately the internet is not like in Finland (24hr-super-fast-internet) so will take a bit longer for me to keep my blog updated..will update soon and put up some photos...

Till later...

Am Bodensee!

The past 4 days I have been visiting my cousin, Kai in Meckenbeuren. A small town in Bodensee, a district in the south-east of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany. The first day we took a train into Friedrichshafen and took a walk a long the promenade.

The second day we took a boat ride to Constance and spent the day in Constance. Constance is a beautiful old city!

Inga, Kai and I enjoying a few drinks at the beach bar along the Bodensee...

On the way to Lake Constance...

Some stunning views at Lake Constance...



On Wednesday I went to the Pfahlbauten museum...a fascinating stone-age village in Unteruhldingen on the bodensee...

Last sunset in Oulu and farewells!

The last evening in Oulu we watched an amazing sunset over the ocean at Nalli Kari, a popular holiday place in Oulu. A perfect way to end my amazing journey in Finland...

The next morning at 11am I boarded my plane from Oulu to Helsinki and met up with Marko and Paul at Helsinki airport, where we played a final round of "13teens" and then we parted ways, Marko flying via Stockholm to Vienna Paul to Berlin and me vis London to Stuttgart...

Upon arriving in Stuttgart I was welcomed with a huge hug from my aunt and uncle who stay in Lenningen. The first day we drove to Bad Urach, one of many beautiful small towns in the South of Germany.

Just before we headed home, we visited a beautiful castle on top of a hill...

Farewell, good-bye, Auf Wiedersehen...adieu!

Sadly the time has come...and I will leave this wonderful place that i called home the last 5 months! This morning at 11am I fly from Oulu to Helsinki and have a 6hour stop over in Helsinki. I will meet up with Paul and Marko at Helsinki airport as they also have their flights today so i will say my last farewells to them at the airport. Then I fly in the evening to London Heathrow and spend a night at the airport as my next flight to Stuttgart only leaves the next morning. So Thursday I will arrive in Germany and am ECSTATIC to be visiting my family there and then some friends as well.


The time in Finland has been unforgettable!
I will miss my apartment...
I will miss Elnadiometra (our basilica plant)
but most of all I will miss my "freaky roomies"...Freaky Elena, freaky Naomi and Petra (who is already back in Slovenia)

So...

FAREWELL FINLAND

Now...

GERMANY!!

Sunset in Oulu...at 11pm!!

And then there were three!:(

Yesterday morning we had to say goodbye to one of our room-mates, Petra, who flew back to her home in Slovenia. So now we are only three in our flat...one quarter of the "freaky four" is no longer with us...sniff sniff!
Naomi, Elena and me...in a rather depressed mood on Sunday morning just after Petra left for the airport...WE MISS YOU PETRA!!

HELSINKI!

This morning at 7:30am i arrived back in Oulu by night-train after an amazing two days in Helsinki. Amy (other South African exchange student) and I left on Thursday morning, but our trip started with a bit of a "hiccup". When we arrived on the train ready to sit down, there was a lady in one of our seats. We thought she had the wrong seat and when i checked her ticket she had a different date to us. Naturally i thought she had the wrong date and was about to point this out when Amy and realised to our horror that the date on our ticket was wrong - it said we were catching the train on Tuesday (which had passed) and not Thursday. We didn't know what to do and the train started moving. All we could do was wait for the conductor...of course we thought of all the worse case scenarios and we prepared ourselves to be chucked off the train but Amy said we should just be honest to the conductor as it was not our faults. Nervously we waited for the conductor to come check. When he came we immediately started explaining to him that they had sold us tickets for the wrong date but all he was interested in was checking whether we were in fact students. At the end, he were moved (upgraded) to a cabin (with tables) that we had all to ourselves...what luck! Amy and I holding up the tickets with the incorrect date...

For the rest of the day, we seemed to have just good luck. When we arrived in Helsinki (after leaving a cold, windy and rainy Oulu), the weather was AMAZING, warm & sunny. We arrived at 5pm, first we went to the Olympic stadium and then we walked to the Sibelius statue and stopped for a picnic. Amy holding up one of the ingredients to our sandwiches we made for lunch...yummy paprika flavoured salami! Afterwards we discovered the most beautiful, unique cafe' that specialised in making the best Pulla I have tasted so far in Finland so we enjoyed some pulla and tea and relaxed sitting on rocking chairs and chatting the afternoon away. At sunset we went to Senate square and took some amazing photos of the majestic building.

The next day we first went to the famous rock church in Helsinki and then we saw the changing of the guard at Senate square (the end of it). Afterwards we took the ferry to Suomenlinna Island. It was again an amazingly warm and sunny day...17 degrees! We had a picnic on the island and made ourselves some "deluxe" sandwhiches of egg, salami, cheese, tomato and cucumber...yum! But while we ate we got attacked by some crazy seagulls and Amy was robbed of some of her tomato, cucumber and cheese...right from her sandwhich in her hand, after which war broke out between us (Amy and I) and the seagulls...we had to fight them off with some stones...crazy seagulls!

One we had departed the island later that afternoon (after sunbathing for a bit in the glorious sun) we headed back to mainland and walked up the Olympic stadium and saw and amazing view of Helsinki!

Tea curtains & more basilica

My room-mate Elena was inspired by an art exhibition she saw in in Finland where there was a curtain made entirely of teabags. So a few weeks ago we were given strict orders to not throw our used teabags away, instead we started a collection of used teabags in our kitchen. The collection of tea-bags...Elena starting the procedure with some surgical scissors and green stitching wire.... and the curtain begins (1 or 2 weeks ago)

Today we adopted another 3 plants (2 basilica plants and an unknown plant) from our neighbours on the fifth floor, Carolina and Batek, who are going away to oulanka for the weekend and left us to babysit their plants for them.

INDIAN!!

Last night we went out to an amazing Indian Restaurant in Oulu (right opposite the train station) for a farewell dinner. Amy is the next to leave and will be flying back to South Africa on Friday evening:( May is a rather depressing month as students start packing and preparing to fly home, some sooner and some later than others!

The food was some of THE best Indian food I have ever tasted. I ordered a chicken curry with vegetables and I also got a tomato soup included in the price as it was the special of the day! First I was hesitant about trying the tomato soup as I have never been fond of it (well, as a little child i thought it was revolting and have never had courage to try it again)...however, to my surprise it was SO good, nice and creamy!! We also had three different types of naan bread to accompany our meal.

And of course we could not eat without a good bottle of red wine...this time one from Chile. Actually when we saw the menu we did not recognise any of the wines listed so we tried our luck and took one that sounded good...luck was on our side and it was the Perfect wine to accompany our meal!

Tomorrow Amy and I head off to Helsinki for two days so we are looking forward to exploring the capital. We just hope the weather won't be as bad as it is in Oulu (cold, windy and rainy)!
Amy's kummi family have been kind enough to give us a life to the train station tomorrow morning. Our train leaves at 10am then we have a 7hr train ride until Helsinki and should arrive there by 5pm. Luckily the days are so long that we will still have quite a few hours of daylight left when we arrive to walk around and explore (the sun only starts to set at 10pm in Helsinki)!

Sping in Oulu!

We have had some wonderful warm spring days in Oulu. All the lakes have defrosted and Oulu has changed into a green city. On out way into town last week, i took some photos of the park and lake nearby...it is especially nice to walk into town on such a beautiful day when the sun shines and one can here the birds singing and see the ducks swimming.
The photo (above) was taken on the bridge just before you get into the centre of town.
Lind and Paul trying out the "water bench"...we found it odd that the bench was situated IN the lake...

Amazing weekend with my Kuumi family in Kuusamo!

This weekend I had a wonderful weekend away in Kuusamo with my kummi family at their cabin. Milla taught me how to ski on Saturday...my first time and i LOVED it!! I think i'm hooked, something i plan to do again in the near future (i hope!)...one more reason to come back to Finland;) We ended up skiing for almost 4 hrs, first we started on the kiddies slope for our beginners practice, but soon Elissa and I had gotten the hang of it and was "promoted" to the normal proper slope. To be honest, when i first looked down the proper slope, my heart gave a skip as i thought i would never be able to ski down...but i took it slow in the beginning and found it not that bad and for the next 3hrs we skied non-stop!

Me, looking a it worried when i saw the much steeper slope ahead of me...yikes!

When we arrived back to the cabin we made some pancakes on the open fire...Finnish style...YUM!
We also went for two walks, one on Friday and one on Sunday...we were lucky to have wonderful sunny weather with the occasional fall of snow and a few drops of rain!









The view at the lake...beautiful!

Pancake Party - new record...117!!

A new all-time record was made...117 PANCAKES!! Our previous record, a rather dismal 69, even more impressive was that it was achieved by our two "first-timers", Paul and Amy...

The Pancake Party started officially at 7pm, but at 6pm Petra, Amy, Paul and I got together to start making the pancakes. Both Paul and Amy were "beginners" with regard to the art of pancake making so it was up to Petra and I to teach them the skill of Pancake frying.

Paul was a natural from the beginning, however did need some practice to get the wrist action 100% correct...and by the end of the evening he had progressed from making funny square shaped pancakes to round pancakes.

We ended up feeding 16 people. Everyone had to bring one filling too! We had everything from jam (4 different types), to grapes & bananas, ice-cream, to coconut cream filling and chocolate spread!

I was given the challenge of trying all fillings at once on one pancake, of course i HAD to try it! The pancake after i had added all the fillings..YUM!







Me, eating my "all-fillings combo pancake"









During the pancake making, there was always someone to keep count on the number of pancakes being made (as can be seen in the picture below).

1 May celebrations in Oulu town center

Today on the 1st May is official Vappu day and Amy, Petra and I walked into town as we had heard that there would be an outside market and some other events happening in town.

Amy, Petra and I in the market center posing with Oulu's famous Policeman...
We visited the market, where they were selling a lot of local food such as Makkara (Finnish sausage) and fish and chips...

There was also an orchestra performing outside in the centre of town...

Vappu!

Vappu-Finnish party week!!!

This week is Vappu week, the biggest carnival-style festivity that takes place in the streets of Finland's towns and cities and the student traditions are also one of the main characteristics of "Vappu". Today the students of Oulu university paraded in town and then at 2pm the first year students were "dunked" into a large container filled with water and ice-cubes and afterwards had to swim in the lake in town. A group of us walked to town at 12:30 to join in on the festivities and spectate the event.

It is also traditional to eat tippaleipa (funnel cake) and munkki (sugar coated donuts) so we bought some and enjoyed them while sitting at the lake. There were hundreds of people gathered around the lake to watch the swimming and join in the festivities.

Us girls (from left Barbora, Petra, Amy, ME and Lind) enjoying our Tippaleipa and Sima which is a sweet mead that one is supposed to drink during Vappu.
Pauly, enjoying his Tippaleipa!








A first year students being "dunked"


After we saw the first few students being dunked we decided to warm up in our favourite hangout - Hemingways, for some coffee and hot chocolate as it was a rather windy and cold day!

Farewell to Andrea!:(
When we came back from town, Andrea came over to say goodbye as she is sadly flying back to Austria this evening...
The farewell party: Marko, Paul, Petra, Andrea, Becky and I