Aland Islands

On the road again...to the Aland Islands!

Hello everyone!

I am leaving on a trip to the Aland Islands tomorrow and will update my blog with pictures of my trip when i return on Friday. And of those who don't know, the Aland Islands is an archipelago in the Baltic Sea. It is situated at the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia and forms an autonomous, demilitarised, monolungually Swedish-speaking administrative province of Finland.

I wish everyone a wonderful week...

More update...

Makkara braaing!
We decided to do a typical Finnish thing and have a Makkara (the Finnish are big on grilling their Finnish sausage known as Makkara over a fire in the freezing cold weather) braaing session one late afternoon at the braai facilities right outside our building. The days are nice and long now and the sun sets at about 9:10pm so perfect conditions to have a late afternoon/eve braai.
The tons of Makkara grilling away on the braai...
Wolfi excited about sinking his teeth into his "Makkara-hotdog!"

Finally an update again...

Hello all my lovely friends and family!

I have to admit, i have been neglecting my blog a bit...i have been busy working on my master's thesis and questionnaires that I hope to administer during May here in Oulu. Well, what i have been up to follows shortly...

FORMULA 1:

On Sunday was the third formula one race of the year in Bahrain and Marko and I (the only formula one fans, out of our group of friends) were especially looking forward to watching the race especially since we were not able to watch the previous two. So we decided to get together on Sunday, and Petra, Paul and Naomi decided to join us. First Petra and I prepared a nice pre-lunch before the match for all of us...a typical Baltic dish called Burek. 12:30pm everyone else came over for lunch and then got ready for the formula one to start at 2:30. The pre-match interview started at 2pm and at 2:30 just as the race was supposed to start...an episode of "The Simpsons" was shown instead!!! We were to find out on the internet that they stopped broadcasting the race on normal t.v. and is only shown now on a paid channel...what a disappointment!
Our television, that usually is packed away in the cupboard, was taken out, and dusted off especially for the formula one race.




Good food, good wine and good company!

This past week we have been busy trying new recipes and baking a lot...and to accompany that we found a really good Australian red wine, that has become a favourite amongst all of us...
The really good Australian red wine...obviously recommended by Paul...

One of Paul's amazing recipe ideas...mini gourmet pizzas (with tomato, feta, basilica, onion, sun-dried tomato, mushroom and cheese..DELICIOUS!) Marko and Paul, my assistant chefs, busy preparing the pizza's

Easter weekend!

Lind (an Icelandic exchange friend of mine) invited me to spend Easter weekend at her place about 1,5km from campus. She stays with a wonderful Finnish family in a beautiful big house on the top floor of the house. That evening we made an AMAZING easter dinner which consisted of roast chicken, potatoes, onions, rice, grave and atleast 4 different coloured vegetables...a feast! Especially for us exchange students...it was food heaven!
An excited Lind dishing up the food...
Hmmmmm......our feast!
Lind and I tucking into our food....The next morning we met with another exchange friend of our...Benjamin (from Germany) for easter breakfast followed by Icelandic chocolate (that Lind's parents had set over to Finland from Iceland) and sweets. Later that afternoon we decided to take a nice walk along the lake since we were blessed with an wonderful warm, sunny easter day!

Life in Oulu!

Some of my exchange friends have taken some amazing photos here in Oulu and I wanted to share some of them with everyone...
Just before our walk to the frozen beach the other day, we spotted our "furry friends" that live in the trees in front of our building. Paul was able to get a really good close-up photo of one of these furry "critters" during his evening snack...although, was looking a bit annoyed that "paparazzi Paul" was interrupting his/her dinner...

Wolfi (my Austrian mate) who lives on the top floor, has amazing view of Linnanmaa campus and the lake..here is a panorama of my campus and surroundings...home sweet home!

We often witness some amazing sunsets...here Patrick and Wolfi took some beautiful photos of sunsets at the beach in Oulu...

Cooking with Naomi (my new British room-mate)!

British "surprise" fridge-cakeOn Monday we were introduced to our new room-mate, she arrived all the way from England, Cornwall. Today she invited Wolfi, Petra and I to some traditional British tea and some fridge-cake. The fridge-cake consisted of a mixture of marshmellows, 5 slabs of chocolate, biscuits and nuts...
Hehe...while we (Naomi, Naomi and I) were preparing the fridge-cake the consistency didn't exactly turn out how we expected (hence the "surprise" factor) but we patched it up as best as we could and once it had hardened in the fridge, it didn't look half as bad...and tasted REALLY good...which is all that really matters;)

(Photo: Naomi (another British student who has the same name as my room-mate) and Naomi (my room-mate) mixing the stuff)