Alright so I'm just gunna start off and say that Finland is pretty swell and in general I've been having a great time running a muck about the place. I've seen and done some pretty fantastic things here along with meeting some genuinely excellent chaps and chapettes. I've also received the odd letter or two from some of my most stalwart friends back home which is just lovely.
Its a bit odd right now, as a write this I'm looking out my window where just over a month ago there was still a large amount of snow covering everything, now the place is a luscious green marvel of a place and I feel somewhat like I should be an extra on the set for lord of the rings. And if I go back to January, when I arrived, the contrast is even greater. When I got here there were around 3-4 hours of light a day, -20 was a pretty normal temperature, and there was a good half a meter to a meter of snow on everything. Now its bright and sunny until about 10:30 in the evening and even after that it only gets a bit dim. there is no total darkness anymore. Which is creepy as shit.
I'm going on a trip to Dublin tomorrow night which sort of signifies the end of this semester. Every exchange student here is going home except for 2 Brazilian guys (and one of them is a master's student so he doesn't count) which has prompted some reminiscing on my be half. A lot of these memories are quite arbitrary ones of going out to bars and night clubs and getting wasted but there are also some genuinely swell ones which would cause a ventricle to burst were you to experience them all in one go. I can't be bothered to write all the things I've done so I'll just bash out some photos stolen from my friends since from what I hear, a picture is worth a thousand words.
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The river when I arrived
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| On really cold days the one part of the river that wasn't fully frozen gave off lots of steam |
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| Those thar northern lights |
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Makan' handy craft portraits of our selves
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| Casually walking into a night club in nothing but a bathrobe, boxers and shoes. |
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| Havn' a pint 'o cream on Paddy's day |
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| Dressed and acting like pirates on a cruise across the Baltic |
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| Soakin' up dem Swedish rays |
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| I wasn't present for this event, but it sums up Finland fairly well |
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| Shootn' ice at trees from a tall tower |
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| Painting the Union Jack onto a guy before heading out to a night club |
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| Taking part in the May day Celebrations. See here and here. |
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Enjoyin' dem great out doors and finding a BIG pile of sawdust concealing a pile of snow
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| More 'o dem outsides |
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| If we'd been loungin' like lizards on this rock two months ago, we'd probably be dead. |
So yeah, those give no real idea at all what I've been up but you kinda get the gist of it. I kinda went to uni for a bit too but that's all depressing and I don't like it at all, so that can go get bent.
Love and kisses.
