Finland update #1

So far Finland has been a lot of fun to visit! Maybe that's because I'm getting to hang out with friends all the time, and I have my own Finnish tour guide, but it's still a cool country. *g* The weather has been beautiful, clear and warm and sunny (mostly; it's been a tad cooler today and I wish I had worn something with longer sleeves). The country itself is also beautiful with plenty of trees and water and flowers and birds everywhere. Those darn birds don't want to sit still to have their picture taken, however; the flowers are much more cooperative.

Anyway, I arrived in Finland bright and early Saturday morning. The plane left New York a little late, so we got here about 9:20am instead of 8:50am. Let me just say the JFK airport in New York SUCKS. It's all convoluted and under construction, so in order to get to my gate I had to leave the airport, go up a construction ramp, and then go back through security and everything in order to end up right next door to the terminal I had been in in the first place! So stupid. Well anyway, the flight to Finland was long, and the movies they showed were awful (Match Point, which I watched and hated, and some cowboy thing that I didn't even bother watching). I listened to my mp3 player most of the time and didn't get any sleep.

The Helsinki airport seemed to be fairly small and almost completely deserted. I went to wait for my baggage...and waited...and waited...and waited. I wanted to call Jennie and Jani and let them know I was there and just waiting for my bag, but I couldn't find a phone anywhere. Finally someone told us that the luggage had accidently been driven to the wrong side of the airport and would be coming soon. I think I eventually made it out of the airport at least 45 minutes after we'd landed.

Jennie and Jani were there waiting for me, and they picked me up and drove us to the town where Jani lives, Järvenpää, where I'm staying in their apartment here. They have a nice cat named Oksu (sp?) who's about the same size and color as Jerry, except he gets into these crazy mood swings where he goes tearing around up and down the hall here. We spent the first part of the day exploring around Järvenpää a bit and having lunch at this place with really good pizza and bread. Jennie tried to find a place that would do her nails for the wedding. We also took the train to Helsinki so I could exchange my money there at the big station, and I did some souvenir shopping at the big department store there.

On Sunday we went to Helsinki's amusement park, Linnanmäki. It was very sunny and warm, well in the 70s, perfect for a day out. This amusement park is what I would describe as very cute. It's not very big, (with a few exceptions) the rides are all quite tame and short, and it wasn't crowded at all, so there were no long waits for rides. We started off with the silly haunted house and fun house, either of which I thought were very fun, except for the big slide at the end of the fun house. For roller coasters they have something similar to Space Mountain, an indoor dark outer-space theme roller coaster, a big wooden coaster, another coaster that's something akin to Psycho Mouse at Great America, and a very evil short coaster with a giant splash at the end that got me soaking wet!! I hate water rides, but I went on it for the roller coaster part, thinking it couldn't be all that bad (haha), and I ended up drenched. Jennie likes water rides; she and Jani went on the rafting one twice and complained that she still didn't get wet, so we went on the roller coaster one even though she can't stand roller coasters. Stupidly, I decided to go with them. =P

Well then it was Jennie's turn to suffer because we convinced her to go on this kiddie train-coaster ride, which was almost completely flat and quite slow...but apparently it was still too much for her, and it went around three times nonstop while we were on it (they were waiting for more people to line up for it I guess). Hehe, I think she closed her eyes the whole time. ;) But I didn't get away unscathed, either. I went on this super psycho ride with Jani where you're in a seat that spins every which way, tossing you upside down much of the time. That one left me with my head spinning and unable to walk in a straight ine; it felt like my insides had been put in a blender! I don't think I can handle a ride like that very often. I much prefered their version of Drop Zone, except on this one you start at the bottom and are shot up to the top, then you fall down again. That one was very pleasant. We also went on the big ferris wheel where I took a lot of pictures of Helsinki from the top, and the Viking ship that we had to wait a while to go on because someone had gotten sick on it and they had to clean it up; obviously we avoided that row!

We did make a mistake in that the park has a Sea Life exhibit, but by the time we got around to checking it out, they had already closed. Oops. Everything in Finland has very unusual hours; for instance the park was open from 1pm - 8pm, but the aquarium part was open from something like 10am - 5pm. Most stores seem to close somewhere between 6 and 9pm. Anyway we missed the sea life exhibit, but our wristbands were good for two days, so we were able to go back on Monday (today). The only annoyance with that was we had to wear the stupid paper wristbands for two days! Anyway at the end of the day we had dinner at Jani's old workplace, Carrol's, which is a European version or spin-off of McDonald's. I still like McDonald's better.

So today, since I'm still not entirely adjusted to the time and because I had fallen asleep so early, I woke up about 6am. After Jennie and Jani got up an hour or so later, we took the train and the subway to Helsinki for Jennie to have a trial run of her wedding hairdoo. This was supposedly going to take an hour and a half, so while she was doing that Jani took me to a marketplace for more souvenir shopping. It was quite a surprise when Jennie called maybe half an hour later saying she was done since the hairdresser had just done a quickie version of how her hair would be. Jani and I headed back to get her, and then we had lunch at McDonald's so I could see how it compared to the ones back home (surprisingly, they're about the same; in England and Japan they're totally different). After that we went off to the amusement park again to see the Sea Life section. It's a farily typical aquarium divided into different types of aquatic habitats with fish and animals to match. They do have a pretty large tank with sharks in it that you can walk through. There's one spot in it where there's a clear shelf over your head, and these two huge sharks like to rest on it right on top of you, which is pretty neat. We went through the whole exhibit and then left Helsinki. Right now I'm back at the apartment in Järvenpää while Jani is doing some sort of genealogy research and Jennie is meeting with the florist. I think I'll take a nap or read after I finish on the computer.

So that's been Finland for me so far. More to come when I have more to tell about. Also, I'll have lots and lots of pictures to share when I get back. =)



PS - Josh, I'm going to email this to my family, so you won't have to keep relaying to them on what's been going on with me. I miss you!