Best Western Hotel Samantta Haukipudas

Introduced to downtown with a drunk guy urinating in the middle of main street at 4PM alongside his patient friends....with the unsurprised locals passing by. Had a good time being shoved all over the place on a Saturday night in the chilly city with great nightlife.

So all you get here is a picture taken at 3AM or so, almost as bright as day.

... of a scholarship dangling temptingly. So I went to the train station to get to Jyvasvla in a last minute change of plan because the coordinator at Tampere told me about another programme at the Uni of J so I thought why not go there and take a look. But the train got delayed 2-3 times and before I knew it, the train for Oulu was already on the track ready to depart. Maybe it is the hand of fate so I decided the plan to go Jyvasvla because the Uni ...

Today we took a cruise through an archipelago of twenty thousand islands to Aland Finland. It was an early start so we had a huge buffet breakfast on board followed by another as much as you can eat lunch. The scenery is magnificent as well! There is free internet connection on board , handy, as we cannot access it out in the woods!!

Four days until the trip starts. We have flight tickets purchased from Helsinki directly to Seoul and the hotel has been reserved in Seoul for the first 7 nights. We chose Hotel Shilla Seoul mainly based on the good reviews it has received on sites such as TripAdvisor (#2 of 200 hotels in Seoul). We got a great deal from Hotels.com for ...

1. Weaving the Incantation 2. A Servant 3. Born From Fire 4. Towards and Against 5. The Smoke 6. Better Unborn 7. Veil of Sin (Ei ennen soitettu, ikinä) 8. Silver Bride 9. Two Moon 10. Cares 11. In the Beginning 12. Silent Waters 13. Alone ----- 14. The Way 15. House of Sleep 16. Black Winter Day 

... back in coach (is it really necessary to rub it in like that?), but I did get a blanket, pillow, and eye mask which is better than nothing. and the seat beside me was empty, so I got a little bit of extra room :) Since the first flight was delayed an hour I was worried that I wouldn't have time to make my connecting flight. but not to worry, I wasn't even listed on the "time critical" transfer board, so I didn't have to ...

June 9, 2008 After our lovely trip to Stockholm, our group decided to take advantage of a 3 day weekend. It was pretty easy to agree that we should make a visit to Finland. Lulea is only about 2 hours from the boarder of Finland. So, we gathered up some Euros, rented a car for the weekend and departed Friday morning. Along the way we spotted some ragged reindeer grazing along the highway and even a moose! Just before crossing the boarder, we stopped at a mega IKEA. We browsed ...

... t stay to listen to the rest of the discussions and presentations... it seems that there is never enough time to listen, especially when it is most needed. still, in many ways finland has got it going on as far as being environmentally and socially conscious and progressive, and it was really interesting to hear a president speaking who really seemed like she knew what she was saying... ;)

... a sandwich like it was a long time I hadn't enjoy... the great thing is that they still use the stamps system which means that with that one I got a free sandwich that I can use later. We ate by the harbour market which has wonderfully coloured house and a funny little man which looks like a mao guard. Our time was short as Laura's father was coming ot pick us up and bring us to Kuusamo and they still wanted to eat before leaving for the 200km ride to Kuusamo.

I spent some time with Stiina, a cousin who stayed in Longview during a summer five years ago. We went shopping one evening, then i stayed the night there and the next day we went for a sleigh ride at her sister's house, and that evening had Steve and Judy over for dinner and sauna. We used the outdoor sauna, so we had to haul out a bunch of ...