Holiday Inn Oulu

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

... is no scholarship on offer so I had to work out the dollars and coins for survival.<br><br>A few facts:<br><br><ul><li><br><br>Finland only started a 3+2 education system in 2005 to stay in line with the whole system in EU. Previously they only offer a direct Masters education.<br><br><li><br><br>Masters Programme are relatively new in the market so it is not surprising to find new courses emerging in the universities in Finland. <br><br><li><br><br ...

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 

... I finished exploring Tornio (there's not much more to it) I hopped a bus back to Kemi and wandered around there for a while, while I waited for the train back to Oulu. Not much to Kemi either, though there is quite a nice Marina. Tomorrow I'm catching an early train (actually several trains and a bus) to Pori, where I'll spend Juhanus - Midsummer. Hopefully today's good weather will carry on in Pori, as midsummer promises to be an excellent celebration :)

After what seems like the longest day of travel ever (maybe because it was actually almost 2 days?!) I finally arrived in Oulu. The entire journey was good, no major disasters, though I spent a fair amount of time worrying that there would be, lol! The flight from Vancouver to London was long, but I managed to sleep a bit. Probably would have slept better in one of the 1st class pods that they so nicely advertised on the ...

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 ...

... youtube.com/watch?v=e98PEx6b aiA. you see, conan bears an uncanny resemblance to the president of finland, Tarja Halonen, who spoke at the forum. it was actually pretty cool to hear the leader of the country speak, it was the first time i had been in the same room as a world leader (okay, so finland isn't exactly a world power, but still, it was great that she came!) - unfortunately she ...

... Aaron & Paula & kids, Gabe & kids, Oli & Toivi & kids, and Reuben & Anu & Helen of course. The next day, Steve and Judy took Elaine, Gunnar and I to the Santa Claus land (in the city of Rovaniemi) in the Arctic Circle. It was a lot of fun for the kids and neat for me to see!