Hotel Palomestari Kemi

Sadly we left Perra's for the unkown. we travelled all day, by bus to the tiny village of Murek, train to Lulea near the east coast of Sweden, another bus to the Finish border and by foot across the border. The journey was fairly uneventful, saw some moose, read the War of the Worlds (and contemplated the destruction of Leatherhead by martians) and avoided scratching my now many mossie bites. The ...

It's Thursday and finally a little sunshine! I've spent the last few days in and around Oulu, exploring the city between burst of rain. I've only been drenched a couple times, and I manged to stay safely inside during the thunderstorm :) Oulu is a great city, it seems very clean (despite the large paper mill constantly spewing out smoke), and it's very accessible by bike - which is how I've doing most of my sightseeing. There's wonderful wide bike lanes ...

... politically back in Burma. They showed us YouTube clips of some of the demonstrations in Yangon, Burma back in September. There is hope that the repression of the Burmese over ethnic groups such as the Karen and Kachin will be loosed and that there will be peace. The civil war (or "Revolution" as they call it) started when the British pulled out. War has continued since 1949. More than a million people have been killed. Many atrocities have been committed. Many ...

... for the best, but planning for the worst case scenario of having the trip come to a complicated ending. We boarded the big blue fancy double-decker bus for the last Swedish outpost Haparanda, a Finnish-sounding name. We ask for buses for our final destination of Kemi. They tell us that they have not timetables for Finland and that we had to take a little mini bus across the border. The bus driver wanted Euros for the fare which we did not have ...

... have quite a bit more snow than Helsinki and the temperature is about 5 degrees above zero Fahrenheit. Klogay Doh who does not have a car brought two friends by the name of Nawu Kham and his wife Hser Lwey Wahy.to drive me back to their apartment about ten minutes away. They are also Karen refugees who have resettled here in Kemi in May last year. When arriving at the Doh apartment I was warmly greeted by Margaret and Elsa. The first thing they asked about ...

... and economic development. not that they don't still have their issues - apparantly it is virtually impossible to get proper bus schedules for the finnish part of town on the swedish side, and vice versa, and each blames the other fully. but when you think what is happening at the borders of some countries in the world, there is definitely a LOT that the world could learn from this peaceful nordic region...

... already acquainted. We come inside the apartment and Meung Aye's wife Ma Chou appears. She is Muslim, a Burmese of Indian origin. We hear children in the background. There are several families from Thailand who live in this complex. Margaret quickly brings up the subject of baptism which is why we are here and have been preparing for several months. Her husband Klo Gay has been baptized since January 1998. She says that our original plan ...

... the two hour 15 minute bus trip to Tallinn and got off at the airport. All four of us checked in. We got on board our small prop ATR and took the 20 minute flight to Helsinki where I'm writing this while we wait for our flight to Kemi. This trip has been so helpful to consolidate a number of hanging issues with printing, the brethren here in the Baltics and happily seeing further development in the preaching of gospel. We are hopeful that all systems are on track ...

... out in a little sledge drawn by two reindeer. However, our lead reindeer seemed to have an attitude problem and was misbehaving so our guide drove us back to 'the ranch' after 20mins to get a more well behaved reindeer. It all worked out for the best as we ended up having an hours ride. The wind was so strong out on the sea and we were eternally thankful for the reindeer furs that were covering us. Once back at the tepee we received our reindeer drivers licence and purchased an ...

... guy who is shown running through the forest on his CD; he's anti-Bush. (A lot of "underground" American music is popular among young Swedes.) The crazy girls are intelligent and fun. But, when we went out to a full nightclub that night, my friends dispersed to go talk to guys. It was a "pick-up" kind of nightclub, and I'm not really a "pick-up" kind of guy. I called it a night. The next night, I was out again. After the bars closed, two young guys on bicycle came by and ...