Sweet Home Helsinki

I'm back home in Helsinki, and I've had an interesting week so far. Last Friday morning I took 3 trains to Manchester airport where I had a three hour wait. I flew to Stockholm and then to Finland. I was so incredibly excited as I would be coming home to not only my mum, but also Jenny, Sofia and Jenny's boyfriend Chris. I landed at half midnight local time and Jen, Sofia and my mum came to pick me up. We stayed up a while before we went to bed and ended up only getting about 3 hours sleep. The next morning, Sofia, my mum and I went to play badminton. My mum then dropped us off in Helsinki centre to do some shopping. We went to Stockmann for some lunch and saw some people outside with a donkey handing out balloons, leaves and singing carols. We took a picture with the donkey and got a free balloon! We then went to Zara and Sofia bought a shirt. We went to H&M and Monki too. At 3pm, we met Jenny, Chris, Roos and her friend Naomi at Tennispalatsi to watch The Book Thief. We all cried only when the little boy Rudy died since he was our favourite character and such a sweetheart. Everyone came home and Roos' family came soon after for dinner. We talked about university, nightlife and funny stories. We also had a challenge on who could frown and smile at the same time and it was very funny. The end of the night consisted of having a ping pong tournament.

The next day we said goodbye to Sofia and in the evening Chris and I baked some delicious cookies. The following day, I helped Jenny with her packing and we took her and Chris to the airport aswell. I felt sad for the rest of the day but mum and I played some games to cheer up. The following days consisted of baking, shopping, sightseeing, cooking, cycling and going to the Flamingo spa on Friday. My mum had a day off so we decided to treat ourselves to a lovely (yet expensive) spa day. The spa was incredibly posh: 6 different smelling saunas, 2 different smelling steam baths and 2 mineral water swimming pools which had underwater music playing. We also paid a little extra for tapas and wine and for a back, shoulder and neck massage which was really invigorating! When we felt relaxed enough we also went to the waterpark next door, which was included in the price. On Saturday, we drove to Jarvenpää with the bikes and cycled around the lake. It was a warm and sunny day, and the atmosphere was showing the first signs of spring.

Last Saturday outside Stockmann 

Sightseeing in Helsinki

My favourite bicycle route in Helsinki

View of the local beach

Some lovely flowers outside the house

View of the lake from our cycle route in Jarvenpää

Me looking at the map

Working Hard and Hardly Working

Hello all, so it seems a new pattern is emerging from this blog writing experience, one every two weeks. Last week wasn't particularly eventful or worth blogging about apart from my driving lesson on Friday, and another one this Wednesday. I've not really been doing much these two weeks, just going to some lectures and finishing my last essay due this side of the Easter holidays. Izzy's friends from Manchester came down on Tuesday evening and lots of people turned up to celebrate. While everyone else went out continuing on from predrinks, I went home for an early and sober start for my driving lesson the next morning at 9:00am. In the past two lessons I've been learning to reverse into a bay parking space and my instructor even let me go into the countryside and go all the way to fifth gear (after I asked him of course). I'm really enjoying my lessons and although I have stalled a couple of times, I think I am becoming a lot more comfortable and relaxed when driving. I used to be scared at the thought of driving as I felt that I couldn't feel in control of the car, but after a bit of practice I've started to feel it is the other way round and eases the experience.

After my lesson I went for a stroll to the north of Aberystwyth and went to Boots to stock up on some make-up. I later went home and soon after was surprised by Izzy, Matt and Jess' (Izzy's friends from Manchester) visit. We went up to the union for a game of pool and on our way down stopped by the field behind the Biology department building to watch some people playing medieval live action role playing games and killing eachother with their swords. It was quite funny, and we took some not so conspicuous photos of the event. They went home and I went to Iceland to buy some Cactus Jack's for later, had a shower when I got back and got ready for the night. Since I always straighten my hair I thought I would try something different and curl it, just as an experiment, but turned out a lot better than I expected so I kept it. I went over to Izzy's and we started drinking and playing games, even though there was only four of us. We left the house fairly late and met their other friend from Manchester (Jess O.) who is a fresher here. We stayed a while until we decided to go to Yoko's (my first time this academic year). We had loads of fun and met some funny drunk people. We stayed till the end, at around 4am and Izzy came over to mine so we went to spar to get some snacks and watch Eastenders. The following day, I was a little hungover but in the evening I did some washing and a little bit of packing. I went to the Castle hotel pub and met Izzy, Matt and Jess for our last drink together.

Some exquisite architecture on the Promenade of Aberystwyth

The cliff railway up Constitution Hill

Some broken stairs from the storm in January

This made me smile while I was on my walk

The medieval live action role-playing, I'm not sure what the guy is doing by the tree in the top left

My first attempt at curling my own hair