A mix of the new and old

Our crew.

We took a trip to Tallinn. It's three hours by ferry...the fast ferries don't run yet in February.












Glen was supposed to exit down low and Tim up high...goofballs.

What The Heck Is "m"???

While on a trip to the Temppeliaukio Church on Saturday, we stumbled across a strange and unfamiliar sign at the Olympic Stadium. While we understood the sign to be an indicator of direction towards certain places and venues, a small "m" after numbers was recorded next to each name. What is this "m"? Anton expended all his energy attempting to decipher the code, but with no luck. Maybe we will never find out what the magical "m" is.

ScRäBbLe Night

Last night we went to this pub called the Black Door. (So what it was at 7:30? We weren't the ONLY ones there.) We were pleasantly suprised to find they had a stash of boardgames. They were all in Finnish but we managed a game of Scrabble. The large quantity of vowels and umlauts didn't hold us back. Few things in this life are universal; board games being one of them.

PS. Nan won.

Cheaper than the 2 Euro Lunches

This blog is going well......but I think we need some more posts. I have a little side blog that I started before this shindig got start so feel free to visit. It has all my pictures and some of my thoughts that may get you inspired to write a little somethin- somethin' on this one! Enjoy!

http://www.morganonthemove.spaces.live.com

Suomenlinna

Sunday Feb. 3rd, going to the Suomenlinna island, was the most amazing time I've had so far. It is definitely going to be one of the highlights of this semester. I have never had so much fun with freezing fingers and toes (I learned that mittens keep your fingers warmer than gloves do). We were all freezing yet we kept going and went around the island, explored the old fort and village, watched Tim and Anton jump off the roofs of the old houses, took as many pictures as our freezing fingers could take and took the boat back to Helsinki , satisfied with the whole experience (on the way back we all sat inside, as opposed to outside on the deck since we froze on the way to the island!). Looking at the 276 pictures that I took, I realized many of them were of icicles and ice-covered rocks. The Cold is painful but it's also beautiful. I am sure that we are gonna have just as much fun once we go to the other island, Outo.

Suomenlinna Highlights

Here are some highlights from our trip out to Suomenlinna today!

Good Eatin'

We have become quite skilled at fitting a large number of people in tiny spaces while here in Helsinki.  In fact, we are surprised to find that, although the people tend to be rather tall here in Finland, the spaces that they occupy do not necessarily reflect their size.  In any case, last night we had a wonderful feast in the small studio apartment that Tasneem and I are sharing.  We started with bread and cheese of course and then moved on to a rice and vegetable dish, salad, pasta salad, roasted turnips and potatoes...and then dessert (chocolate and cake)!  They have these little cakes called Runebergintortut (we called them Poet's Cakes because they are named after a famous Finnish poet whose name day is celebrated this time of year).  No matter how much food is put on the table, we always manage to consume all of it!  Hopefully we can continue to have group dinners throughout our stay here, although I'm sure we'll soon be busy with school work– afterall, we are here to study architecture.