Ski-Jumping (not me, don't worry), and more hiking, math, and finnish.

The weather is really starting to change here. There are nearly twelve hours of daylight, and today the temperature was 32F for the first time in weeks. The most startling difference is that it is both very sunny and very warm - usually we only had one or the other. I haven't tried ice-skating on the ice track yet, but I better soon or the ice will disappear!

The past week and a half have been really interesting. I went to Kuopio, a town about 120km north of here, to see a World Cup Ski-Jumping event. It was really, really cold. I was traveling with Gabi, and Austrian who speaks Hungarian, Anja, a half-German half-Finnish woman, and Emmi, a Polish polymath with a disdain for table manners. We arrived in Kuopio around 4pm and were outside in -15F weather for about 4 hours. There were cheerleaders. The ski-jumping was really neat, but I didn't really understand enough about the technical aspects of the sport to make it super fascinating. Mostly, I thought to myself, "Wow. That guy just flew 400ft through the air on skis. I'm really cold. Wow. That guy just did the same thing. I'm really cold." Repeat 80 times. The biggest problem was the feet, because we were standing on snow. And the snow was actually colder than the air. And we standing on it. Around 7pm, we met a friend of mine, Kati, who is a student at U of Jyväskylä who happened to be visiting her family, who lives in Kuopio. She was nice enough to take us on a little tour of Kuopio after the Ski-Jumping, including a visit to an observation tower. After that, we went to a bar where there was a live band - consisting entirely of Finnish ski-jumpers. The music was terrible. But there's something you have to understand here - in Finland, ski-jumpers are superstars. People love them hardcore. And they party hard. These guys were seriously anorexic, and pounding the champagne straight from the giant trophy. It was hard to call them althletes after this - seeing them up close made me realized that they fail the first test for being a "real althlete": if I can beat you up, then you are not an athlete. After that, we crashed at Kati's place, since the only train back to Jyväskylä didn't get back until 4am. Thanks Kati! It was really wonderful to be in a real home after months in my flat with still-blank walls. We ate oatmeal with wild berries for breakfast - normal people, including non-hippies, pick tons of berries in the wild during the summer and freeze them for the rest of the year. Note to self: do this if possible.

Finnish Fact: Everyman's Rights. Why can't America be this awesome?

HIking this weekend was great because of super wonderful weather. We went to Tourovouri, about 5km north of downtown. In attendence were the usual suspects: Maria, Karoline, and Tatiana. It was sweet. We were almost killed by cross-country skiers, but that's better than almost being killed by SUV's, like in Ann Arbor.


I've been working VERY hard on math lately and not getting, well, really anywhere. The problem we're working on is quite hard, I think, and technically a nightmare. I met with Pekka today, and he suggested that I give up and move on to the next portion of the problem and hope that something happens subconsciously in the meantime. I hope this doesn't reflect poorly on me. I just can't solve it. I tried. A lot. I'm just not smart enough. Sigh. Math is hard. Somebody call Barbie - I need someone to commiserate with!

Maybe this will help: I've finally found a decent coffee shop.

I've also become more comfortable speaking Finnish. I now know about as much finnish as I did french after two years of study. I guess that's the benefit of immersion. My goal is to be able to have a real conversation in finnish before I leave at the end of may.

Other big news: I'm going to alaska to visit with family after I return from Poland. Seriously, my internal clock is going to be set to "cuckoo".

Check out my photostream for lots more photos.