Pietari

Dave and I took a 2-day ferry trip to St. Petersburg in November. It was the exact same idea as the ferry trip I took to Tallin last November, if you recall reading that post. Nonetheless, our boat left on a Monday evening, arrived to the port in St. Petersburg on Tuesday morning, and on Tuesday evening we set back off for Helsinki. Wednesday morning we were back on land and headed home. It was a quick trip, but well worth it. I have been itching to take a ferry trip to St. Petersburg since moving to Finland last year, and thankfully I squeezed it in before moving to Spain. 

So in typical fashion, the ferry trip was an excuse for most of the passengers to drink copious amounts, sing their best/worst ballads at karaoke, and then dance at the dingy discotheque. I think it's hilarious to watch the performances at karaoke, so Dave and I witnessed a few atrocious renditions of songs, which we'd never even heard of before, before calling it a night. 

Decorations in the ferry bar

We figured we'd at least indulge in the 2 for 1 bloody marys

Watching the karaoke, and wishing my picture wasn't being taken.

So on Tuesday when we arrived in St. Petersburg our plan was to wander as much of the streets as we could before having to get back onboard. First, we were forced to take a shuttle into the city from the harbor, so we made the most of that and let it drop us off right in front of St. Isaac's Cathedral. From here, we made a loop around the city with the Peter and Paul Fortress being in the middle of our walk. We saw all kinds of gorgeous buildings, Dave practiced reading all of the Russian signs he possibly could, and we checked out quite a few second hand shops on the hunt for children's books so Dave could keep practicing. In the end it was a really good day, with temperatures that were still bearable, and despite not having enough time in the city, we enjoyed our day exploring St. Petersburg very much. My favorite thing that we saw was the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, mostly because I'm convinced that it looks like a Willy Wonka factory, but anyways the pictures will tell the rest of the story of our trip.

The world's worst picture of me and the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood.

Willy Wonka lives in the top spire.

He hates when I try to take his picture, can you tell?

I don't want my picture taken either!

Ship across the way from the Peter and Paul Fortress.

The pedestrian crossing signs look as if the dude has thrown out his back.

He gave in and gave me this awkward pose of him with the Peter and Paul Cathedral.

Thumbs up for the cathedral.

This was how much of the Hermitage we saw...

And then we stumbled upon a wedding that we felt inclined to take sneaky pictures of.

In our attempt to find food we accidentally stumbled upon an ultra hip place where I mistakenly ordered 15 euro potatoes with steak, whoops! At least the tea was good.

But the cool cat family tree on the wall of the cafe was the redeeming feature in the debacle.

And back to St. Isaac's at the end of the day.

I <3 Russia!

Oh and naturally we indulged in the ridiculously cheap wine and beer available in the supermarket with the rest of our rubles for the ferry ride home.

And now my passport has rad stamps in cyrillic.

The first thing you see when you get off the ferry in Helsinki, the home of Europe's largest selection of electronics, which are probably, always the cheapest...

Since getting back to Helsinki from this little mini holiday, life has been quite crazy. Getting my life ready to head home for 6 weeks, preparing for my semester in Spain, and saying goodbye to Dave for now. Between schoolwork and restaurant work, we all managed to get together for our attempt at Thanksgiving, and that was good fun. But for now it's back home for 6 weeks, and I can't wait! I promise to do an update about my time at home at some point in January, but happy holidays for now! xx

Happy Thankskipping!

Autumn in Helsinki

Autumn has been quite demanding both mentally and emotionally, but thankfully the season changes again soon enough. I'm not wishing away time, don't worry, but I have just been crazy busy, and that gets really old after a while. But that said, there have still been some lovely things that have happened in the past 2.5 months. Mostly my time has been taken up by my thesis work, which has proven more exciting in some moments than in others, but the following pictures can try and capture that.

But this first picture was one I took when I was flying back to Finland from England in the end of August. I think that the coastline of Finland is quite beautiful with all the specks of tiny islands. I want to set up a tent on one for an indefinite amount of time.

Tervetuloa Suomi - Welcome back to Finland.

And as soon as I got back to Finland it was back out into my gardens to do a couple more rounds of bee sampling before the season was over. Mostly I just relished in being outside in beautiful landscapes, it got me through those long days. And quite a few gardeners have some hilarious scarecrows, which provided for quite a bit of laughter each time. I'm still considering doing something with all of the pictures I captured of the scarecrows of Helsinki. 

This guy was quite exceptional.

And as most of you likely already realize, I had to kill all of my bees for my study, but not to fear, bees aren't endangered here, so the colonies will manage to continue on despite what I extracted from the ecosystem. And maybe I'm just reminding myself for continued peace of mind, but all of the worker bees die at the end of the season anyways, so it was just expedited. Anywayssssss, it was quite interesting going out to the gardens and seeing what I 'gathered' from leaving pans out for 24 hours. I placed 9 yellow, white and blue pans (3 of each color) containing a soap water solution in each of the 12 gardens I sampled at for a period of 24 hours. I then retrieved whatever had fallen inside the next day. Like so..

I'm a tad convinced that yellow gathered more, I'll know soon enough. And a rock was placed in each to weigh them down. And the 'Helsingin Yliopisto' label was to encourage them not being stolen by gardeners, that translates to 'Helsinki University."

A bee gathering food in one of my gardens.

The next step, after my field work was over, was to discard all flies, spiders, etc. that I inadvertently collected. Then I pinned my bees so that they could be identified more easily. The wing venation and coloration of the thorax can be critical in identifying the different species of bees, this is why pinning them is necessary. And then I identified them with some immense help from a bee guru at the Natural History museum. Juho, the bee guru, gave me a collection of reference material of the 19 most common bees in Finland so that I could more easily begin to learn the differences between the types of bumblebees, this was a tremendous help! I can officially say that all of my bees and wasps are successfully identified, yay! And then I weighed my bumblebees, so that I can determine their fitness. Ideally, the weight of a specimen reflects it's overall health, or in other words, the heavier a specimen, the more healthy it is. And once the weighing was finished, and the bees were given proper labels, I donated them to the Natural History museum, where they will now reside (I admittedly feel pretty cool having a 'collection' in the museum, granted they reside in the basement, but still). 

Separating out bees from other winged creatures. I LOVE microscopes..

The 19 most common bumblebee species in Finland. A worker (male), female, and queen of each of the species.

Pinning a parasitic bumblebee, she is obviously a queen if you can't tell by how absurdly large she is!

Fancy scales with homemade aluminum foil balls for stabilizing the bees.

I spotted this 'cat lady' when leaving school one day and it made my whole day! Note the cat in the box, the cat backpack, and the superb choice of wardrobe! I hope that one of my cat lady friends transitions into a full blown cat lady like this one day!

Now that all of my identification work etc. is complete, I have begun the statistical analysis portion of my thesis project. This will be quite a frustrating time, I have been told, and it's living up to its expectation already, but nevermind, just as long as it gets completed in a timely manner I'll be okay. So my life has consisted of staring at Excel spreadsheets and stastistical computing models as of late, and my eyes are growing weary already. But from time to time I manage to take breaks, phew! 

So now that you're all bored from hearing about my thesis, let me tell you about the other things that I've managed to do this fall. Well, one of the first weekends that I was back in Finland I went to Lahti to visit my friend Magda, and we sat on the lake outside of my old apartment; it was a perfect night for watching the colors dance in the sky like only Finland knows how to do. 

This has no filter, I swear.

And then it transitioned into these fabulous shades of blue and purple.

I also got to check out the local beehives that are kept at my school's campus. There is some really interesting research being conducted on honeybee hives at Viikki (my campus) regarding the varroa mite, one of the main causes of colony collapse disorder in honeybee hives. There are a handful of places in the world that are not infested with the varroa mite, and one of them is the Åland Islands, the islands between Finland and Sweden. One professor at the university has extracted a handful of hives from the Åland Islands and is monitoring the progress of these hives in Helsinki to determine how long it takes for them to be infested by the varroa mite, and if there are any conclusions that can be drawn from when the mite inevitably arrives. Needless to say, honey is a happy by-product of this research, and I got to help harvest the honey. It was really interesting to see this process, since it was what I was originally interested in. I am still very eager to take a beekeeping course and to learn how to be a beekeeper some day. 

These are the 'clean' hives at my campus.

Scraping the wax from the comb.

Filtering the honey! It then got poured from the plastic bucket its being collected in, to glass jars for taking home! Mmm!

What else can I share.. well I have spent some time with other friends/classmates as well, and that has been quite nice. We spent an evening making Chinese dumplings, and I can tell you that my future does not lie in any Chinese restaurants, that's for sure, but it was still good fun. 

I don't have the dexterity for this kind of stuff.

I also spent Magda's birthday weekend with her, and it was nice to have a weekend like that! But the highlight was making sushi for the night of her actual birthday! I could easily eat/make sushi every day! It's so much fun to make and it's super healthy! The trick is just finding the doll hairs to fund eating seaweed and avocado every day for the rest of my life..

Magda and Alana roll sushi.

I also doubt my future lies in a sushi restaurant, but that's okay, I'd prefer to do my botch job, with no judgment, from the comforts of my own home, or friend's home in this case.

Well I also managed to get the nerve to sign up for a full marathon, and I'm already wondering if I am crazy, but I'm mostly just excited! I will be running the Barcelona Marathon next March with my dear old pal Casey and her lady, Chelsea! I'm really looking forward to their visit, arguably far more than I'm looking forward to the race, but all of it will be a memorable time, for sure! Yay for friends visiting, running until we nearly die, and then traveling around Spain, boom!

We might be crazy...

And then as you've maybe already read about, I got to take another trip to Cornwall, which I'm so grateful for! But as I was flying back to Finland the colors of the trees were magnificent, and it calmed my heavy heart.

Autumn colors soothe the soul.

And then not long after returning from England, the snow started for the first time of the season, yay! Nothing like snow in October :-/ but oh well, I'd rather it snow than drizzle rain at 35 degrees, it's just nasty like that. So the snow is actually welcomed on my part, I know, who the hell have I become! 

Snowy train rides.

And my good friend Sunrise's daughter is actually doing her sophomore year of high school in Kouvola, a town east of Lahti. Naturally we had to meet up because it's just too small of a world for me and someone I know to be living in the same country and not see each other! Spending an afternoon with Makyla was really nice, her positivity and joy really radiate and it was so calming to see someone from home. I can't wait to see her again before I leave for the holidays. 

Yay for seeing friends from home!

And Halloween, my favorite holiday! What's not to love about being scared, dressing up, and eating copious amounts of candy without having to feel guilty afterwards?! Nothing I say! So naturally scary movie watching ensued, and a Halloween party was had. I dressed up as Mrs. Fox, from the Roald Dahl classic, Fantastic Mr. Fox. There were quite a few animals present at the party, so we all got together for a blurry picture.. 

All Hallows Eve.

And that about does it for the past couple of months. I'm looking forward to going home for the holidays, and to be writing my thesis from a Barcelona apartment, rather than crunching numbers, but all in due time. In the meantime, I will continue to find the little joys in this otherwise stressful time of my life. Sorry to anyone that I've dumped on recently, and sorry in advance for any future unloading, but I promise this phase of my life will be over soon enough, and I'll be just as excited to talk about something else as you'll all surely be to hear about something else. In the meantime, thank you everyone for the continued emotional support, it means more than any of you know.

Autumn in Cornwall

You want to know what the coolest and worst thing in the whole world is.. RyanAir. God, if you have ever taken a flight on this beloved airline you will know exactly what I mean. Basically, you can find deals on flights that make you wonder if the plane will crash due to a disproportionate allocation of resources, or rather if your vision is poor and it's finally time for another eye exam, because a 40 euro round trip flight from Finland to England is almost comical. But then you get on their bright blue and yellow planes and it all makes so much sense, it's a big advertisement flying 32,000 ft in the sky. They are constantly over the intercom the whole flight advertising some bullshit that no one really ever wants, and good god is it annoying. But thank you Steve Jobs for allowing me to crank up my tunes super loud. But hey, I should quit giving them free advertising.

So my dear friend Jessica just moved to Italy to be with her gentleman, and naturally we figured that meant we should meet somewhere in this continent for a trip together. Going to England seemed like a no-brainer because we had gracious and willing hosts in Cornwall, and Jessica could also see her good friend in Brighton as well. Double whammy! So an adventure in beautiful southwest England ensued again, and I was so excited! 

I got to England 5 days before Jessica and made my way to Cornwall for a few days of visiting before Club Jessica reunited. The time was spent visiting with my favorite people in the world (on this side of the Atlantic at least ;-) ), and it was grand. I got to go to a lovely birthday party, which reminded me of being at Discovery Zone, for anyone back home that remembers that place! And we took a trip down near Plymouth so I could meet Dave's godfather; thankfully I woke up in time for that haha! And then Jessica arrived!! Yayayay! 

Once Jessica got into town we spent lots of time exploring the coast, eating delicious food, and checking out the local pubs! It was just so good to see a face from home, especially her face :-) But I will let our pictures do the talking. And on the day before my flight back to Finland she and I spent the day in London with a tour guide from Indiana. It's weird how small the world is when you can manage to be put in touch with someone that knows everyone you do from home, but yet you never knew yourself. 

My favorite sign in Bradworthy :-)

I spy with my little eye, an octopus..

Skipping stones at Welcombe Mouth

Ahhhhh.. look who I found!

Suns out, tongues out!

Beautiful walks along the coast path

I'm convinced that these cows have the best view in the world.

He would run, while we would walk, but hey we can't all be as cool.

My lunch date ♥

More views, it's too good.

We are pretty good at doing Sundays :-)

Yeah, so maybe I am a tiny bit obsessed with taking pictures of the ocean.

This is what fuchsia looks like, I want it everywhere at any future abode I reside in.

Oh and so obviously we got hair cuts.. this guy was especially thrilled, but not as thrilled as Pete and me were.

Another day walking, and another day of him running.. all the way out on the tip of that cliff is a dot, that's Dave, running to the edge of the world. 

But we had fun taking it slow.

More I spy the little runner.. but you can't make out his weird 5 finger shoes in these pictures ;-)

Jessica feet.

Fungus among us... get it??!!

We naturally had to have all the cliche foods, like cream teas, mmmmm!!!

We saw some amazing sunsets. This one is from Ann and Pat's deck (the neighbors)

Sunsets over the ocean and wine with these two is enough to make everything feel okay.

Friends hanging out at Crackington Haven.

And we're SO excited to be here.

We've got ups!

Club Jessica hits England.

Testing to see if we still have our panorama skillz

And taking it to a whole new level.. watch for our 4 presence panorama to debut in November.

Sunset on our last night in Cornwall

What a perfect trip this was. Having great friends and a lovely mister with an equally lovely family makes my heart filled with joy. And all the better for being in beautiful Cornwall ♥