Jane in Finland: Tuesday September 7 - Exploring the town day to Night

At Noora's flat

To put myself out of the lazy mood I was in yesterday evening, I researched the nearby tourist attractions and asked my flatmate about the interesting places in Jyvaskyla. For today, I had two goals - visit the harbor and the tower in Harju which overlooked the city. Little did i know that today's adventures would take me to many other places other than just those two.
I started my day off with a healthy breakfast for champions as any good day should be started. The weather was also agreeing with my choice of sights for today as it was sunnier and warmer than any other day since I've arrived. The harbor was beautiful and I saw many fishermen, people walking their dogs, nordic walking and other students out exploring the city. A couple of fishermen who didn't speak any english, offered to take a picture of me with the harbor in the background as they saw me struggle with the timer option on my camera. I was extremely happy about this and asked if I could take their picture in return. I think they agreed. As I was taking the picture, one of them caught a fish!! It was just like in a movie. I was at the right place at the right time. I set off to the Harju tower in great spirits after this fish experience.
My navigating skills are improving everyday. I found the tower with next to no problems although it was my first time there. Compared to the Calgary tower or the CN tower in Toronto, this was a tiny tower and I braved to take the stairs all the way up. I took some excellent panoramic shots but didn't linger as an amorous couple decided that it was an appropriate spot for a rendezvous. At the bottom of the tower, I was pleasantly shocked to find a Natural History Museum of Jyvaskyla. It is not a big museum which must have been why it wasn't very advertised in my guide book. It was a quaint museum with many stuffed animals and history of how the region was formed. Unfortunately it was all in Finnish so I could only use common sense to piece information together.
By 12.30 pm, I had already visited 3 places. Productive, n'est ce pas?
Instead of going back home for lunch, I remmembered someone telling me that the free store and survival kit payment office was open from 1 to 3 so I pedaled to Kortepohja (which for me is on the other side of town). Wrong choice. The office (and I hoped the free store too) opened at 3. There was only an hour and a half until that so I decided to get and snack and go for a walk to explore the area. At 3, I paid for my survival kit and found out that the free store didn't open until 5. This time, I went home because my stomach was complaining.

The kick-off party hosted by ESN was tonight and Noora had invited all us girls over to her house for some late supper before we went to Club Night. I wasn't as good at finding her house as I was at finding the tower. I seem to be the problem child when it comes to finding things. She cooked some traditional finnish snacks for us. We sat and chatted about all sorts of topics before she walked us over to the club. Club Night's music selection was much much better than Freetime's but it was SO crowded with no room to dance defeating the purpose. I talked to Annelies' friend Lenny from Holland. She was very friendly and we made plans to go for lunch next week when she got back from the Aland islands trip. I seem to be doing a lot of talking in general. Perhaps by the end of this semester I will even change learning styles from visual learner to auditory learner.