Jane in Finland: Thursday October 14

Technology is completely unreliable! My 8 am Skype with my parents was highly unsuccessful. We didn't get more than 15 minutes at a time; the connection was terrible. But nothing could get me down on the last day of Maja's stay in Jyvaskyla. After breakfast, I did some household duties while Maja went climbing in Granitti Sport Hall (where I had gone earlier in September).

All this physical exercise merited a nice big lunch at the music hall. We arrived at the best possible moment, when they still had the Finnish pancakes with berry sauce for free ! YUM. Paivi and I ate wayyyy too much and stayed at the university while Maja and Mareike went into town. I met up with Maja again at my Sports lecture. Today, we discussed the anti-doping organizations world wide and in Finland. The lecturer worked for such an organization in Finland and even gave us Golden shoe laces at the end of the lecture to help us remember the clean and fair sport mission of the anti-doping organizations.

On this cheery note, Maja was off to get her hair cut and me and Paivi hit the mall for a little while. To put a finally mark of celebration of Maja's stay here, we chose a very pertinent movie to the occasion - Julia Robert's Eat, Pray , Love. Both me and Maja related to it very easily seeing as we're both ladies on the move.

Freetime had karaoke night ! This was another chance discovery but me and Paivi were stoked about this. We pelted out Everybody by the backstreet boys and Genie in a Bottle by the great Xtina.

Biking in snow really hurts. You know why? the snowflakes feel like chunks of ice hacking at your face at full speed especially if there's wind and there's nothing you can do about it. I should invest in one of those full face and head hats. So what if I look like a robber on a bike? At least I'll be warm.