Difficult task from 1600's

I had free from work today. It's been interesting yet a bit stressful week. Working as a news reporter in tv is not always so easy.
The most interesting this week was a visit to Helsinki Olympic Stadium. The World Championships in athletics will take place in Helsinki between 6th and 14th August. I'm not so interested in sports but it was nice to see how well prepared everything is.

I have tried to read some old documents (mid 1600's in Isokyrö court). One of them talks about Matts Brühinsson (Matti Prusinpoika) in village of Napue, Isokyrö, Finland. He is dead and his children are discussing about the heritage. Language is difficult, it's old Swedish and written in old fashioned handwriting.
!

My dog tries to get some attention, I'm going to take him out and after that I'm heading to the library. I don't a have a clue, what I should lend this time. If anyone has good suggestions what to read, you can make a comment to me

Learning languages

I have good plans for the next autumn. First, I'm going to continue my Swedish languge course. My company pays for this course and it's very effective. Each week we gather with our teacher Christer to discuss together for 90 minutes. I think it has already made a difference. It's easier for me to begin talking Swedish whenever necessary. I sometimes even make interviews in Swedish.

The other thing I'm going to do this autumn, is take the same French course as my husband. I thought it would be nice to be in the same course. Perhaps we can later make another trip to France. Bretagne would interest me, I would like to see the stones in Carnac - which are as mysterious as those in Stonehenge, England.
Speaking French is still very difficult for me. It's the pronounciation - mine is just terrible!

And finally, but not least important. I've promised to my friend Irene that we are going to be fitter and take some weekly aerobic classes in some nice gym in Helsinki. I have to admit that it has been a while since I last attended aerobic classes. I've been of course walking with our dog and doing some nordic walking. My father bought me nice red poles from Finnish company Exel. In Exel homepages they tell that energy consumption increases when using poles by an average of 20% compared with ordinary walking without poles.

Blueberries in Sipoo

I went with my husband and my dog Jekku to pick some blueberries today. My husband told that he had seen them while jogging with the dog in Sipoo. And it was good day for picking some berries, the sun was shining and the forest in Sipoo was warm but not too hot.
Afterwards we watched a video film. Stepford wifes - it was quite funny with Nicole Kidman, Glenn Close and Christopher Walkman, Betty Midler etc.
It makes me think, do men really want such perfect wifes? I hope not.
My husband is currently reading The Handmaid's tale by Margaret Atwood and the film made him think of the book. You know, a woman is only known with a man's name. In Stepford wifes - all the wifes were just Mrs Walter Kresbys or something similar. The sad thing is that it's so true. And besides, why do we women change our last names when we get married? Well, at least I did.


This is the last day of my holiday, so tomorrow it shall be just all work and no play... you know what they say, it makes me a dull girl.

My memory meme

I happened to surf in Ally's
pages and she had this nice memory meme. So I thought I might do one myself as well.

What I was doing ten years ago - 1995:- July 1995 I was in Germany attending a seminar about UN in the university of Tübingen. We were there together with my friend Marita.
Later that year in September I started my exchange year in Tübingen university. This was an important year for me, I learned a lot of myself and learned to speak better German. I met some nice people during this year. Hello to Sandrine, Tuula and Helgi if you see this.

5 years ago - 2000.
I got engaged, moved back to Helsinki, got my degree, started a new job and rented a new appartment with my fiance(now my husband). It was a year of many ahivements.
.

1 year ago - 23rd July 2004.
I was in Helsinki packing for the 10 day trip in Poland. We went to Warsaw and Krakow. In Warsaw we stayed with our friend who is a history teacher

Yesterday - Friday 22th July 2005.
I was admiring my clematis (kärhö in Finnish) in my garden and I read a novel by Tuula Rotko about a woman who has the same first name as I and lived in 1715. Those tragic years when Finland was under occupation of Russia and they burned everything, killed many of the grown ups and took kids as their slaves.

Two ostrichs and a woman

I was able to amaze myself last week. I did something really spontaneous and bought a painting. The oil painting is quite large and there are two ostrichs and a farmer's wife in the painting. And a cat. I think it's quite humorous. It also reflects the changing of modern day agriculture and farming in Finland.

The artist is Mr Heikki Mäki-Tuuri and he painted this in 1995. Mäki-Tuuri has been born in Tuuri and lives nowadays in Ylistaro. You can see his curriculum vitae here.

My brother has an watercolor painting from him, which is also very nice.

Visit from Germany

Last week we had two friends of mine from Germany visiting us here in Helsinki. It was fun. One day we went to Porvoo to see the old medieval church and on the other day we made one day trip to Turku, the oldest city in Finland. We also spent some time in Hollola summer house, where our quests Verena and Uwe had the chance to go to sauna and row on the lake with the rowing boat. On the left is a photo of our quest Verena and my husband's niece Pinja.

Revealing

I read through an old e-mail a friend of mine had sent called Nallepuhin päiväkirja (Winnie the Pooh diary). It was a sort of chain letter type of thing. I thought I could share some of the questions and answers with you:

1) My nicknames? Dallas
2) Parents' names? Risto and Maija
3) My hight? 167 cm
4) Color of my eyes? blue
5) Color of my hair? dark brown
6) City I live in? Helsinki
7) Favourite color? red
8) Book I'm reading right now? "A Nice Girl Like Me" by Abigail Bosanko
9) Favourite film? Dersu Uzala by Akira Kurosawa
10) Favourite flower? Day lily

Blogs reach media

Finnish online media Digitoday has this summer started a blog as well. I wonder how long it will take until they will start a blog in my newspaper?

Even Kesko's Pirkka customer magazine has its own blog. Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet has a blog and recently I read Washington Post's blog "Finland Diary"

What could we say, blogs - a trendy way to publish ?

Replacing violets

After 2 weeks in France plus one week in Western Finland I finally came home.
It's been sunny and hot here in Helsinki as well. Unfortunately my violets didn't survive without me. They were so very dead.

I had to buy some new flowers. It's nicer that way. Besides I'm having guests from Germany later this week. Don't want them to have only dead violets to see.

So I went to Plantagen store. There weren't much summer flowers left, but I did bought some Marguerite Daisy (Argyranthemum frutescens, Marketta), pink Busy Lizzies
(Impatiens walleriana, Ahkeraliisa) and blue Lobelias (Lobelia
Lobelia).

House was a mess, so we are actually in the middle of the cleaning process. I did the toilets - as always.

The dog doesn't like the heat at all. He doesn't even want to walk very far, I don't blame him, his undercoat is just only starting to fall. And he has very thick fur as Finnish Lapphund ( Suomenlapinkoira ) does.

Memories of Provence

This church was in the village of Roussillon, famous for its red ocra.
The two weeks in Provence were just great, the landscape varied a lot in Provence and the whole trip was rich in experience.