i did mention in the last post that they refer to this place as a village right? yes, a village and of course with that there comes small town fun. last week was mid-summer, something the scandinavians call juhannus. usually this holiday is celebrated with a koko(bonfire) and more makara(sausage)and alcohol than your stomach can hold; thankfully this juhannus lacked none of that. leena invited some freinds over along with her brother and cousin leea and of course that meant sauna time (which i hear is a finnish summer pastime and this was my second of what ended up being 4 before the week ended). after bbq and sauna it was time to go see the koko, and man, you never seen a bonfire like this: it was about 15+ feet wide and about 6 tall and didnt stop smoldering until a few days ago. awesome, just awesome really; something about a large fire like that, lots of people and a beer in hand brings out primordial caveman instincts and i felt like tom hanks in castaway. so i resisted any urge to hit leena over the head and drag her away to my cave, but could not resist to bbq our chocalte bananas, this however had to be done with a 4ft stick and i had to take my glasses off before heading into the fire so they didnt melt on my face (leea youre brave, and yes, i still have my eyebrows).
however one of the best parts about this day was sampo. sampo is one of the village youth that helps hannu out on the farm and fixes everyones motorcycle when they need it. well, when everyone had been around the fire for about 30 minutes or so and it was a blazing, rip-roaring inferno sampo rumbles down the road in fashion that only a 10 cylinder diesel powered tractor can: loud rough and heavy. everyone turns around to see sampo pull the tractor and trailer to a skidding halt about 30ft from the koko and jump out. 3 of his freinds hop out of the trailer and he blops down a small circular charcoal bbq and starts up his sausage. hilarious. i cheered. others cheered. i never wanted to be 16 again more in my life (along with every other man that saw sampo). sampo, you are my heroe this week.
well the next morning i finally got to play this finnish game (which name i cannot pronounce correctly, which got me into trouble and ill write later about that) that is played like bowling (but with small logs, of course) and scored a bit like darts. sweet huh? and i won! well, later in the afternoon leena and i went to her mom's cabin where we ate more, played more games, had another sauna and went to sleep. the next morning (this is where i tell about this weeks blunder...well, one of them) we are all eating at the table, and ya know how some languages if you pronounce a word wrongly it can mean a complete other word? same here; the finnish language just has some letters that i cannot pronounce for the life of me. so i casually ask leena 'are you ready for morning ____?' and she looks at me like 'really? (pause...) who told you to say that?' and her mom is chuckling in the background (leena later laughed too). apparently i said the name of the log game wrong and it came out to the equivalent of 'are you ready for morning cock (not chicken)?'...(sigh) so my understanding of finnish profanity continues and this time without hannu's help.

been a pretty active week, but if you know me well enough i always have some ideas in my head. sometime last week we made it out for orienteering. orienterring (since some of you are wondering) is a short race (from 1-4miles) in which you are given a map with points on it that need to be found with a compass navigational skills. sweet huh? (if i didnät explaing good enough click here) unfortunately, my navigational skills are not as good as i thought and in finland children are appartently born with a compass in hand, so leena burned me and i could see little knee-high orienteers passing me up all the time. i eventually wanted to smash my compass and walk away, but thanks to the undying patience and love of leena i finished the course and will go back to 'fight another day' once more.
this week we made it out to kayak in one of the local bays in a city called inkoo and borrowed keijo's canoe last night for a short trip that will begin the training we wish to do for our trip at the next of next week.

factoid: smoked fish, who knew it could be so easy (and tasty). i now have a summer ambition to build an outdoor grill and smoker; we'll see.

perspective: i äm currently in the village where leena grew up, a small village named karstu at a lattitude of about 60 and a longitude of roughly 24. Los Angeles is at 34, -118. i say this because if you were to travel down the world at the same distance i traveled here you'd land somewhere close to cairo, egypt or off the coast of crete (depending on calculations). if you were to travel straight up from l.a. to the same latitude as karstu you'd end up in the very similar climate of the northwest territories of canada (where there is less than 0.1% person per sq mile. interesting huh.

factoids: somehow, listening to 'abba' just seems right around here, and sauerkraut can be very tasty if sauteed with honey (i just had some at a bee farmer's house, amazing)

apologies for the procrastination, but i guess ive been caught up in this reality tv show called life; seriously. comedy, drama, action; the past few days has had it all.
to begin with, how much trouble could one get into on a farm? well a lot, and one of the things i managed to do had quite a bit of the flavor of the show 'jackass' (which i love to watch so much). well sometime last week i was diligently lofting weeds into a wheel barrels when i managed to stab my own foot with the pitchfork...dont worry mom, didnt need stitches, but man it hurt like a b*tch! what was just as ironic was that i did it at the same time a woman from the state was here to monitor leena's dad's work safety! thankfully she was inside at the time and didnt here the shouting and profanities that came out when i stuck myself.
and i suppose i intentionally left out the following story of farmhouse hazing, but was somehow reminded of it this week. so, the first day of work here i put on the blue pair of dickies i just purchased from the thrift store before i left home. the perfect work pants right? hilariously leena says that they're too nice for work, so i think whatever, ok. the work pants she says are out in the barn, so i take a stroll out to the barn to put on 'work pants' and her dad sees me in my boxers and gives me this look like "what the hell are you doing? dumbass american" and smiles while leena is laughing (thanks tyttö, really).
well iäm being called upon to make lunch. midsummer holiday today, guests and stuff. the sun has been setting at about 10pm but twilight now until about 1am and supposed to be longer tonight. its cool, but hard to sleep in.
more later. pics in the link below:
this weeks PHOTOS

finnish summer week 1

we'll iäm back in finland if you havent heard; and just like last time if i failed to connect with you while i was in so.cal i apologize. so to recap i'm still living this GAP year to the fullest (wikipedia it if you dont know what it is. my GAP started by leaving a good career in social work for the last 6 years to travel and be the good samitan with an organization called Youth With A Mission. i did this cuz i was quite sick and dissatisfied with many things (much like supertramp in the movie 'into the wild' which ya'll should watch if you havent); really i suppose i was craving life change and since i can now be found in the Finnish country side dating a beautiful scandanavian woman and working the forest and the birds, i realize i have really obtained that (although received would be the most adequate description).
my story goes something slightly similar to that of a biblical one. if you might recall, jacob worked years to marry his wife and then was tricked into marrying two women and working twice as long (dont know which is worse). fortunately leena's older sister is about to be married and i only need to work one summer. leena's dad agreed to have me work on the farm for him for the summer and leena agreed to continue what seems to be a promising relationship. not too shabby of a deal: shoveling bird shit for smelling the roses.
since youre caught up and knowing that i am currently half way around the world i'll fill you in on week 1 (and if i havent mentioned i'll be here to sometime in mid-august so look for any catching up in so.cal to happen then...yes, just in time for usc football baby):
so the first day i actualy spent with leena's older sister. we planned a surprise party for leena so my presence was kept a secret and leena thought i was arriving a day later. elina and i went to helsinki for a concert of finnish ska (nothing like so.cal ska, it was quite horrible, sorry United Beat or whatever their name was. finland is way too cold of a place to be able to play, understand or listen true reggae ska) then we went to get supplies for the party. party was great leena, i think, is still in shock. everyone had a great time.
rest of the week has been great. my back is sore but my body feels strong from all the work (which really hasnt been that bad). i have always believed in the mind-body connection and there's something truly to be said about good sweaty work that brings peace to the soul. if you dont know, her dad owns ands operates roughly 250 acres of land (one american football field is about 1.3 acre if you were curious). its a lot of property, some of it is farmable and what is not is used to forest trees. hannu plants and harvests his forests every few decades and the past summers harvest partly went to leena's dts funds that helped us meet (random fact). usually he farms various grains (including wheat) but lucky me-this year is a rest year for the fields, so the majoritiy of the work i'll be doing is in the forest, with the birds and on the cabins.
since leena and i hadnät seen eachother in 5 weeks we spent our first day at the beach; very beautiful, reminded me of the oregon coast. the next day we planted some birch and pine trees. the next few days it rained and maintained about 40-45 degrees F (cold and wet) with me shoveling bird shit. really it was kind of cool and having leena doing virtually the same thing right beside me made it almost enjoyable (ok, i loved it). birds? yes, pheasant actually; he's been raising pheasant for about 15 years and during the summer the bird runs must be cleaned, and thatäs mostly my job.
one of the days we spent staining the wood on one of the many vacation cabins hannu has on the property and rents out every summer.
typically everyday i tend to the baby birds and make sure they have food and water and the correct temp intheir coop. then its off to do whatever hannu wants. after dinner i check the baby birds again and pick the eggs the adults have laid. its quite a good routine and you think they'd be used to me by now, but i still piss the momma birds off when i take their eggs (as you can imagine), but they're all cluck no claw.
this weekend we tended the eggs and the eggs about to be hatchlings so check out the link for pics below.
this week's self discovery: i think kittens are amazing to watch and adorable and iäm not ashamed to say; a sever allergy that iäve seemed to grow out has kept me from this secret. the second is that i believe stevie ray vaughn's voice was reincarnated into john maher...who knew he could sing and play liket that? really.

photo link