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.