Christmas and Orangutangs

Christmas was very nice this year. We spent it in Liljendal with super a lot of snow and our friend Natalia joined with Faro's best play mate Vasco. They loved running in the snow. When we got back to Helsinki Faro slept like a stone the whole evening, he was so tired from running around and playing. My sister's dog Johka also joined in on Christmas Eve.

We all got spoilt with the presents and I was very happy to finally get a new phone :-) Once I get used to it I hope I can start blogging from the phone as well and hopefully manages to post something a bit more often.

The best Christmas present of all was however the Orangutang adoption Stefan got me. I got soo touched! He really knows me well :-P

He adopted for me the cutest orangutang baby called Luna ( He might have wanted to tease a certain friend by chosing this one ! :-P)

Anyway, look how cute she is:

They are just adorable :-)

I fell in love with the cuties when we saw BBC's Orangutang Diary series.



If you wanna help too, you can go to to

Save the Orangutang

or

Redapes.org

Asian Dinner

My Chinese colleague from my old job invited us for dinner. Its already probably a month ago but I wanted anyway to write about it because it was a cool experience.

For appetizers we had Vietnamese spring rolls which was not only a tasty experience but also a practical one as we could fix them ourselves. As we didn't remember to take any pictures of the whole procedure I suggest you look at the video and imagine us doing it...which would be a lot more messy :-D But it was yammi!

For dinner we had traditional Chinese dumplings which I have tasted before. They look a bit like Italian Ravioli and basically I guess they are a bit the same - filled pasta. Perhaps only Chinese pasta is a bit different and the filling as well. And spicier sauce, which I liked! :-)

After eating came my favorite part of the dinner. We were completely stuffed so, we could not have managed to eat much more sweets but, instead, we had the privilege to have our own Chinese tea tour. It was so cool! Usually I don't drink too much tea but the tea they had was brought from China and was completely different from what you get in the store here. She told me she only buys the brand she knows does not use any chemicals. It was so amazing, we had black tea and white tea and green tea and different variants from those. I was so sold! I could just imagine ourselves sitting in a Chinese tea house chatting and sipping away:-)

She had of course the real Chinese tea set as well.

To round the whole dinner off we ate a fruit called honey pomelo. Hadn't myself tasted it before. It had a tick skin and not so much taste but it was ok.

Wow! I can be lucky!

I won today a trip to Manchester with Easyjet! Made my day! I didn't think acctually no one ever won those things :-)

Better start planning when to go...:-)

Anyone who has been tehre who can give us any good tips on what to do?

White Knuckles

This video I wanted to post ages ago but forgot all about it :-) I wonder how much work they put into making it:

Dance

I've been completely hooked the last weeks on the Finnish version of the program "so you think you can dance". The Dancer's have been amazingly good and the choreographies as well. My favorite choreoghrapher in the program was defenitely Reija Wäre. Her choreograhpies were just amazing.

She did all my favorite performances:

Dance - Videot | Nelonen.fi

Dance - Videot | Nelonen.fi

Dance - Videot | Nelonen.fi

There was of course so much more different dance styles represented in the competition but these were defenitely the once that stayed in my mind.

The dance that opened the whole competition was also good:

Dance - Videot | Nelonen.fi

I am proud that in this small cold country they managed to find such great dancers :-)

In the end Sam won and he defenitely deserved it. At one point he did this reeeaallly slow perfect piruett and it just showed what a perfect control he has over his body.

Dance - Videot | Nelonen.fi

Hopefully we see more of him in the future :-)

In the final show the national ballet was performing and aaaaaaaaw how I adored it! It made me wonder why I have not yet visited the ballet. I so need to go and bring a pack of napkins as well because I will for sure cry.

Dance - Videot | Nelonen.fi

I understand if no one will have the patience to go through all those videos but I am so thrilled I can't help sharing the experience :-D

I have a fridge in my shoe

New York New York

We went to New York and during that time our little boy had an accident, you can check Stefan's blogg for some pics on the poor little one while he had to keep his leg in a bandage. Luckily he should be fine unless the hip will be dislocated again, we just have to be very patient and skip agility and other fun stuff until his leg is strong enough again.

We had anyhow a fab time in New York, these pics are taken by our friend Ninnu who joined us in the trip, she's great at taking photos.










After this lovely trip we have run a few times to the Vet and now we are taking Faro swimming and to the physiotherapist also. Perhaps Stefan will put up some pics from that because it was quite interesting. But whatever it takes to make him well again :)

Bears

Funny coincidence that at the same time as there are United Buddy Bears – The Art of Tolerance on the Senate square in Helsinki. The hunters and police had to shoot a bear in Pernaja, Finland (close to were our country side house is) since the bear got too close to the village. They tried to scare it away back to the forest but a bear that has gotten a taste for left-overs in trash cans is not likely to return to hunting grounds on it's on will.

picture from here.

Read the article about the bear in Pernaja in swedish (Pernaja is Pernå in swedish) here;

STORVILT | Polisen ger upp björnjakten

Prue's Blogg

The first time I was in Australia I attended a youth camp organized by LIONS in Halls Gap national park in Victoria. It was great and I am forever thankful to the LIONS organization for making it possible for me to go to Australia so young. We got to meet other people from all over the world and it was so much fun! We did everything from rock climbing to gold panning.

Here's a view of the magnificent scenery there is in Hall's Gap:


I do recommend a trip to Halls Gap if you are the active outdoor type! Please remember though that it can be cold in Victoria during Australian winter's.



With some of the people from the camp I am still from time to time in contact with (at least facebook friends ;-) ) .

Some moment's ago I received an e-mail from one of our camp leader's, Prue, about her new blog, I quote:

"For a while we've been talking about the lack of websites with ideas on what to feed kids, how to keep the entertained and where to take them. My and I have decided to take action and have started a blog at http://nestlingblog.wordpress.com/ ."

Feel free to read about the life of Aussie mums if you're interested :-) Even if I do not have kids I think I will try on the risotto recipe, looks yummy!

Esperanza

Last week I heard by mistake that Esperanza Spalding will be in Helsinki and I said "oh, I would like to go" so Stefan ,as the real gentleman he is, bought me tickets :-)

So we headed to the new Jazzbar in Helsinki called Birdland. She was there with her band Elm trio. They were really good, even though I think that Stefan thought it was a bit too Jazzy. It was true that they were much more Jazzy than only Esperenza by herself as I was used to hear her. But I did enjoy hearing them and it is amazing seeing the musicians play. The things she does with her voice is impressive and it's even more impressive to see that she is playing the bass at the same time and still manages to keep the voice so clear. In the end we did not stay the whole gig though. Not because we didn't want but we were quite tired and had to work today. Perhaps next time she is in Finland we can see her again :-)

This is the song I fell in love with maybe a year ago.



If you want to hear her newer sound check out her myspace page:

http://www.myspace.com/esperanzaspalding

Holidas are Over

This summer holidays we decided to stay in Finland for several reasons. One because we wanted to enjoy being with Faro now when he is still young and learning new things all the time, two because we wanted to work on the house in Liljendal and three because we just wanted to stay here for once during the light months.

It was a good decision, we enjoyed watching Faro little by little learning to swim, now he swims like a champion and he is a fast swimmer as well :-) We managed to also buy a lot of stuff for the house and fix a little bit of this and a little bit of that. As a bonus it was one of the warmest summers in looong time, they even classified it as tropical weather as we had more than 20 degrees during the nights and we broke the heat record in Finland. All in all we enjoyed it!

We are now very excited about Friday as Stefan's brother and wife are visiting us. Let's hope the weather stays nice and that they enjoy the stay!

Go Spain!

Even if I am not into football too much I am very happy Spain won the world cup! Iker did a super nice save during the 15 minutes I watched. I couldn't watch more as my nerves were so tense after only 15 min. Specially after this almost goal from Holland: (the sound is wierd in the video but I couln't find any better.)



I wonder if Finland will ever even qualify for the world cup :-D Well, congrats Spain! I will go back to enjoing my holidays now :-)

Exercise for Man and Dog

Heheheee, This would be funny to teach Faro:


Dog and Owner Exercise

(click on the video to see it)

BTW, anyone interested in tickets for Pori Jazz on thursday 22:nd?

Check the stage and the program here.

Day Cruise to Tallinn

Usually when we go for a Day cruise to Tallinn we take the Viking Line or Silja Line boat. My dad took a rowing boat and some buddies :-D

21 people, (doing shifts of 14 people 40 km per time), ~120 km and 11 hours. The way back they relaxed on the motorboat :-)

I hope that when I am his age my hobbies will be similar :-D

Some pics of some stuff we've done lately

Been busy with the following lately (not necessary in the correct order):

Mini-holiday in Gothenburg, Sweden visiting lovely Ida.



Dog training Retrieving:



Dog training Agility:

Changing the to the summer tyres(with some help from Dad):



Fixing nice stuff in the roof in our house (fixing not so nice but result-very nice):

Faro also had his first lake experience:


And we did some control guarding in the orienteering Finnish Championships:



While I'll try to catch up with myself you can enjoy Stefan's video of " the Orange Bullet"

http://hellsinking.blogspot.com/2010/05/faro-la-bala-naranja.html

Waiting for Vappu

Sitting in the sofa waiting for Stefan and Phillip. Phillip has just arrived from Germany, he was an exchange with Stefan, 3 years ago already! Time flies! I'm waiting to see him and relaxing for Vappu! Let's hope we get some better weather than today...

Faro met his first love today, a golden retriever. First time he was interested in girls in you-know-what-way:-D

Let's hope after Vappu I have some time and energy to upload some pics.

Faro's Silhouette

Alice, Wonderlands and other stuff

I started with Ashtanga yoga again since I found a course in the work building. After only a couple of times I can feel how good it is for my back since I sit all day at work.

We're gonna also start a puppy course with Faro soon, let's see how that goes :-) He is usually obedient but when there is other dogs around he don't really concentrate, basically we hope he will learn this is in the course. let's see how it goes. I did some fetching with him today in the forest and we lost he's toy in the wet snow. it just disappeared under the snow and neither me not Faro could find it anymore, I have no idea what happened there but it seemed it vanished. :-)

Today I had to work for reporting, even if it's a official holiday, but to compensate we went to the movies afterwards. We saw the new Tim Burton movie Alice in Wonderland. It was not exactly what I expected, maybe I had to much expectations since so many people said it was so good. Neither I could see the point of 3D that everybody was saying was fantastic. The 3D glasses also annoy me. I wish it was possible to buy them in your own size as I have to always keep pushing them up my nose during the whole movie.


pic from here

Anyway, I got a bit curios on how all the different versions of this tale differs and found a this article. It would be interesting to now see the old Disney version again, it isn't many years ago I read the book but I've managed to forget what happens in the original version. Somehow I can relate to this Alice and her being a bit distracted by her own thoughts all the time, but then again my middle name is also Alice :-P



pic from here

jo-jo-yo

The week of Joss and Florence we finished with an annual ball. It was fun, we only go once a year nowadays so better enjoy when we can :-)

After that week I got sick and now just when we thought that spring is here it got cold again :( now we could have some warmth already! My cough won't go away!

Today I listened to the radio in the morning and they played Redrama's "Vad jag vill". Such a funny song! Redrama is a Swedish-Finnish rapper and the last CD he did in Swedish, usually he raps in English. Not so often (if ever) you hear a Swedish-Finnish guy rapping in Swedish. I just enjoy so much hearing a guy rapping stuff like "han röker mer än Snusmumriken". Sorry, everyone who do not understand Swedish. Snusmumriken is a character from Moomin ( my favorite):


Get's you in a happy mood if anything :-D I want more of this :-P

Florence + the Machine

On Monday we saw lovely Joss and yesterday I saw with my workmate Florence + the Machine. Florence has also an amazing voice, totally different than Joss (which is still my number 1 ;-) ) but good. really good. And it is not every day day you see a band with a harp on the stage! A really beautiful one too.




My workmate also introduced me to Kate Nash's music, she has some really nice songs, some are not so nice, (like dickhead, who makes a song with a name like that anyway? ) but her British accent is funny.

The song "Foundations" is good, same as "we get on":

Oh Joss!

We went to lovely Joss Stone's concert yesterday. She's sooo good. She's one of those that sound even better live than what she does on her records. Such a wonderful voice, soo pretty and she seems so nice and down to earth too!



My pics are really crappy but on facebook there were really nice pics from the gig.


I even got one of the roses she threw to the crowd in the end:


and guess who were the the warming up band:-P You might remember the pic I posted from the company Christmas party? The pic with Axl Smith. Apparently he will come out with an album soon called "People Come First" so he was there playing some songs with his band. That was a funny coincidence. :-D

Inner Peace

I have to admit I am a super messy person in the sense that I leave stuff around on the apartment. Stefan is sometimes better than me putting things in place, especially clothes. Mine are a bit of everywhere and before guests are coming over I just throw them in a wardrobe. Sometimes I think it is because our apartment is so small and we do not have enough wardrobe space, but I let you know if I improve if we ever have a bigger place :-P

I discussed this phenomenon with my workmate the other day and she had a theory I liked. She said she read somewhere that people with a messy home have inner peace and people with a lot of order in their house and shining kitchens feel very chaotic inside and that's why they have seek order in their surroundings. So we have lot's of inner peace in this family :-D

Also Faro has inner peace:

This is how we found him one day after work when he was 11 weeks old.

The Surprise

This year I didn't know what to get Stefan for his birthday so I decided to make him a suprise and take him to Chez Dominique. Usually that is not the sort of restaurant I would go to but I thought, what the heck, once in a lifetime it has to be experienced.

We took a suprise menú and I have to say the food was superyammmiii (too bad some of the yammiest food were the smallest portions) and the first wine we had was heavenly. I also enjoyed being spoiled for a night, the service was really good, I felt like a princess :-)



The picture is from their website: http://www.chezdominique.fi/press_cd2_en

At the moment Finland is losing ice hockey badly against USA in the Olympics, luckily I went out with Faro so I didn't see the disaster. Outside it was sooo calm and nice as everybody else is indeed watching the game :-D I noticed USA has a Jack Johnson in their team, too bad it is not this wonderful Jack:



Wonderful Kiira however ended up as 11th in the figure skating and the other Finn Laura as 6th. Very well done both of them :-) I wish I could do the same as them when I skate! :-D

Curious Cute Animals

This video is so sweet, Natinal Geographic put some cameras in the jungle to get material of the chimpanzees. This cutie noticed the camera and took a look, I love the part where she pokes the lens.

Watch it here.

Faro is also enjoying watching TV sometimes when there is other animals, I think "the Police Dog Rex" is one of his favorites, but he also got mesmerized when we watched the documentary "Earth".



He got absolutely nuts when the ice bear growled in the documentary.

This is how much he's grown in 5 months:




He's become such a big strong boy! He's not completely recovered yet from the Aspirin overdose though :-( We have to give another urine sample tomorrow because his kidney values were low on Monday.

On time and out of time

Pheeew, I'm lucky Stefan is not a typical stereotypical Spanish in the sense that he likes to be on time.

Nevertheless sometimes I have to cope people that are not on time. Nowadays I'm pretty used to waiting for some time for some friends and even expect it and it is not so bad. I can even do one hour of waiting without getting stressed if we are at home.

However today I met an extreme case, the time of arrival was set at "around 18", which was fine for me and I naturally thought that that is sometime after 18 maybe even closer to seven. But after finishing making the food, and the table ready and playing singstar and watching a TV program and starving we decided that it was time for filling at least our tummies. In the end the couple arrived almost 3 hours late and they had to leave pretty fast to make it to the next place. At that point my openmindnessness for this other culture is difficult to dig after and my politnessness is reaching limits :-P

Well it's all a good experience I guess.


On another subject: Finland won their first medal (silver) in the Olympic games today, in snowboarding.

I would love to see the figure skating of the women, I think it is next week but unfortunelty in the middle of the night. The Finnish girls are really good and Kiira is so gracious abd beautiful:-)

Happy Valentine's Day!

I just got the best news! Our baby puppy has been in hospital tonight because he ate aspirin yesterday while we were in the store and that's poisonous for dogs :-( But now they called from the hospital and said everything is fine and we can take him home. Next week we'll have to go for a check-up though and from now on we will for sure not leave any pills on the table, even if he shouldn't be able to reach for them because obviously he somehow was :-S

It's crazy what a strong bound we already have with him, we were both worried sick the whole time. The aspirin could have cost him serious damage on the kidneys.

Happy Valentin's Day to everyone, take care of your loved ones as you never know what will happen!

Best Friends

I know someone who's gonna like this pic:

I just have to upload these too, we were sledging in Paloheinä and Faro enjoyed the top of the hill:

Visit from France

Stefan's cousin's visit was a success! We had still lots of snow the whole week but a bit warmer weather which was great:-)

Stefan's cousin and Faro:


The boys spent time at Suomenlinna and took a day cruise to Tallinn, they also went to see an ice hockey game, which apperently contained some tension:-P. Stefan's cousin also loved the sauna and all the food we made him try ( at least he said so) also he kept telling us he liked the Finnish beer. Good boy ;-) The weekend we spent time at the countryside. He tried crosscontry skiing and we ate some elk meat for dinner.

On wednesday we went to a consert that the radio X3m does every month. Last month we saw Asha Ali. This time they had Fibes oh Fibes! there. Not bad either! I always get in a good mood when I hear their music:)

And I won a X3m black the coffee mug!

For doing this pic with the radio guy:

The pic is from the radio x3m home pages: http://www.yle.fi/extrem/audiovideofoto/foto.php?id=2782

huh, I didn't realize I look so ugly, but that was the point, an ugly pic.

It was funny but I got supernervous talking in the radio but I convince myself everybody gets nervous.

This Sunday it will be both Valentine's day and sledging day (Fastlagssöndag or Laskiaissunnuntai) let's see which occasion we'll celebrate, if any.

January

I just realized it's last day of January and I haven't had time to write nothing in ages! Late Happy New Year to everybody!


We began our New Year of 2010 with a week in Spain, which was really nice but not much warmer than here :-P I met for the first time the Vancouver couple in Rioja:-) Hopefully we meet again soon!


We didn't see snow in Spain even though we knew there was some of it too. Seems this winter most countries in Europe got snow. Also we have gotten loads and loads of it.



At the moment Stefan's cousin in visiting us and we spent the whole day outside. Sledging and walking and the boys tried walking on ice too :-) Also Faro enjoyed the snow a lot. Right now I'm exhausted and decided to stay home while the boys still headed to town for a drink. I'll try to update next time before end of February :-D