Having a holiday.

It's time for a diary post this time. I'll save the recounts for Young Africa 2007 & Nthabi for another time, but meanwhile you can have a peak on what was going on from my photos. A big thank you for everyone who came to see Nthabi, Reason and DJ Hamma perform!

But now I'm having a sort of a holiday. Though writing at the same time the final report of Young Africa for the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, trying to collect my thoughts for the research plan of my Master's thesis and revising my Swahili (http://www.bbc.co.uk/swahili/ is quite helpful, easy language for anyone who has read a bit of Swahili!).

I arrived here, Eastern Finland on Saturday. We spent the evening at the summer cabin of my family, had a sauna, swam in the cold lake, experimented by grilling some rye bread with garlic on a pan (muurikka)...

On Sunday I didn't do that much really, just started with the research plan and rented the movie "The Queen", which was quite nice.

On Monday I cycled to the center of the town, changed some dollars in a bank, visited the city library and got some fairly good books there for my thesis, actually - the ones in Finnish are a lot easier to find from here than in Helsinki, where all the books are always checked out! In the afternoon I started writing the final report for Young Africa, just enjoyed the sun outside and went for a swim to a small bay where we used to go by boat when I was a child.

On Tuesday we went to visit the Orthodox monasteries of Valamo (one of the enchanting buildings on the photo) and Lintula, bought a cute soft ram (what in the world is a teddy bear, which is not a bear but some other animal in English?), South African stamp collection, Yugoslavian folk music on a vinyl, wine and you know, this usual stuff you get from monasteries... :) In the evening I really wanted to go and see the last "evening market" (iltatori) for this summer, a tradition in our town on every Tuesday during the summer. My plan was interrupted by a huge thunder storm, which also cut down the electricity for a while, for thousands of people during the whole night. No market then, just chatting with an old friend - which was nice! Holidays are great.

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