It’s been a while, a week and a day to be exact, since my last entry, although I’m going crazy on Twitter. Follow me there guys. Srsly. I think it’s the summery warmth that has struck me with a slightly lethargic disposition when it comes to blogging. However, for you reading pleasure, let me pick up where I left off last time.

Temperatures are soaring in Vaasa. Even though we’ve had some rain the thermometers have shown temperatures above 20° C/68° F for a week now. As a realist and borderline pessimist I of course prepared each day for colder weather to come, I live in Finland after all, and as it turns out today it looks like we won’t be going above 20 anymore, for a while at least. I definitely enjoyed the warmth fully as long as it lasted though.

Last Friday I spent the afternoon and evening with my friend Katriina. Starting with a visit to a few stores in the center of town we made our way to the post office and carried a rather heavy package home to Katriina’s new apartment in Olympia. What was in the package? A dancing pole. Yeah you heard me. Naturally we continued by assembling the pole and I must say we did a pretty good job. The pole assembling took about an hour, and as we both were very hungry we decided to go and have some pizza. This was my second visit Illyrian´s Restaurant & Coffeebar. You find it on Rauhankatu 16 and I recommend it warmly. The pizza was topped off with some soft ice cream, after which I made my way home in the rain at 8 p.m. … and I didn’t even get cold! This was only the start of the nice weather we’ve been having the past week.

On Saturday I headed to the grocery store with John, Sanni, and Janne. The others gathered stuff for the grilling that evening, while I hustled around the store fetching ingredients for the upcoming Sunday dinner. After the grocery shopping, with John acting like a teenage hooligan in the beer aisle and whatnot, we made our way (after some stops here and there) to the camping site where we put on the sauna and started the BBQ. We were a bit unlucky with the weather though. It was a bit chillier by the sea than in town, and me and Sanni got a total of about 10 minutes of tanning because of the clouds and later on even small showers of rain. It was however a good BBQ and fun day spent with friends. After we were done at the camping site we dropped off Sanni as she had work in the evening while me, John, and Janne still went for some ice cream. After the ice cream Janne was too tired to go on and drove home. I stayed at John’s apartment, where also Juulia joined us, to watch the movie It’s Complicated (2009). It turned out both John and Juulia had already seen the movie, but I guess they were fine with watching it a second time. Somewhere around midnight I made my way home. John was nice enough to follow me home by taking Lupe on late night walk at the same time.

On Sunday it was once more time for Sunday dinner. Before I went to John’s place I prepared the dinner by baking the chocolate cake. I don’t know why but everyone seemed to be in a slightly bad mood. I’m sure we all got over it though after the delicious ginger pork (豚の生姜焼き/ぶたのしょうがやき/buta no shôgayaki) I whipped up with a little help from everyone else. The chocolate icing was put onto the cake and eaten with great delight after the ginger pork. I think I’m still looking for that perfect chocolate cake recipe though. One day, one day…

On Monday it was time to start cleaning the camping site reception. It feels like we carried out tons of old papers and brochures, not to mention all the other old stuff that had piled up over the years. I continued the cleaning on Tuesday, this time arranging the last storage room, cleaning the floors, and wiping away some dust. I think the rest can be done after we open the camping site, perhaps by someone else than me as well. In the evening I joined John and Janne for a round of minigolf, as the keeper of the points of course.

On both Monday and Tuesday I had had grand plans on going to the beach to lay in the sun for a while, but it was not until Wednesday I finally managed to drag my butt to the beach without any interventions by for example the heavy rain and thunder storm on Tuesday. Later on a group of couch surfers arrived to the camping site’s beach/sauna, and as I wasn’t in a particularly sociable mood I stuck around long enough to devour a grilled sausage and then rode my bike back home.

Yesterday our class had it supposedly last speaking class at school. After class we however found out we were supposed to have two classes more. Didn’t matter much to me though, my work starts next Monday and I won’t have time for school anymore. After class I made my way to Amarillo with Janne, Timo, Jetro, Miikka, and Katriina, where I had a delicious (and very hot) Habanero burger. My recent craving for hot food has not faded, it seems. After lunch/dinner the group split up for a short while and met up again on Räätälinsaari (for future reference, Jetro…), where we enjoyed the sun albeit the cold wind, and played a game called Rappakalja. As it was starting to get too chilly we made our way to the park by the orthodox church, where we all (at least tried) to play footbag. My last stop was Katriinas apartment in Olympia. At about midnight I split from the group (apparently they made their way to some bar) and walked home.

Now how’s that for documenting my life. Maybe I’ll try to write shorter and more humorous blog entries more often for the rest of you to enjoy.