A long way to go.

Hi everybody!

Felt like starting a blog again. It's been a while since I wrote the last blog but hopefully this will last for a while. I named my blog "Life in the Savannah" as most of our friends has started to call our place Savannah. Maybe that's because we live "in the woods". Kind of ironic because there's not so many trees in the actual Savannah. Actually the name coined during our housewarming party a year ago when Katja's friend Jani and Krista came and said that they met all kinds of wild animals coming here through the woods.

Today I started running again. I went jogging, ran 9 km (though had to walk some of the time) and it felt quite all right. I would've thought it would be more horrible since I'm not at all fit. The only problem was that I got lost a few times during the 5 km jogging path and ended up not running it and found myself somewhere in Herttoniemi which was totally in the wrong direction. First of all, I had to start jogging again because I've gotten so fat and it's time to do something about it. Second of all, I registered for Midnight Run which is a running event in Helsinki. You have to run 10 km at midnight. It will be fun, I'm sure. :) I have never been on a running event like that even though I've been on athletics competitions. 

In the weekend, Katja and I were visiting Stockholm by boat (Silja Line). We went shopping on different stores. We are not extreme shoppers, however, far from it. Usually we just have some stores in which we want to visit. This time we went to Lagerhaus, Akademiska bokhandeln, Stadium, Skopunkten etc. Katja had fixed a meeting with her friend from there (she spent a year living in Stockholm as an exchange student while studying Swedish). I'm not comfortable speaking Swedish, especially with natives so I ended up listening them catching up and actually understood them quite well! A bit comforting since I'm planning to get Swedish as my minor. I've been on the minor exam twice (actually waiting for the results from the last one which was about a week ago) and trying to get in. I should get Swedish as my minor if I wanted to get employed in the future (I did my subject teacher studies this year so I'm going to be an English teacher). But we'll see how it goes... Anyways, we had a good time in Stockholm and on the cruise although we are too old and tired to actually be partying like most of the people going to cruises.

We started hosting couch surfers a while ago. We had our first couch surfers Caitlin and Shannon from the San Francisco, CA. They were sweet girls who actually loved everything sweet, too. Unfortunately, I was working most of the time they were here, so I didn't have time to show them around (Katja did neither as she had to do paper work). However, we had couple fun nights, one watching the Eurovision Song Contest, playing a drinking game and going to DTM (a club) to dance and the other one playing drinking games and other games with our PS3. Hopefully they enjoyed their stay. They went to see Suomenlinna, Temppeliaukion kirkko and Sibelius park on their own, as well as some events in the city centre. They did delicious chocolate cookies (Nestle Tollhouse recipe they talk about in Friends!), pancakes and we barbecued together. We are getting our second (or third if you count Caitlin and Shannon as two) couch surfer, John from the USA, after Midsummer. We are also getting other visitors as Katja's friend Noora will be visiting, too. Can't wait for all the visitors. When you have something fun and versatile to do, it almost feels like a summer holiday although I don't have one. But let's not seize on that.

Nea