Ice Skating!

Last night Sally, Dan, and I went to a Thai restaurant a couple blocks from the apartment.  It was quite good and I definitely plan to go back at some point.  Around 8pm we started walking to the center of the city - to ice skate at the rink next to the train station.  Once we have our student cards, it will be less expensive, but to rent skates and pay for admission was 10 euro.  I never before realized how spoiled I am having my own skates which are usually quite sharp...I couldn't get an edge that felt comfortable so was a little frustrated (and felt mildly like a pre-madonna when I complained about it) but had a lot of fun.  The music choices were hilarious and surprising.  Some of the pieces were "Fat Bottomed Girls", "Gold-digger", "A Whole New World", and "Sexy Chick"...they don't edit music here in Finland apparently so I was surprised how different the words were from the radio versions.

....I don't photograph myself very well....particularly when skating backwards

After that, the four of us (Todd had met us at the rink after eating at an Italian place which is now on my list of places to try) went to a bar which had board games!  It was packed, but at some point I would like to go back and actually play Risk or something there (it was the only game I remember that I recognized).  Later, we toured Todd's apartment which is very compact but amazingly efficient in storage and nicely decorated and met up with Phillp, Saori, Matt, and Michael.

I have not found a church with english services near my apartment yet.  The plan is to still go to some of the churches in the area, but Finnish is so different from english that I don't think I could last for more than 10 minutes in a service.  Thankfully "The Journey" (my St. Louis church) has sermons online, so that was part of my morning so far.  A lot of places are closed on Sundays here, so we'll see what Sally and I find to do on our last day before classes start.  :)