Well the first week is over, actually a little over a week. I have to say that it feels like we have been here for at least three weeks. I've met a lot of people and it seems like I have known them for a while now. Both Scott and I are enjoying our stay here in Finland after the first week, which is a good thing. We lifted 5 days this week during the afternoon at Nautaulis, the place where we have a membership. It has everything we need, but the ceilings are a little low, so we have to watch our heads in some places. The rest of our downtime is spent mostly on the internet and Playstation Madden 2004.
Special thanks to Thomas, Mikko, Rio, Kimi, and Tomi for taking time to make sure me and Scott are doing well here in Finland. Also, thanks to the rest of the team for making us feel at home here.
This weekend we had a bye week and there is also a festival in town mainly down by the dock (small river runs through Turku). There are tents set up everywhere for people selling all kinds of things. Many people come from around Finland to Turku to party. All of the bars, nightclubs, and streets are just packed with people. They have big fishing boats that are outside bars where people can hang out and drink. I took a few pictures tonight (Saturday) and will post them on here a little later on a seperate page..
On Friday, we went to a place they call Young House, which is like a YMCA. This is a place where kids can do activities all day and play sports with all their friends. Yesterday was a special day specifically for football, so Scott, Kimi (Offensive lineman, center), Seikko (defensive back) and I went and were suppossed to teach some kids how to play football. Well it was a crappy day, but about six kids were there. They were all pretty shy or "too cool" to try something new, so some of the workers had to force them to do some activities. Once they got into it they really enjoyed themselves. One little guy, named Errki, started to run some routes for me. He was pretty shy to start and Kimi made him do the first 2, but after that he wanted to do that all day. So me and Errki threw for about 45 minutes even when everybody was packing up to go home. He couldn't speak english that well, but he knew "go deep" and "this is fun." So it was cool to play with those little guys for a while.
On Saturday Scott, Kimi, and I had to help out with the girl's flag football games. There were 4 games in a row. (4 teams, each team plays twice). Scott and I started out on the chain gang. To be honest, at first it was funny seeing girls play flag football so seriously. The only girls football I have ever seen is Intermurals at Hanover where the girls do more giggling than playing football. This was quite a change. I refereed the third game with one other guy and that wasn't as boring as doing the chains. By the end of the day I was enjoying myself somewhat, however, it was probably in the low 40's, it was so cold for June 12th. But seeing girls playing flag football so seriously is something I will never forget. Next week we play Jaguars and I've heard that they aren't any good, but we still have to play well.
Special thanks to my man Kari for getting the pictures from the games and Young House.
