AndrewsWHERE

Hold the search party! Yes, I am still alive, still in Finland, but I can occasionally understand the locals now! I could make excuses for why I haven't written lately, but there's no good ones. It's just been on my 'to do' list for a very long while but never quite made it to the top until now. So, the Navy is well and truly over now (silent cheering) and life is far more comfortable. I'm still living in Helsinki, but I've got a new apartment (well, it was new in September) not too far from the city centre. Granted, it is in Kallio - another "ghetto" (albeit Scandinavian ghetto), but it's a lot nicer than my old apartment in Itäkeskus (the east centre), and I like to think that it's what's on the inside that ... read more

That's right!!! Winter is gone, summer is here, I've got 20ish days left in the Navy and things are starting to look good. Our training is all but finished, only some classroom sessions left to go. On one day last week I watched 3 episodes of LOST, which I have been waiting to catch up on since I finished at camp last year, so we haven't exactly been busy. But I'm not complaining about being bored at all, it gives me a chance to get things organised for when I get out of here. Two weekends ago (19st-21st) was Juhannus, basically a huge mid-summer holiday that they celebrate in the typical Finnish fashion. We went to Raumanmeren Juhannus, otherwise known as RMJ 2006 which is the biggest summer music festival here in Finland. I went with ... read more

I'm really not sure how to start writing this journal. Right now I'm in Finland, and due to my Finnish citizenship, doing 6 or so months National Service in the Finnish Navy. Yeah, I know, it sounds kind of random if I hadn't told you already. So yeah, I got here about 3 weeks ago. The trip took about 50 hours, I had to stay overnight in Darwin on the way, such a pain. I also managed to pick up a stomach bug and a case of diarrhea on the way though, I think it was from some water at Bangkok airport, but you never know. I spent the weekend at a friend's house in Riihimäki, about an hour drive north of Helsinki. It was great to have somewhere to recover and people that I knew ... read more

You may have been wondering what has happened to me over the last 5-6 months since I last posted. It seems a little unfair to jam 5 and a bit months into 1 short journal but I'll try. I've been working at a summer camp called Camp Wahanowin. It's about an hour and a half north of Toronto, just outside Orillia. Camp was divided up into probably 3 main parts so I'll deal with them seperately. When we first arrived at the beginning of May, we had 2 weeks of maintainence where the entire camp had to be set up. It was so ridiculously cold for those weeks that at breakfast the seats in front of the heater were hot property. I think that my down sleeping bag paid for itself in those couple of weeks. ... read more

Well, the season here at Big White is over. For about 5 weeks in the middle there we had hardly any fresh snow fall and we watched as our base slowly shrank and rocks started appearing on runs. But then about halfway through March winter returned and we had a great end to the season. It’s a bit frustrating at the moment as we’re still getting fresh snow fall but we can’t go out riding on it. It’s all a bit sad that the season’s over, but there is a lot happening over the next few weeks, so it’s good to look forward to it all. Most of the time up here is spent either working or riding, so I’ll write about some of the different things that we have been doing. Last week a bunch ... read more

I've decided to do a current journal and fill in South America steadily. Sorry that it's all over the place. After Curitiba when went up the Sao Paulo, for a night then ducked up to Rio for our plane to New York. We nearly froze when we got off the plane at 6am, but over the next few days covered most of what there is to see in the Big Apple. Lundy headed over to London on the 15th, so it was a bit strange saying bye in the subway after travelling for so long together. I will be glad however to not have to throw any more pillows at him to stop the snoring (hehehe, sorry Lundy). The next day I went to Chicago, which wasn't any warmer, and then caught a plane to Minneapolis. ... read more