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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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ATTENTION: Sorry again about the extra emails. No, I am not in South America. Just cleaning up some of my old blogs and unfortunately it's way too much effort to not send those emails. Read them if you want...... or don't. Thanks to everyone who has emailed me, sent messages and left comments. It's good to know that people are actually reading my blogs and I'm not wasting my time, spending hours writing them and posting pictures. It's also good to have a bunch of emails in the Inbox after lining up forever (in my free time) to get a computer [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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NOTE: It's a little embarassing that it has taken me this long to put up this journal. I've been home for about a month and a half, working and catching up with people. On the 5th of Januray I'll be heading over to Finland to live for a while. I'm doing National Service (like in the military, I have Finnish citizenship and it's compulsory - should be interesting) for at least the first 6 months. I may or may not be there for a while, we'll see how things go. I'm also adding a few journals filling in South America and [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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On Friday we drove from Big White down to Vancouver then up to Whistler. We stayed in an awesome condo in the middle of the village, about a 3 minute walk from the gondolas that go up the mountain. We even managed to pickup free internet on Sean's laptop from one of the nearby hotels. While we were there they had the Ski and Snowboard Festival in full swing, it was such a change from whole family focus they had a Big White. There was a huge stage set up where they had bands and music in the afternoons and at [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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Right now I'm at Big White Ski Resort in BC, Canada. I was lucky enough to get a job here in Central Reservations, where we book accommodation for people coming up here. I get to go riding most days and get paid better than most jobs up here, so I'm pretty happy with it all. There are so many Australians here at the resort, it sometimes feels like I haven't even left home. I've found a really nice apartment with 2 other Aussies and a Brit, so home life is pretty good as well. We even have an outdoor hot tub, [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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