finn-ishing up the week

well, now I can openly write about what happened last week: I successfully pulled off a HUGE surprise! I flew to Finland on Wednesday with Marc and surprised the HELL out of Hanna for her birthday, as evidenced by her face. It was amazing. We spent a long weekend enjoying Finland (Helsinki and her summer house). The whole trip was just so great and I loved spending every second with Hanna! Highlights included skinny dipping and swimming to a rock to sunbathe, going boating at midnight to watch the 'sun set' (it never really set, it just dipped below the horizon for a couple hours), eating a fish with all the bones intact, riding a roller coaster with an actual break man, eating reindeer meat, watching Marc bonding with Hanna's father (who speaks absolutely no German or English), watching Marc bonding with Simo (Hanna's boyfriend), going swimming in a freezing cold bay in Helsinki, and paying 4 Euro for one beer. Crazy. After leaving Finland, Marc and I had a 6 hour long layover in Berlin, so after prodding at him for a while he agreed to leave the airport and go on a Berlin adventure with me. It was really awesome: taking really touristy fotos in front of the Brandenburger Tor with a real German. And I knew the way around more! Fun times.

Roller Coaster with Live Break Man

I've been back in Bonn for about a week now, I survived three PM shifts at the hospital and managed to get tomorrow off so I can celebrate Julian's birthday and Lisa's going away parties with everyone this evening. Wednesday night I went clubbing after work with Goetheallee 62 (it's becoming a bit of a misnomer to describe them as "Marc's roommates" because now I hang out with them all too, so it's like Marc is their roommate?). It was a ton of fun I have to say, we played Shocken, a really fun dice game in which everyone gets wasted. I lost and had to buy a round of beer, but luckily beer for 5 in Germany is cheaper than one small beer in Finland so the out of pocket cost wasn't too high. Then we went to N8schicht, which was really fun. Tequila shots can do a world of good after a long day at work :)

Other than that, life has been tame. Yesterday I finally met the new Americans at Flunkyball (who seem to have more drama than we ever did I have to say), and I thought they were pretty mediocre. I guess I'm biased though, and I am looking at the whole situation from the outside at this point. Some of them are really odd (there was this one Italian girl who looked like she was seizing but I'm pretty sure she was doing some sort of victory dance) and some of them were really nice. None were that cute. I have to say I think my German friends take the attractive cake around these parts...

I've been really disconnected with home lately. It's just such an escape here and I have a life and I have this huge lust for life, it's nice to be able to forget about home for a while. I feel guilty, but at the same time I feel so refreshed and rejuvenated. I love shopping at German grocery stores and knowing what I like and what to buy. I love knowing how life here runs. I love this!

Praktikum going really well. Bureaucracy of staying here not so much.

Hanna, Viivi, me and Marc in front of the summer house