Sorry for the delay...2

Right. Second post. So after Tallin there was....Lapland. Getting up there on Wednesday night was hilrious as have never got an overnight train before, but because we bought the cheap bummish student tickets obviously we dont get beds or anything, we dont actually get seats easier but we took them anyway. So we got drunk. In finland, and this sounds like a joke but actually isn't, it's the thing to do...ten minutes into the train journey there was a trail of people going into the restaurant car. So we had a few beers and went, then got told off for drinking our own beers there. But the guy that was running it closed bar anyway so we sat there til 4am, when he got stressy with us and told us to go somewhere else. Which we did - Michael had taken his trousers off by this point so we hid them in the carriage. He found them.

So then we woke up still drunk, piled off the train in Kemijarvi (very northern finland) and onto a bus...the bus took two horrifically hungover hours then we got to our cottage that slept 16 but was going to sleep 20 for the next three nights. I had a whole heap of pictures but apparently my mp3 player hates macs, because I plugged it into Glenn's laptop to check some of the photos out and charge the battery and it wiped EVERYTHING. im not joking. all the music, all the photos, everything. but i got some more the next day off nick and yolanda and we're ok...i just lost some of the really nice ones from when we were climbing the local 'mountain'. during the day me and nick and michael took the boat out on the lake, which was wicked.

so that night we got stupidly drunk and were doing shots of some of the most disgusting drinks you could imagine, including the one from Riga vlad had brought up to Tallin for me. It tasted like death. Sufficed to say, for me it was a messy night....one of only 4 in my whole life, so was a bit disappointed in myself with that, but i felt so much better afterwards, proving that drinking is fine just dont mix. dear oh dear.

the next day we got up and went for a walk with glenn and clemens, just for a couple of hours to check out what was around. we found a wicked little beach with a crazy barbecue hut in it, and then some nice woodland...easy walking, but still good. that night nobody really seemed up for it, but we had a barbecue and stuff so yeah. actually, i think that was the night we played with tinfoil and dressed up. not as good as the edinburgh Foil Party of course, but you have to excuse everyone here - they just don't do things like we do them back home..!

So the next day me nick and Glenn packed a lunch and went walking. everyone else had gone to some tourist centre and watched some movies and stuff and then gone off on a hike, but we thought we werent paying for a taxi to go walking, that kinda defeated the point. so we walked, and then got lost, and then found, and then didnt know where we were, and then were lost in the woods and some hikers with a proper map found us and showed us where we were - nothing serious, just funny. so then we climbed this really steep hill which in winter is a ski slope, and we got to the top of it, which was good. hardish, but after Trailwalker, you have to think "ive done worse than this", which is a nice mentality i think.

so then we went back and had a couple of beers in the evening and did some really gay activities that the student tutors had prepared for us, even though most of us wanted to do have a barbecue at the beach - oh well. me and michael had a sausage eating contest which i won anyway. i felt so sick i thought i was going to die of sausage poisoning.

the next day we packed our shit and went home on another night train, but without any booze this one was pretty horrific....it was incredibly busy and some people kept getting moved around and stuff. hardly slept at all. but made up for it the next day.

anyway, it was a good break, didn't really want to come back to Tuomiokirkonkatu (where we're staying) - even sharing a bed with Nick is better than the Cuckoo's Nest-esque halls here. ah well. all in all everything's fine.....we're nearly halfway through already, which is absolutely crazy. we're gonna be working so hard soon as well that its just gonna fly by i reckon. jess and mum and dad are coming out on consecutive (?) weekends in October which is wicked, we had the option to go to St Petersburg then, but frankly I can't afford it and strangely I'm not really bothered about it. We're going to Stockholm in early September so I'll sort my money out for then, and then it looks like a day after I get back to the UK I might go out to Hamburg to visit Doug for a couple of days, purely because it's cheaper and easier to go from there than it is from here (annoying).
Will try and remember to keep better posted in the future, sorry for the essays guys!