Jan Turns Sixteen, Yay!

Dressed for the occasion. Jan turned sixteen - happy birthday! He is graduating from junior high this spring. He has applied to study in a program that combines high school and business school. We are still awaiting the results (fingers crossed...). A very bright fellow, extremely talented in sports (football foremost, but any will do), and a people person. One of the only people who can consistently beat me in Axis & Allies Miniatures. Jan is looking forward to Aunty Lynn's visit to Finland this year, because he is excited about the opportunity to brush up his English.

Julia & Flowers

Pretty, eh? This is Julia, 11 years. She and her brother, Jan (16 years this week), live with my parents in Helsinki. Both are very bright and athletic youngsters. Julia impressed me with her courage off the coast of Zanzibar with her diving skills. She loves animals, football, trampolines, and cool cars (she's been in a few sweet ones).

Jan has his 16th birthday party on Saturday, so expect a blog of him later this week.

King's Brother In Love

So time ago I confessed to being in love with Prince Joshua. Well, I am also in love with Princess Daniella - King Daniel (my brother) and Queen Sirkku's baby girl. Sometimes when I visit their blog, I catch myself talking baby talk out loud when I'm looking at her pictures. Oh, I miss her!

The good news is, Family Africa is coming to Finland again. Their two-month summer (semi)holiday starts on June 6th. It will be interesting to see how Prince Benjy's vocabulary has grown since the last time I saw him (February this year, the photo of me and Daniella below was taken on that visit to Tanzania).

Professors' feedback

As promised (or warned), here is the feedback I got from my professor(s). It is a strange combination of critical and positive comments. I'm very happy with the grade though, but honestly don't think it merited it. It had the potential but in truth did not fulfill it. (Thankfully, the professors disagreed.) Again, I will happily translate it into English upon request.

Now it is possible for me, if I so decide one day, to continue as a PhD student. But I won't take that route just to satisfy my personal interest in philosophy and theology or to bask in another 4-5 years of pampered semi-irresponsible student (or in this case doctorate) life. Motives must be pure, and the practical benefits of the process and the degree indisputable.

Thesis Done!

Ah, feels good. I handed in my thesis on April 18th and on May 19th it was finally accepted. So, as far as the thesis is concerned - done and dusted. (I still have a few courses to complete.)

The analysis of my sources and actually writing the thesis was very difficult for me. I chose a rather difficult topic and it required studying various fields of philosophy and theology of which my preliminary understanding was extremely limited.

The title of the paper is “Imago Dei and the Body - Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body.” Basically, I was trying to analyze how, according to John Paul II’s understanding, do men and women reflect the “image of God” not only as a rational beings but as embodied and sexual beings.

Below is a picture of the abstract - a synopsis of the structure of the paper and its main points. You can click on it to make it bigger. (It is in Finnish but I can easily translate it into English if anyone is interested.) Perhaps later this week I’ll post the feedback - from my professors - as well.

Aunty Lynn & My Graduation

Aunty Lynn (my mom's sister, on the left) is coming to Finland again this summer, yay! (Her son-in-law, Tim, calls it the "Booze Fest 2008", or so I've heard.) It'll be nice having her around. But I think most of her time with my mom will be spent at the summer cabin just relaxing and enjoying the boo...tanic atmosphere of the cabin and its surroundings. My plan is to hold a graduation party on June 28th so that Aunty Lynn can make it too. It looks like Danny and Sirkku are returning to Finland in June (instead of August), so they will hopefully make it as well.

*My thesis was accepted last week, but I still have a few difficult courses to pass before I can confidently say that I will graduate according to plans.

Good Morning Slippers!

Slippers is one of our two cats (MacGyver was introduced earlier). Slippers - named after her four white paws - is a lovely cat. She is fearful of strangers and of objects in people's hands, but once you win her trust, she is not shy about letting you know she likes you. And she's an impressive huntress. Nowadays, when MacGyver (whom Slippers adores) is getting older, it'll often be Slippers who, for example, will attack a neighboring cat twice her size and scare it off our (her) property. Because she is careful and timid with strangers, I think Slippers has most of her lives left. Unlike MacGyver, who probably wasted his 9th sometime in the mid-90's.

Lepojärvi Cabin

Speaking of our summer cabin, here is a picture of the lake. The cabin itself is just 20 meters from the peer. The lake is called Lepojärvi or Restlake (lepo=rest, järvi=lake). The canoe has served us well - my father made it some, what, 15-20 years ago? It's made of fiber-glass, painted camo, both ends have water tight containers, and the comfortable seats are made of overlapping car seat-belts (visible if you click on the photo).

I'm looking forward to the summer season, as stated. Hopefully some weeks will be spent here. The kids, I'm sure, can't wait. They'll probably haul all the animals - ducks, chickens, bunnies - to the cabin where they can run free. There's no electricity, no running water - so a lot of time is spent warming up the sauna, heating the water, preparing food, washing up after food etc. But it's worth it. Sielu lepää, as we say in Finnish ("the soul rests").

Finnish Beer...

...all tastes the same. After working in a Belgian restaurant for a few summers and getting to know all the wonderful Belgian beers (Hoegaarden, Leffe, Chimay, etc.), I can never go back to Finnish beer. However, there is one event that specifically calls for cold, bland Finnish beer: the sauna. Beer enjoyed before/during/after sauna cannot be rich in flavour or semi-cold: it has to be cold and fizzy to be truly refreshing. Nothing beats grilled sausage and meat and a cold beer. And during summer time, the best way to keep beer cold is (of course) throwing the case into the lake. Like here, at our summer cabin in central Finland.