Planning the schedule and shopping

We had our first meeting this year on Friday 18th. We met in a café called Mummo kahvila, Granny’s café. We hadn't really decided a topic to discuss about, and we ended up going through our schedule and decided dates for the whole spring, when we are going to meet. We looked at our already planned list about things we want to do, and decided dates for them. We also decided few extra dates when we’re focusing only in Finnish and Japanese language. After the café closed we walked around forum a little bit, visited few shops together and left home. Me, Mayu and Rika took the same bus so we discussed little bit more on our way to home.

Next time we were supposed to meet on 25th, and it was planned for shopping. But on Thursday it turned out that Mayu had some other plans, and then Jonas also informed that he couldn't come either. Me, Tiia and Rika decided to go anyway, and check the last sales that shops had. After school we met on Forum, and started going through the shops. We talked about shops in Japan and how customer service differs in our countries. In the end we didn't buy many things. Rika went home after we had walked around for about 2 hours and me and Tiia stayed in the centre for about one hour more.

From now on for next few weeks we have meeting every week. This week we’re going to visit an Asian market here in Jyväskylä, and maybe do something else too if we have time. And hopefully I remember to bring my camera with me then..

Visiting Tampere

As I mentioned our next meeting was planned on 30th November. Unfortunately that plan got cancelled because Mayu got sick, so we decided to postpone the meeting.

On 15th-16th December we had plans to go to Tampere for a short visit. We decided to buy the train tickets beforehand on 11th December. We all 5 were supposed to go to Tampere, but this time Jonas got suddenly other plans he had to do, so he couldn't come with us. But since we had made all preparations for the trip, the rest of us decided to go and bought our tickets.

I went to Tampere already on 14th and on the morning of the 15th, I went to get Tiia, Mayu and Rika from the train station. 

At first we went to nearby super market to buy food for the weekend. We decided to eat traditional Finnish Christmas meal. Then we headed to my sister’s place, where we would all spend the night. We dropped our luggages there and ate before we left to back the city centre. Mayu and Rika wanted to see the Christmas market in Tampere so that was our first destination.

The weather was really cold, I think it was around -15C and it was fairly windy too, but the Christmas market had really nice atmosphere on it. We also went to another smaller Christmas market in Stable yards, a little walk from the centre. On our way we visited Tampere’s movie theater and I showed that not all movie theater in Finland are similar as in Jyväskylä (to be honest, I don’t like Jyväskylä’s movie theater at all..).

We also took a quick view of Näsinneula from the Näsinkallio park. Näsinneula is the high tower located in the amusement park of Särkänniemi.

Mayu and Rika both like Moomins a lot so of course the Moomin shop was a must visit. When we visited the shop, there seemed to be other Japanese in the shop. Seems like Moomin’s really are popular with Japanese!

We finally decided to move indoors and went to the shopping mall, Koskikeskus. We spend our time checking the shops and around 6pm my sister came to pick us. When we arrived to her house we decided to cook some food and bake Christmas tarts too. 

Mayu and Rika also made these for us

I’m sorry girls, I forgot the name of this dish. But they were really good and fresh! I also served everyone Tampere’s special, black sausage! Seems like it was edible, and maybe even rather good? I hope so!

My sister's friend also baked a reindeer pie for us! I think it was the first time for everyone tasting a reindeer pie.

And of course Christmas isn't Christmas without Christmas chocolates!

This black cat was also our entertainer during the evening.

We were all pretty tired so we went sleep quite early!

On Sunday morning around 10am we left to Vapriikki, a museum in Tampere. It has many exhibitions and it’s very affordable for students with student card, only 3€. It has many exhibitions, I think around 10. We spend few hours walking around and I hope Mayu and Rika learned about the history of Tampere a little bit, as many other things from Finland too. We also discovered a small Angry Birds play ground in of the exhibitions! You could play the game for real. It was quite fun. 

The exhibition that I wanted to see most was The Mummy exhibition and it was pretty interesting.

After going around the museum we headed outside of Tampere, to Ideapark. It’s a big shopping mall about 15 minutes drive from Tampere. So for the rest of the day everyone spent their day going around the shops and looking for something interesting to buy. There was also a gingerbread house contest going on, you could vote for the gingerbread house you liked the best.

Before leaving we went to eat Italian ice cream together.

Around 4pm we started to get ready to leave back to Tampere, because Mayu and Rika’s train would leave at 5pm. We escorted the girls on the train, and me and Tiia took the next train at 8pm to Jyväskylä.

I had really fun weekend, but it was too bad that the weather was quite horrible. Maybe if we have time we can go to Tampere again on spring, so everyone can see little bit different Tampere, and maybe that time with a nice weather!