Hi all,

I've been away for about a week now, but it feels like months. My trip has been broken into two sections - playing up in Helsinki, and watching frisbee and being responsible in Turku.

My first experience of a non english speaking country was interesting, and I was a bit lost until I realised that nearly everyone spoke good English. I ran into Will Mitchell (a frisbee dude) the first evening, and spent the rest of my time in Helsinki with Brad (a mate from Sydney). One of the more interesting things we did was raise the aussie flag on a island fortress/naval base type thing. We also impressed locals and tourists alike with our vocal renditions of Pain of Salvation, Dream Theater and Pink Floyd songs. Some Andorus and Bee.d.  snuck in there as well. The weather was too shite to do much site seeing though, so we spent our days resting and spent lots of money at night. It was worth every euro cent. I think I'll be coming back to Finland.  Interesting things seem to occur here, as Brad will surely attest to.

My first few days in Turku were spent being responsible and looking after the junior lads, which is worth the effort. Their games have been very good to watch, and they're winning enough to keep themselves happy. One exciting game was against USA, where they lost 17-4, but managed to pull off a 'distraction horizontal offence'. Two of the lads did a well choreographed back-flipping manoeuvre in the endzone, leaving the US kids too stunned to defend.

Last night I kind of slowed down a bit on the responsibility thing, as I ran into Rob (lad from Southside, currently playing with South Africa), and ended up playing some kind of "I'll show you my chest hair if you show me your knickers" drinking game with a bunch of Irish girls (which seems to be the sort of thing you do when Rob's around), then the staff dragged me out to a bar. I'm learning a little Suomi, as well as a bit about their drinking habits. All is good.

It seems I never had anything particularly interesting to say, but I just felt obliged to email you so you know that I'm enjoying Finland, and most of you are at home working. Giggles all round.

Cheers,
Wally