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A very rare thing happened this morning: Stephen woke up before me! All the other mornings I have been waking him up around nine, and it is a pity I do not have a voice recorder, because it is incredible how many funny things he says when he is still half-asleep :-) But as I said, this morning I was the lazy one, I slept almost until 11am, I think it is an all-time record for me. Since I woke up so late we skipped breakfast, and for lunch we ate leftovers from the day before.

The weather was absolutely perfect today, sunny and -6 degrees, so we decided to go for a drive to our summer cottage in Larsmo. Just when we were about to leave an old friend of mine, Gorel, called and asked if we wanted to go for a walk with her. But since we were on our way to the cottage we convinced her to join us there instead. So the four of us (I, Stephen, Gorel and my dad) drove to Larsmo and walked the last part through the forest. There was not that much snow, so it was no problem to reach the cottage. It is such a beautiful and relaxing environment here, it is just a pity that the sun sets so early this time of the year, therefore we did not stay very long to avoid the darkness. Stephen took some beautiful photos of the view over the sea, and also some good photos of me and Gorel. It would have been fun to walk on the ice to some of the islands nearby, but the ice is still very weak, so we did not want to risk falling through the ice.

Gorel came with us to my dad's house and we had coffee and some cakes. I have not met her since last Christmas, so we had a lot of talking to catch up with. In the evening my dad got a fever, so he had to stay home in bed, although he was invited to some friends for dinner. Stephen and I went to a nearby petrol station to eat some very good kebab and "grillpanna".

Always when I am visiting Finland I try to meet as many relatives and friends as possible, since the opportunity to meet does not occur very often. Today was a very lucky day, because Stephen and I were going to meet two of my best friends at one go, Katarina and Pamela. At around 9am Pamela picked us up, and I was glad that she offered to drive us to Vaasa, because the road was slippery and I do not drive a car very often anymore, so I am a bit unsecure. We drove through a village called Kvevlax, quite near Vaasa, where we picked up Katarina. When we arrived to Vaasa we started off by visiting some shops, for example a photo shop a stationary and bookshop. We decided to go quite early to eat, and Stephen convinced us to go to his favorite restaurant Rax, a pizza and pasta buffee. This is really a good place to go if you are hungry, they have a lot of different vegetables, soup, delicious nachos, lasagne and many kinds of pizza slices. We could hardly move to go out of the restaurant once we were finished :-)

While we were at the restaurant we revealed the news about our engagement to Katarina and Pamela, and they were both very surprised but also very happy for us. I think Katarina has already started to plan our wedding :-) After the meal we went to a nearby park (or more of a backyard) to take some photos. We did some more shopping, and although we had eaten such a large meal for lunch Pamela suggested to go to Arnold's cafe to eat their famous dougnuts, and we all agreed it was a good idea. It is very seldom we are in Vaasa, so we have to enjoy everything it has to offer.

We sat quite a while at the cafe, having an interesting discussion about what is important in life. In the car on our way back to Bennas we had changed subject to homosexuality, and as always when Katarina is involved in a discussion it was an interesting one.

In the evening Stephen, I and dad went to visit my grandfather, who had spent Christmas in Sweden with his daughter (my aunt) and her family. I am glad he came back in time for us to have a chance to meet him before we go back to Malta.

In the morning I went to Esse to pick up my nephew Jonatan, who was going to spend the day in Bennas together with Stephen and me. We stayed inside during the morning, mostly playing football in the hallway. After lunch we played card for a while and then we went out to play in the snow. Stephen joined us as well, and we had a fun snowball fight. The day with Jonatan went by very fast, and I was really enjoying spending time with him.

In the evening Stephen and I went to Jakobstad to buy some last things from there, and when we arrived back my friends Pamela and Johanna came to visit us. I have not seen Johanna for more than two years, since she lives in Germany and we are very seldom in Finland at the same time. Stephen has actually never met her before, but now he has met all of my friends. It was a very nice evening with a lot of talking, enjoying tea and a panettone we brought from Malta. We also watched some photos through the computer and listened to some of Stephen's own music. It became a very late evening, Johanna stayed until midnight, because naturally we had a lot to talk about.

After she left we realized that we had not packed a single thing yet, and we were both very reluctant to get started, but we did not have a choice. After finally finishing the packing I realized another thing: I really needed to take a shower. So I think it was past 2am when we finally got to bed. So not many hours sleep on our last night in Finland for this time.

At 7am we left from Bennas, my dad drove us to Vaasa airport. When we were sitting in the cafeteria waiting for the boarding to start, a customs officer approached us and said that they wanted to open Stephen's luggage, and that he had to come with them to another room. Luckily I went with him, because it turned out to be my luggage which contained something suspicious. It was quite prejudiced of them to immediately assume that it was Stephen's luggage... Anyway, I did not have any weapons or drugs in my luggage, just a big can of juice, which maybe looked like a can of petrol or explosives in the x-ray :-)

We first flew to Stockholm, where we had to wait at the airport for about two hours. The time passed quite quickly though, and we were soon on the plane towards Oslo, Norway. There we just had to leave the plane while they were cleaning, and then we continued towards Malta. We arrived at around 5:30 pm, and we unpacked our things. We were both very tired after the long trip, so none of us felt like going anywhere in the evening, although it was New Year's Eve. After unpacking Stephen sat by the computer and I was almost asleep on the sofa. We forced ourselves to stay up until midnight, when we had a drink and about ten minutes past midnight we were both asleep :-)

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