Olen Nuoret Tutkijat

I'm having one of those days today. You know the ones where everything seems to be going wrong. Thing is I was having one of those days yesterday too. Oh well. I think the problem is I don't have much to look forward to now until I go home for my birthday/easter. Still, I have Måns to keep me happy :)

Another thing - why oh why is it snowing again? We had glorious sunshine on thursday, which made me go a bit hyper with excitement that spring was on the way. By saturday the roads and pavements had begun to clear of snow, and I was certain that was it, winter was over. So when I woke up this morning to see a fresh layer of snow, I was distraught... Oh well, another reason to look forward to going home I guess.

I wanted to do a post about friday but given that I didnt do it yesturday its unlikely I'll find inspiration to during the evenings (my laptop is still being somewhat of a little terror). But I will just say a few things.

• I'm so proud of my poster, which is now blue-tacked to the kitchen wall and will be going home with me at easter (although I have now found 3 mistakes, grr)
• My presentation was too short (being only 10minutes instead of the requested 15), but nothing major went wrong and I managed to answer most of the questions afterwards.
• I am very very proud of myself for doing it. I haven't really done any public speaking before, so to get up and present my research to what is supposed to be my peers but are really my superiors given that they are all masters/phd students (or above) and I havent even finished my bachelor yet, was an incredible achievement. I'm surprised by how proud of myself I am. It marks a big change in my mentality in the past year, but also shows how far I've come since I left school at 18 (a very difficult time for me).
• The evening afterparty was so much fun.
• We had wine alongside a posh 3-course meal; Russian blinee's (pancake things, I dont know how to write it in english) with sour cream and fish eggs, followed by duck with raspberry sauce, and then chocolate mud cake for afters. Yum Yum :p
• Then my supervisor bought our research group (all 3 of us) some PAPP-A drinks. I'm not sure what was in it to make it PAPP-A related, but we decided it was the colour of the buffer we use so that is good enough.
• Some of us then went on to Börs (a big pub/restaurant/nightclub complex) where there was much dodgy dancing to old school anthems from my colleagues. Its true that Finns come out of their shells after a few drinks, hehe.
  
• Oh, but I was possibly just as bad, as I launched into the traditional arm-swing dance for Cotton-Eye Joe. I learnt after that they don't do that so much in Finland, so that was something new for them, hehe. I started a trend though, since everyone followed my lead :)
• A few more drinks and then it was last bus home for me. It was such a good night actually. First time I'd spoken to some of my colleagues, but definitely have some good memories. Was a celebration of our achievement, and a lot of fun.