since kochun has been so helpful in teaching us to make good beer (yes, it's good. even other people say so) we decided to culture him a little bit. kochun, because he's from seattle, doesn't have any experience with a good minnesotan HOTDISH. i know, you think 'how can he live without hotdish?' well, while we were brewing beer we also made him the king of all hotdishes (as all midwestern kids should know)... tater-tot hotdish. what's better than sampling your beer as you brew and having tater-tot hotdish? i don't know either

have you ever had finnish beer? don't worry if you haven't because you aren't missing much. kaitlin, matti and i have taken matters into our own hands with help from our friend kochun. he's from seattle and after being here a little while he decided that he needed to brew his own beer if he wanted to drink any at all. so, he's provided expertise and we've so far produced 19 liters of american pale ale (all of which disappeared on the night of our housewarming party), 22 liters of a honey wheat beer and we have another 22 liters of that will be ready in a week or so.

last day of the army was a great day for all of us. the guys all looked pretty strange to me when we were back in our civilain clothes. it made me think about how you automatically make some kind of categorization of people depending on what kind of clothes they wear. our last night the guys in my tupa and i goofed off a bit... and on the last day our alikersantti korhonen showed us a title from the newspaper, the translation is "Bravo saved the EU." So yes, we are defenders of the free world

gun checks were one of the tasks i excelled at. i tend to be obsessively neat (as you may know). i actually surprised some officers who said they've never seem a gun so clean. so, we had gun checks after everytime we went shooting. if you pass the first round you add a bit of oil to your gun, put it on the rack and then go about your business. if not, you have to clean it again (as my friend katro is doing in the photo)

well, here are a few group pictures. i thought you'd like to see who's responsible for the defense of finland. the first picture is from the last weekend before we were done. i always had to wait a few hours at the train station for the bus to the base, so i'd often have a beer or two with some of the NCOs. this is a picture of a few alikersantti's and a kersantti who were my 'role models.' the say the army turns boys into men; i'm not sure how true that is

the largest group is my bravo team. we were a collection of guys who got booted out of the antitank forces or the recon team. we were kicked out for various reasons; attitude problems, inability to do basic tasks, various other disciplinary problems, failing tests, whatever. i was told that i was kicked out because i didn't speak finnish (they ignored all my attempts at finnish) even though i performed better than most on the physical and skills tests. the smaller is the group of guys i lived with during basic training. we had a lot of fun together and remained friends for the entire time (even though we were in different units later on)

here are a few basic army glamor shots taken at various times. it was kinda fun carrying my assault rifle (sako RK-7.62) everywhere. let's see, in one picture i wanted to just show off my beret and our cool pin. i kept the pin but am not such a fan of the beret. the sienna shot is up in the north (rovajarvi, near rovaniemi) and you can see our tents in the background. the third is taken while i was guarding the road and warning civilians about tanks driving up and down the road

hey, i thought it'd be nice to post some pictures from my life here. this is my first blog and i've found it to be VERY frustrating so far so i had to strip my first attempt. so, let's how this works out