Kristen

Hello all :)

Today, I explored the city a bit on my own. I went down to the city market and looked at all the handcrafts. There are lots of jewelry made from reindeer, furs, wooden crafts made form juniper and birch and silver. Very neat stuff. They had lots of fresh fruits and veggies there as well.

Strawberries are quite popular and smell soooooo good. The city market is right along the harbour and is beautiful. On my way there I walked by Senate square, Uspenskin Cathedral, the president's place and saw lots of neat architecture. I saw a building by Alvar Aalto, a very famous finnish architect.

While at city market, I decided to take a ferry to the Helsinki Zoo (http://www.hel2.fi/zoo/index_eng.html). It was a very cool zoo. Its off on an island--like Jurassic Park. They have lots of animals. At first, it was very disappointing because I didn't see anything. Everything was hiding, but by the time I did the circle, I saw the first few a

nimals that I missed. This little kitty was very curious and came right up to me. It looks like a house cat, but I looked it up in my book, its called a Pallas cat. Sorry the picture is a bit blurry--I took it through glass.

I also discovered the finnish equivelent to the Canadian Goose. I took some pictures, I found out that they are actually called barnacle geese.

My favourite animal at the zoo was the brown bear hands down. He keep looking at me and would sit there and then stand up:) There was a pair of them; they are sooooo cute!

Anyways, on my way back to the train station, I totally got lost. I had no idea where I was. I walked right by it and hit the one after that! What a long walk!

It's so hard to figure things out. This is my trip to work for tomorrow: From Kannelmaki to Rautatientori then take the Vuosaari subway to Itakeskus and look for Lyypekinkuja to find my work building....yep wrote it all down...cause words all look similar when they are 20 letters long....hopefully will get used to it soon:)

XO Krissy