Dear blog,

the trip to Rhodes is gone with the wind, but lots of good (and unfortunately also not so good) memories remain within me from this trip. The highlight moments of this trip were spent with a couple of crazy Norwegian guys in the form of conversations, card games and drinking some strawberry daquiris. Let's not also forget our hotel manager Mike, whose memorizable sentence "hello boysh" has been something of an excessively hilarious subject back home.

On last weekend there was a farewell party for 4 people. Two of my friends are also heading off from Finland for a whole year(!) (although "only" in Europe ;) ) so we deciced to host an all-too-crowded party at a rentable location in Otaniemi, along with sauna and some snacks. Needless to say, there was lots of fumes in the air that night.

During this and next week I am on vacation, after which my employment relationship at VTT ends. Greetings to all VTT guys'n'gals! For your comfort this vacation is only a so-called vacation, because there is a 20'ish tasks left on my ToDo-list for these two weeks. And all are related to me leaving the country on 22.8. The most time-consuming task is moving out of the current apartment.

Back to the subject. After a little more than 1 and ½ weeks it is time to grab a Tolstoi-train to Moscow. I will collect the tickets today from Helsinki central railway station (is there any other :). Already, bookings have been made to three hostels: One in the centre of Moscow, one in Beijing near Tiananmen square and one in Shanghai near the famous river, which divides the city into the "old" and the "new" side.

After arriving to Beijing with Transmongolian express, we are planning on staying for ~three days in Beijing just looking around. After that the plan is to travel to Shanghai using always-so-environmentally-correct train transportation. A good argument for a train is also to travel overnight, so one does not need to pay for accommodation that particular night, and the exploration of the city may commence immediately in the dawn.

Shanghai has lots of places to see and feel, but the exact places to visit will probably get more clear in the coming days. To get into touch with the Chinese nature, it is highly probable we will also visit Huangshan. Planning this trip is the next task on this week. Anyway, after this little tournee the dormitories at Tsinghua University will (if we get one) be available and the international students' enrollment and studies commence.

That's all for now.. Zài jiàn!