Wednesday, June 9

Yesterday, I spent late afternoon navigating my way across Helsinki on a tram, walking to the shore in Eira, and then settling down for the evening at Ravintola Saari with Christa, Elena and Micke, celebrating one year of Vaken: a year that has worked very successfully despite any effects generated by passing pandemics.

Saari sits on an island that sits approximately one hundred metres from the shoreline. You wait for a boat which takes you on a three minute journey to an island that looks as though you could wade to it. The effect of leaving the mainland makes it all worthwhile.

To my surprise and delight Elena and Eerki, who we know from Pellinge, sit down at the next table, the one shown here, and then join us on the boat back. Elena has worked with great success as a pedagogist and so her appearance seemed both apposite and timely.

Today, I work on the paper that I have to finish next week, about the pedagogy behind the Vaken project. I have sat reading papers by Martin Seligman and Walter Mischel, and now I have started assembling my notes into something resembling coherence.