Wednesday, October 2

 
 
YEAR:  2013 | Tags:  | | |
 
 
 
 
 

A Room with a View, 16:50

 
 

I woke early, had the same breakfast as yesterday and got a lift to AFDA with Gina. Lars and Jani were spending the day at UJ in meetings.

Jutta and I got reports from all the groups and made suggestions. These varied from tiny suggestions to advice to start again. By 15:00 we had seen all the groups again and the students had all dispersed to carry on thinking in various bars, clubs and restaurants in the city. They had all made significant progress and we were happy that they would all have interesting ideas to present on Friday.

I managed to have online chats with both Irma and Auo, which felt very, very nice. Today is the day that Sauli Niniisto makes his visit to Kontula and Irma is in charge of all this. She was very excited, because it is highly likely that this will be front page news in all the Finnish media. It is the first time a Finnish president has made this kind of visit, which will finish will a streamed and unscripted question and answer session between him and 600 young people.

Jutta and I decided to see if we could remember the route Jani walked yesterday, and it turned out that we could. We stopped at a restaurant called The Ant where we both had salads. They were large, fresh and delicious.

Since today was the first genuinely hot day we decided to have our planning meeting on the roof in the sun. I am looking out over the area around the hotel which has hills on all four sides.

Lars and Jani will join us when they return and we will all sit talking until the sun goes down about 19:00. After this I will attempt to watch the stream to find that the internet in the hotel will simply not connect me. This is a regular feature of life in Joburg, apparently. I will discover that I have even lost the ability to send emails, and after an hour of trying, which will involve walking around the hotel and grounds trying to find a wifi connection, I will give up and go to bed.