Monday, February 9

Naa had no school this morning so I left on my own.

I spent the morning writing furiously. I wrote reports on student work, notes for Erik, and various bits of administration. I cancelled my trip to Vilnius because it conflicts with Naa’s last A-Level exams, which are English and Maths. For these she needs my help, or at least my support.

I also booked my flight and hotel for Odense. I had a difficult choice. Do I leave Sunday afternoon and then spend an unnecessary night in Odense, or do I leave early Monday morning? I decided on the second option and booked a 7:00 flight for the Monday morning, which I might come to regret. On the other hand I will have a weekend at home and won’t need to treat Sunday like another weekday, which I will definitely not regret.

I will get back at about 23:00 on Thursday.

At midday Naa arrived at Arcada, and we went for lunch at China Flavor. It wasn’t hot and sour soup today, as it is most Mondays, but I had chicken, tomato and hot chilli soup, which was almost as nice.

Now we are outside the restaurant looking at the “new” Tockmanni. Apparently all of the Tarjoustalo stores are being rebranded with this (ever so slightly) more upmarket name. Naa and I will walk around it quickly. Everything has been moved around but the product mix has only changed slightly, in that you can buy cider there now.

When we get back to Arcada Naa will sit in A303 reading her books for tomorrow’s English oral examination, and I will attend a team meeting. I will then spend two hours reading about, and experimenting with, Eliademy, an unfortunately named MOOC framework that has been developed in Helsinki. The team are based in Ruoholahti and are happy to be visited. I am probably going to oblige them soon.

At 16:30 Naa and I will get the tram to Sörnäinen where I will get the metro and Naa will walk down to her journalism course at Happi.

By the time Naa gets home Irma will have booked the air tickets for next winter’s trip to Ketala, and we will have got a very pleasant and very unexpected surprise.