5 Days of Brain Gymnastics

Me with Sheila and Berit at the conference

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Italy, then the Arctic Circle, and now a visit from my PhD adviser from the U.S. Dr. Sheila Slaughter visited us in Jyväskylä, gave a few lectures, and then we all traveled down to Helsinki for an academic conference. Sheila was the keynote speaker and both Charlie and I gave presentations at the conference. While the week of academic gymnastics was fun, intellectually stimulating, and proved to be very important to drive my dissertation forward,

Charlie and Sheila: pre-sauna.

The swimming hole at the lake.

the real fun came when a group of us from the Finnish Institute for Educational Research (FIER) got together for a night at a traditional Finnish sauna called Savutuvan Apaja. Us ladies were lucky enough to get the sauna on the lake, while the men had a sauna far away from the lake. The beautiful antiquated wooden sauna was stocked with cold beverages of your choice (cider, beer, sparkling water, etc.), towels, and even the unique Finnish sauna shampoo and soaps. We enjoyed the hot sauna and then went for a few dips in the ice cold hole in the lake.

Before dipping in we had to break the thin layer of ice that formed on the exposed water with a shovel nicely placed next to the hole. After one hour of sauna we met up the men again in the candlelit dining hall where we enjoyed Finnish specialty foods including the ever-popular muikku fried fish (oh, and scrambled eggs for us vegetarians).

The UGA crew (or all of those affiliated with UGA) at the Nordic conference.