I tried to sleep in on Saturday. It wasn't really working for me. Heather had a 4am pickup for the airport. I was expecting Erica around noon. So I caught up on email, wrote, worked a little bit until she got here. I also looked into what to do in Helsinki. My lfight gets into Finland at 10:30 pm and I don't fly out to Chicago the next day until 2:30pm. I wanted to explore the city a bit but I ended up just booking a room at the airport hotel. I figured by the time I get my luggage and got downtown late at night, I would only even have a couple hours the next morning with all my luggage before having to turn around and head back to the airport. So, this way I can get some work done in the am and get a good night's sleep before my 9 hour flight back to Chicago. The fridge is emptying out so I meandered down the street a bit and got some food and read. The day was gorgeous.

Met up with James, Aaron, Audra, Trang, Leslie, Meredith, Crystal, Nancy, Jess Rojas and Jeff from Seattle for dinner. We ate at a spot right around the corner from the apartment. Literally. It was a cute traditional Czech spot. The waitress was very friendly. We were her only customers. It started downpouring as soon as we got into the restaurant so we were glad we didn't walk far. She was wearing a yellow dress and we learned that under communist rule they would force the prostitutes to wear yellow so people would know they were for sale.

After the rain stopped the fireworks started. We learned that they do them every Saturday night over the river. It sounded so close and impending. They were loud. Dinner was ok. Probably the worst restaurant food I've had since I've been here, but it was decent which is a testament to the food everywhere else. I tried a new dark, sweet beer. We all took a shot of the locally made vodka. Then we headed out for the night.

We started at a club recommended by a local. There were teenagers standing outside so we were a little turned off. We went in anyway. The ground level was packed out with locals of all ages. There was a cover to get downstairs where the DJ was - $2.50. So we paid it and went and listened to dub-step and watched kids trip out on mollies. Some of us took a shot of absinthe. The production was cool. Setting sugar on fire and stirring it up. The shot tasted horrid. Worst I've ever had. Way worse than a fireball. And I didn't feel any type of effect whatsoever. Other people said they did.

We moved from there to a place called CoCo. They had dubstep and some hip hop. The DJ was pretty good. It was hot and loud and a very different crowd. Dressed up and there to impress. We were there for a couple hours before heading to a Cuban spot. I really liked the Cuban spot, but we were all getting tired and decided to head home. It was about 2:30am. One of our crew also bought pot mints at some point so we each tried those. (sorry mom and dad) Tasted it, but didn't feel anything from that either.

Got home and had no food to eat, except left over pasta. I tried to be quiet while I was cooking it, but I might have woken my roommates with the clanging. Oops.