Conference travellers

On Monday it finally started: The 3rd Global Conference of University and College Chaplains, Campus Ministers and Religious Professionals and it is held in Tampere. As a part of my job I was a part of the organizing committee as long as I was still working and it's been a long long process. When Lotta annouced that she'd be arriving this spring I was even somewhat relieved to say goodbye to long meetings in Helsinki and Tampere. Now that the conference is going on in full speed (it ends tomorrow) I have to admit that I wish I were there.

In fact I was for a day :). We took our very first overnight trip to Tampere Tuesday and I got to listen to the first keynote speaker of the conference. Her name is Amy-Jill Levine and she was absolutely worth getting up at 4.20 am and driving to Tampere. She was funny, profound and easy to listen to all at the same time. She's and Orthodox Jew and teaches about New Testament so that'll give you an idea on what we had the pleasure of listening to. If you ever have the chance to go listen to her, do! As Christians we tend to forget that the fact that Jesus was a Jew means that He - obviously - represented all the rich cultural, religious and historical background of a Jew.

It was fascinating to listen to a Jewish perspective on - in this case - the parable of the Good Samaritan. Amy-Jill Levine pointed out that Samaritans were in fact the enemy and the more appropriate way of bringing the parable to our day would be to say that the first person to go past the injured Jewish man was a member of the Israeli army, the second an evangelizing Christian and the third a member of Hamas. This is the thing with all of Jesus' parables. They were shocking to His listeners and that is precisely why they were both remembered and why they were thought provoking. There is, as Professor Levine pointed out, nothing sweet about them. They always had quite an impact.

In the evening our whole family got to join the conference to an evening on Viikinsaari. It's an island close to Tampere (about 20 minutes by boat). The evening was very warm and this time around our daughter had too much to wear (as opposed to Midsummer when we were worried that she might not quite have enough) :). It was so good to see so many of my Finnish and international colleagues that day and evening. And of course to be congratulated on our very well behaved little girl (she joined me to listen to the key note speaker and really was a very good sport about it although she was awake throughout the whole lecture).

We stayed in a hotel in downtown. The room was very nice and specious but it was very very warm in there so both Husband and I slept quite poorly. On the other hand, our little puppet slept really, really well and only woke up at 5.30 in the morning to eat and then fell a sleep immeadiately to wake up again at 8.30 am.

I've bought Lotta a ball inspired by the UEFA EURO 2008 :) and as you can she's pretty into it. The last photo is the bag I now carry around. It used to be that I always carried a backpack and when I got pregnant it at some point became kind of difficult. So, I finally started to carry a purse and felt very grown up! Now I carry a bag that came with the pram and try to fit my wallet and phone in there together with diapers, toys, extra pieces of clothing etc. etc. Things have indeed changed a bit!

Oh, and the first photo on the top. Not hard to tell that this is our first child, is it? ;) We put the safety seat on top of the pram to fit into the elevator and Husband managed to place our nursing pillow on top of it, too. The whole thing looks pretty funny, doesn't it? But, it worked.