Thursday, January 8

Today I left alone because Naa had a 10:00 start. It was snowing gently as I left the house.

Tomas and I spent the day with the 52 students from the Innovations and Concepts course, who demonstrated the innovative sports that they had invented in the last twenty four hours. There were nine games, because not everyone had been here yesterday and the tenth group was only formed in the afternoon. A few games were described with illustrated talks, but most were presented in playable form.

The day began with Duckface Hunt, which was a combination of whack-a-mole and the current trend for photographing people making duck-faces. The class was taking place in the auditorium and everyone except the two with cameras had to hide beneath their seats. The team with cameras stood at the front as people bobbed up and down at random intervals making duckfaces. The team with the most in-focus shots of duckfaces after two two-minute rounds won.

Other games included a combination of SingStar and French cricket; a combination of trampolining and volleyball (which was demonstrated with a small trampoline but not actually played); a combination of tug-of-war and basketball, which worked surprisingly well and could well work as a real game; and a game that involved teams of two where one player span round and round very quickly for as long as it took for the other player to make a paper aeroplane while wearing oven gloves. The dizzy player now had to stand on a spot with their arms held in a circle while the other player tried to land the aeroplane inside the circle they were making with their arms.

The session finished with a game in which each player watched someone play a simple musical phrase on a guitar. They then had to run out of the building and back again through revolving doors and, when they returned, play the musical phrase themselves on the guitar. I was impressed that several people managed to do it even when the revolving doors got stuck and they had to be freed by someone else.

Now I am on my way home. I am on the bus waiting for it to leave. It is half snowing and half raining.

When I get home I will clear an area by the side wall of the house that has become waterlogged, and then have a shower. Naa will spend the night at Kamppi.