05 Sep - afternoon

I have no pictures of this afternoon for several reasons; one of them, and probably the most important one is the fact that we have visited the Service house for disabled people, even though it is a service house, and they get help - it is in fact their house and I felt innapropriate to take pictures there.

We had wonderful conversations there, most of the people attending the meeting could in fact understand and speak English, so we presented the country answered their questions, showed them our flag and one of them asked what did our national anthem sounded like - and we had to sing it. 

They had heard it already because they are all very fond of football and they know Cristiano Ronaldo and José Mourinho quite well...

We saw pictures hand painted by one of the tenants there, we learnt that two of the tenants were married and two others were engaged, they proudly showed us their engagement rings...

We served them coffee and redberries cake and helped a couple of them to eat it, took a few pictures with them and went to visit the house of one of the tenants - Seppo's son's one. Tero was in bed and willing to have us over his place, his father showed us his life as it was before he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at the age of 24 and told us about his journey through the disease until now that he is 40 - a very sad moment... we  wrote a few words  in a notebook so that he could have it read to him, later. 

The most touching and difficult moment was when I went to bid him farewell... his hands grabbed mine,  perhaps as strongly as he has been grabbing his not so very much longer lifetime... a very sad moment, as I came out of his house tears rolled out of my eyes uncontrollably... 

On the outside his father confided - his next door neighbour had passed away the day before, the Finnish flag was at half-mast (Suomen lippu olli puolitangossa)... Not easy!