All present and correct

One of the first things we've been doing each morning when we woke up was clicking on the tracking link for our consignment of boxes, to see what progress they had made. This morning there was excitement because it was clear the boxes were in Helsinki, but trepidation because it was not clear that they were all here. One of the boxes had not been properly scanned. In the end, what took two weeks to choose and pack and six days to travel here arrived around lunchtime. All present and correct. And it took precisely 20 minutes to dive into the boxes, pull out their contents and squirrel them away.

We feel much more at home now. There are books in the house (although most of them will be going to work) as well as the option to play music.

After this excitement, we caught a tram to Eira in the early afternoon, and walked back along the front back to the market hall where we had a cup of coffee. Finally, we went to Stockmann (like John Lewis on steroids) to get some more bits and pieces and trammed it back here, using our new travel cards. More than 15,000 steps today, easily exceeding my newly instituted target of 10k per day. However, in order to get the necessary floors I had to climb the stairs twice to the apartment (which is on the sixth floor).

Work has already started, in the sense that I wrote a short text over the last couple of days. I'll be publishing it here, on my new Medium blog, where I also published some reflections on "being an EU citizen" earlier today. However, tomorrow is the formal start date, and I'll be trekking in to the university first thing in order to activate my official account. I am in haste not only because I'm keen to get started but also because I want to start using the university sports facilities that are right next door to this building. There really will be no excuse for not going to the gym.