With awe we awaited the Frozy Camp. The venue was assured on the last minute, and it took even longer to confirm that there would actually be sub zero temperature.
But after all our seminar, that had drew some international attention as well, got snow and even more than ten negative celsius degrees of freeze. At least for the fist day which was saturday.
In the saturday we made our way to the site. We got fire going on in the tile oven to warm up the old activity center.
A moment was spent just exlopring the place, until it was time for first training. On a clifftop, feet in twenty-thirty centimeters deep snow, temperature a lot below minus ten degrees, one could call that challenging training environment. But the weather was ideal for a winter day. There was no freezing wind and falling snow didn't weaken our eyesight.
During lunchbreak the oven got covered with clothing accessories hanged to dry in it's warmth. But before we got our clothes dehydrated we already headed for the next training session.
The idea was to train on ice, so to the shore we went, near Angelniemi ferryboat. The place was nice but due to mild winter we had before we didn't dare set foot on glacial surface. So we trained on docks. As the sun set some kids doing sledgeriding nearby witnessed white-clothed figures practicing hip movements with nanbu shodan against the red colouder horizon.
After sunset we went indoors. There was a gym hall, excelent place to do some ki nagare techniques. We also tried to adapt the things we learned during the brake about foreseeing the attack and different types of counter attack.
According to the seminar invitation we were suppoused to have sauna, but unfortunately there was none in the venue. Some of us did the second best thing and drenching their clothes with some nightly sledgeriding.
Next morning we found the weather be little bit warmer, though still below zero. The first errand was graduation. Two of us took the chance.
It was a bit unusual graduation. First we went to see a local sight, a giant's ketlle. As we got there it was decided that the mandatory shihotai katas would be performed in that pothole. There was ice in the bottom, so the surface was placid but very slipery. And there were of course very little room. Rest of the graduation was performed on a clifftop, near an almost horizontal drop down to a glen. The outlook was awesome. At some point very shark cliff descended down to the glen which had another rocky, cliffy hill opposite.
After the graduation we went straight into training. Beginning with light ki nagare and genki katas also those, who did't take the garduation (or didn't have to climb up after falling off the cliff) were also made swet with randori san no kata in line form.
To sum it all up we trained little more in the gym hall. Those, who had passed treir graduation, got their diplomas with relevant ceremonies. After the place was cleaned and all the stuff gathered up we headed towards Turku to be in time for our sunday evening training in dojo within our normal training time table.
Because there was no possibility for sauna during the seminar and there actually was this one slovenian person with us, the few last ones decided to move on to Raisio, into private house to spend evening with sauna and liquid refreshments.
Kalle Lönnroth, 6 kyu after the seminar