Just be.

But something's telling me to

2011-08-27T22:33:00.000+03:00

Busy with people, but now few days alone. It feels good to sit in the dark and have the headphones on, listen to Dusky's Lost in you very loud and feel the evening. It's autumn, once again. I love how everything slows down, green colour is bursting into the shades of yellow, red, brown.

I also feel some kind of longing for... what?

Maybe the old days.

I hope that one day I can try riding again. I quit my lessons when I was young because I was too afraid to call to the stable and make a reservation to the next level riding class. The stupidest reason ever.

I've learned from my mistake and these days I'm not afraid of calling anyone.

Old days, new days. There's time to do things in the future, but future is always running ahead of you.

I started working again, time started flying. Broken bikes, repaired bikes. Nightmares about earthquakes in Helsinki. Music on the marketplace. Dear friends who take the best photos, worry about my bike, carry small people in their backs, ask the questions which should be asked.

42 days and I'll be on a plane heading to Korea and Japan.

Berry story

2011-08-07T11:27:00.001+03:00

There has been news about how Finnish people just let the berries rot in the forests instead of picking them. Estimated 90% of the berries are not picked, although they're VERY healthy and full of vitamins and antioxidants. They're really so called super foods!

We have lots of different berries in Finland and while I was in Kuopio, I picked raspberries and blueberries from the forest and blackcurrants from my mom's yard. Later in the autumn it's going to be time for lingonberries and cloudberries.

Raspberries can be found from thickets, where it's rather difficult to move around. But blueberries grow in many kinds of forests and it's easier to pick them, just that your back might be hurting the next day :)

For the blueberries we (me, mom, Seppo) went to an island accessible only by boat.

Of course we wore the most fashionable clothes we could find! Notice our beltbags and rubber boots.

It took about 20 minutes to reach the island. It was a windy day, so the waves were almost big (scary!) but there were no mosquitos at all in the forest (nice!).

We found a place for the boat and Seppo tied the ropes tightly on the trees, so that we would be able to go home, too.

Earlier I said that picking blueberries is easy. True, usually it is, but this time we chose an island where we had to climb a lot to get to the blueberry lands. It was good balance training, especially when we came down with our full buckets.

So blue! So big! So free! This year the berries are very big and juicy and there are lots of them. In Finland everyone is entitled to pick forest berries anywhere for free but still most of the berries are not picked.

The views from the island were amazing. Combined with the soothing sound of wind going through the leaves of trees and crispy air, it felt very relaxing to be in the middle of nowhere :)

I picked about 3 litres of blueberries with my bare hands (mom and Seppo used "poimuri", kind of tool for picking berries) because I like to feel the berries and bushes. And when we came back, I made this.

Blueberry milk! The best dessert from my childhood.

Today I'm going to the forest again to pick some berries with Yi-Te Lai. Our Taiwanese-Finnish group isn't afraid of the promised rain for today!

->

2011-08-01T22:27:00.000+03:00

Berry picking. Mostly. With mom.

Today +14 and 3 litres of blueberries!

Korea and me

2011-07-22T18:49:00.000+03:00

Sometimes I've thought about how Korea came into my life and why I feel so strongly about this spesific country. My story with Korea dates back to the beginning of the 1990s, when I was checking the pen pal ads from Finnish text TV at home.

Young people from Korea were looking for pen pals around the world to practice English through a pen pal club. I took the address and wrote a letter stating that I was interested in writing with someone. I didn't know anything about the country at that time.

And soon I got a letter from Si-Nae, my first foreign pen pal :) I guess I was around 12-13 years old at that time. We wrote letters very often and she sent me all kinds of guide books and photos about Korea and I was so fascinated. It was also interesting to know how her daily life was and how busy she was with studies... Maybe that's the reason why we stopped writing letters after 10 years of the first one.

After that I forgot about Korea and concentrated on my complicated life (like all lives are when you're a young student) :) But on one student party I met You-su, a sweet Korean girl who became my friend almost immediately. I guess we were the only ones who wanted to speak quietly when all the others, mostly Spanish exchange students were shouting their lungs out ;) It was 2003.

Once You-su invited me to her place for some Korean food (and wow, the first time was horrible as everything was so spicy!!) and there was also Hyeyeon. I talked a bit with her and we changed e-mail addresses as she was going back to Korea for half a year and planning on coming back in the autumn 2004. I didn't know that she was going to be one of my dearest friends <3

You-su left, but Hyeyeon came back with Seonggwan and Yong-uk, two extremely funny boys. In the autumn 2004 we did everything together, played card games, watched movies, got drunk on christmas, travelled to Ruka for some snowboarding. That was one of the greatest periods my life :)

The boys left, but Hyeyeon stayed for 2 ½ years. And when I'm thinking about going to Korea, travelling with her and getting to know her culture even better... I couldn't be happier.

During the years I've also got to know other Koreans and all of them have been very warm and friendly. That's why I know that I'm not going to get lost in Korea.

Meow?

2011-07-20T21:47:00.000+03:00

Cats and dogs. I like them both. Most people are either or, but I prefer both. My grandparents used to have borzois when I was young and when I was living with my mother, we had a cat called Edith. I really loved all those animals plus horses (I used to take riding lessons) plus cows (I used to take care of cows at our cottage's neighbour) plus giant otters :)

So Kassu came into our home for one week. At first the attitude was like this.

New places are always stressful, I know. But then it started to rain and Kassu felt like home immediately.

My first Couch Surfing guest got also his share of Kassu's friendliness. I joined CS recently and almost immediately got requests for surfing and of course I said yes. I'm always free for interesting chats about all kinds of things and that's exactly what we had! The next day he continued his trip to Outokumpu and Kassu was left heart broken.

Maybe someone could explain why animals like to bother you when you're using your laptop? You're trying to check your e-mails and suddenly there is a big furry object in front of you preventing your access to the keyboard. Like this.

Or this.

But we also had relaxing co-existing time :)

In the end, when it was time to go home, Kassu was feeling VEEEERY peaceful at this place. I guess the sofa was perfect for resting his tired bones.

Luckily this was also Kassu's state after I removed a tick from his neck. I'm so proud of myself, because 1) I had never removed a tick before and 2) I was brave enough to succeed with it! Ticks are the most disgusting and annoying insects we have in Finland. I hate them.

As all good times come to an end, it was also time for Kassu to go home. Thank you Tuula for borrowing the cat! The only thing I don't miss are the morning wakings at 4am, 5am, 6am and 7am, because Kassu insisted on sleeping on my stomach. That's not how it works Kassu!

Extremely easy Korean cooking

2011-07-14T16:53:00.000+03:00

Open the package including all the ingredients, in this case rice cakes, noodles, dried vegetables and gochujang-looking paste.

In this product seems to be two Korean dishes combined, tteokbokki (떡볶이) and jjolmyeon (쫄면).

Boil some water and add the frozen rice cakes and noodles. Then add the dried vegetables.

Then add the gochujang paste.

If you wish, it's a good idea to add something green, in this case spring onions, easily cut into pieces with scissors.

Add the greenness!

And then it's time to enjoy either with chopsticks or not :) It was as yummy as I expected, chewy rice cakes and noodles with SPICY sauce <3

This and a few other Korean products can be found from Vii Voan in Helsinki.

This is about GMarket.

2011-07-12T17:51:00.001+03:00

I was chosen to be one of GMarket's Top Bloggers for June for writing about the stuff I've ordered from there. As I gift I got a 50000 won (around 32 euros) certificate and here is how I spent it. Of course I'm hoping to win the competition again, so let's see if this post is interesting enough ;)

This time it took one week for my purchases to arrive. This time the parcel was on my door before 8am, luckily I was ready for it! It's possible to track your packages all the way from Korea with a tracking number :)

This time I ordered from 5 different sellers and the weight of the package was only 0,91 kg, so the postage I paid was about 12 euros.

Let my scissors do their job!!

I ordered Innisfree Green Tea Pure Cream samples for my travels as they are easy to carry with me. Innisfree is one of my favourite Korean cosmetic brands as their products are quite eco friendly :) GMarket is selling lots of samples of different kinds of cosmetic products, so it's good idea to try first before purchasing a full size bottle.

And then something utterly expensive, History of Whoo's Wild Ginseng Oil Ampoule. The price of the full sized bottle (30 ml) is 169 US dollars in Ebay (around 120 euros), but luckily I got these samples for a cheaper price, only a couple of euros from GMarket. Sometimes it's just nice to try something luxurious :)

I really like all Enkistar jeans I've ordered from GMarket so I chose one pair of hot pants from their sale collection. And as always, the size is perfect and I'm very happy with Enkistar, once again!

And then something white...

Besides these clothes and creams I ordered one pair of panties. No photos coming.

I tried the clothes on yesterday and this is how they look like.

Notice the huge veins on my hands, it surely was a hot day today before the thunder!

So, as always, GMarket didn't let me down and I'm extremely satisfied with everything, especially winning the gift certificate ;) I know that at first the GMarket home page is just a big mess and you get headache because of the blinking photos! But after the first shock it's easy to see, why GMarket is so popular in Korea and also in other Asian countries. The selection is SO HUGE!

감사합니다 G마켓! When I'm in Korea in October, I'm even going to buy ready made meals from GMarket! Only a while and a scooter boy is going to bring the warm food to me, wherever I am...

Dear Kuorinka beach

2011-07-11T15:33:00.001+03:00

I had seen it so many times, but didn't have the courage to approach it until last Saturday with 12 friends. After biking in the excruciating heat for one hour, I could finally see it in my eyes; Kuorinka lake and beach.

And oh my was it crowded!!

We chose a place next to a tree providing some shade, then left our stuff there and decided to go to swim. Unfortunately the water was so cold I backed off immediately.

But after some time it got so hot that I HAD to refresh myself a bit :) The lake is famous for its crystal clear water, so I could see the bottom of the lake all the time.

The beach was also so shallow that it was possible just to walk couple hundred meters and enjoy the small cool waves.

After 4 hours of swimming, standing in the water, eating (Taiwanese snacks are the best!!) and talking, I headed back home with Juha and Barun. Other TRUE beach lions still wanted to stay there although the water bottles started to be empty! Luckily there was a kiosk where it was possible to buy coffee, tea, ice cream and stuff like that.

The ride back home (about 15 km) went smoothly and of course we had to take photos next to the Joensuu sign ;) After a day in Liperi, it was nice to come back to good old Joensuu!

I'm lucky because my skin tone is yellowish and I didn't burn at all (of course the sun screen helped me with that), but Juha was completely red and he said it still hurts a bit to touch those reddened zones! Poor Juha.

Lai's photos can be found from here :)

Taina on the road, part 2.

2011-07-08T12:17:00.000+03:00

After juhannus it was time to head to Espoo because of my cousin's confirmation celebrations. The car was packed with mom, her husband, grandmother, Moona (my brother's daughter) and me. Although it was quite hot, it was nice to travel south with them. Moona was drawing lots of pictures in her note book.

She was asking all the time what she should draw and I said car, rainbow and raindrops...

...and a pirate with his ship!

Moona has also been practising writing, on the front page you could find this text:

which means "Nea is stupid sometimes, Moona is sometimes stupid" :D

Then it was party time. I didn't take any photos of my celebrating cousin Otso :D He was surrounded by people all the time, so it was kind of impossible. It was very nice to meet all my relatives, especially all four cousins! And of course the food (always the best thing in all parties!) was excellent and vegetarian choices were plenty.

Going to the church is of course the main thing in the confirmation party, but I skipped it, because being in the church is so boring. Instead I was decorating cakes with my cousins and before Vili head back to the army, we took this group photo.

Taina 30, Vili 20, Valdis 19, Emmis 16.

The next day we (me + Juha) woke up early to get to the ferry to Tallinn. It was quite difficult to wake up because we were listening to the Foo Fighters gig until 23 o'clock in my aunts flat, where you could recognise the songs even if all the doors and windows were shut :D

In Ruoholahti we met Emmis and walked to the terminal of Eckerö Line. The boat was full of people and we found places from the pub, where we could play card games and listen to karaoke..........

After 3 hours of karaoke we were exhausted, but finally in Tallinn. We visited mostly shops like Pull and Bear, Terranova and Mango, but after a while our legs were hurting so much that we decided to visit African Kitchen!

I visited this restaurant last summer for the first time and fell in love with the atmosphere, music and cheap vegetarian foods :) This time was no different, we ordered yummy juices and the foods were excellent as well. So I can recommend this place for anyone visiting Tallinn!

After 5 hours it was time to get back to the ferry (M/S Nordlandia). It was quite full already, so we found the only free places from the pub again, even closer to the karaoke stage. And this was the result.

Barely alive we landed back to Helsinki again.

Next day we went to Korea House for a lunch with my aunt. Bibimbap with lots of kimchi, seaweed and barley tea! Then some puerh tea from Stockmann and the train back home.

There are so many things you can see during a one week trip! So I wonder how much I can see when I'm heading to Korea & Japan for 3 months :)

It's July.

2011-07-01T22:55:00.003+03:00

We have a visitor. His name is Kassu and the happy owner of him is Tuula, who's living in the building next to us. She went to help her daughter with moving, so we eagerly welcomed Kassu to stay a couple of days with us.

He's already taken over this place by sleeping in every corner of this flat! He also came to wake me up at 5am, 6am, 7am and finally at 8am I woke and gave up. He also escaped once from the balcony, but he's a shy boy and was waiting for us to carry him inside just outside the balcony ;)

I found this book called A Journey in Search of Korea's Beauty by Bae Yong Joon (2010) from huuto.net (Finnish web auction site) and paid only 2,5 euros for it. I found the original price sticker (22,000 won = about 15 euros) from the back cover of the book so I saved quite a lot of money!

The travel book consists of stories, poems and beautiful photos from Korea and Japan at the same time as it provides information about Korean culture and customs. These hot days are perfect for reading this book, marvelling at the pictures while drinking some tea :)

And dreaming about kimchi like this.

Taina on the road, part 1.

2011-06-30T13:10:00.000+03:00

First cute cats, Kiki & Lissu.

After cat-overload it's time to think what really happened during the week when I was away from home. Fireworks? Explosions? Something really awesome? Not exactly, but lots of great time with the best of people :)

Thursday morning at 7 o'clock. Nea & Moona were awake, I was not.

My visits to Kuopio always include a short trip to Siilinjärvi, because my brother and his family as well as my grandparents are living there. I really love my grandparents and it's interesting to talk with them, but they surely know nothing about vegetarian food. Last time I was offered salami pizza ("but isn't it vegetarian?") and this time pizza with minced meat, shrimps and tuna ("this is supposed to be vegetarian for sure!"). Nothing beats the local hamburger place (which serves vegetarian hamburgers) after the visit to my grandparents house ;)

Kiki was using her laser gaze to shoo off the intruders. So we decided it's better to leave Kuopio behind and head to Syvänniemi.

Syvänniemi is a big yellow old house. With lots of flying things like mosquitos, wasps and frisbees. There were some nice catches...

...and misses as well.

One morning we all (me, Juha & Arash) woke up quickly because there was a huge wasp in the room. We all ran downstairs (Juha first!), but after gathering enough courage Arash was brave enough to go back and annihilate the wasp.

Our juhannus consisted of smoke sauna, cooking food and pancakes, raising the flag, seeing the bonfire and while other were already sleeping, I was watching CSI. And I drove a car in the morning for the first time in 3 years!!

Arash concentrating on pancake making, it's a hard work!

At 18 o'clock it was time to raise the flag. My grandmother and Tuula took care of that :) When my grandfather was still alive, we used to sing "Siniristilippumme" (our blue cross flag) when we got the flag up in the pole, but now we skipped the song. In my opinion the song is way too patriotic and I don't want to die for the flag of our country as it says in the lyrics!

"WTF just happened here!"

We also had two dogs spending the time with us. Luppa is an old lady, who can't hear much, so she occasionally barks in a very loud voice. Onni is a small boy, who pees in a girl style. Both are friends of everyone :)

Being on the countryside is fun for a while, but it's hard to imagine living there all the time. When I was small, I used to go to the neighbours cowhouse to take care of the animals twice every day and those times were the highlights of my childhood! But there are no cows anymore, no cats, no dogs.

These days Syvänniemi means peace for me, endless board games, old Finnish songs on the radio, sleeping easily in the quiet room, TV programs meant for elderly, sauna every day and MOSQUITOS!!

We also played the best game ever in Syvänniemi, like we play every time we spend time there. It's called "Treffipalvelu" (Dating service) and the main goal in the game is to try to pair men and women. The higher their heart beat is together, the better points the dating services are going to get. This time the most challenging thing was not to get good pairs, but to help Arash with the Finnish words of the game! It must be nice to play something where you don't understand the words you're supposed to use... It was lots of fun anyway :D

Part 2, where Taina travels to Espoo, Helsinki and Tallinn, is coming later.

Midsummer stuff

2011-06-21T11:12:00.000+03:00

Have a nice juhannus everyone! I'm heading to the cottage and spending the midsummer's fest with my grandmother, friends and 2 dogs. See you next week :)

Snow, Jyväskylä and Japan

2011-06-16T12:10:00.000+03:00

Last week was warm. Or should I say hot (+30). So I decided to play some mini golf, read a good book on the beach and then have a cider or two with my friends.

There were noisy middle aged slightly drunk people playing mini golf as well. They were funny and red. I finished 3rd, I'm just not lucky with the stick :D

This book was pure excellency. I've read other books from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and she's one of my favourite authors. "The thing around your neck" consisted of short stories, which are short enough for sunny summer days :)

Jokiasema was so full of people there were no seats left for us and we (me + Merja + Arash) had to sit on the pier. We were talking about all kinds of stuff (especially politics?!?) and the weather was quite hot even at 23 o'clock... But it was not too hot for some snow:

We were even throwing snowballs. And it was +23. And almost midnight.

After talking some more politics and going to sleep at 6.30, I was ready to go to Jyväskylä. Which is a dangerous place for engineers, but luckily I'm a humanist.

I have been playing quite a lot of Space Alert, our awesome board game. Juha's friends have lots of nice board games in Jyväskylä and we tried two of them, Puerto Rico (which I accidentally won by reading magazines while others were thinking for tens of minutes how they're going to play and which are the good moves...) and Betrayal at the House on the Hill.

We played this game twice and both times I played a very fast and strong girl (who was a bit stupid though), who was just using her spear/axe in a skilled way. I hate horror movies, but horror games = so nice!!

And something completely different? Juha is going to Japan in the end of July for one year! He's going to teach in a local school(s?) and visit all our Japanese and Korean friends. As I have already collected enough money for the plane ticket to Seoul, now I'm only thinking about how LONG I want to stay there :)

Let's go!

That time of the year

2011-06-07T16:28:00.000+03:00

Eating a cake is always fun, especially if you have interesting company while eating! Yesterday we devoured our cake bits in a local cafe called Houkutus. At the same time we celebrated Lai's birthday, welcome to the 30s!

I decided to buy a summer card for aerobic. I don't have the money of course, but mental health = priceless. After sweating for one hour it was time to go and hug someone on the railway station...

Anxiously waiting...

Inside the train was Hyunsik, who came back after one week of travelling around in Great Britain. I forgot to take photos, because I was hugging him tightly! And of course his bike was stolen from the railway station :( But we were thinking, how lucky it was that the bike was stolen on his last evening in Joensuu and not the first!

Today it was the first time to ride a bike to the airport! They even had bike stands there, I was amazed!

Say hello to group photos ->

This is always the thing to do on your last moments together; take as many group/friend photos as possible. Because you never know if you can ever meet again. But if everything works out, next time we'll meet in Korea!

I had almost tears in my eyes when I tried to explain how Korea has a special place in my heart and how it was so special to spend time with the only Korean in Joensuu :) Maybe all these spring goodbyes during the years have affected me and I don't get so emotional anymore. But still...

This was the last and happy sight of Hyunsik when he waved at us :) 안녕히가세요 현식!

The plane was small and the sound was horrible AND it took off to the wrong direction and I failed to take other photos.

Näkemiin is Finnish and it means goodbye or farewell or see you later. I prefer the latter one :)

حالت چطوره؟

2011-06-05T16:04:00.000+03:00

Yesterday I visited Anna and Shahram in the evening. They came back from Iran about one month ago and had their bags full of foods, books, souvenirs... They served excellent foods again, dried green vegetables were used to make a very tasty (vegetarian!) Iranian soup and my favourites were the nuts and dried fruits always served as a snack or dessert :)

Then we got some souvenirs!

Inside this package there were dried pressed fruits for eating as a snack. The taste was awesome! These snacks should be imported from Iran as soon as possible!

My new book (poems by Hafez) :)

It looks so beautiful, although I don't understand a single word! I hope that one day I would master also these Persian alphabets. Thank you Shahram and Anna!

Today has been a very lazy day, I haven't been even able to finish my knittings because of a sad accident:

I sat (!) on my knitting needles (made from bambu) and one of them just broke. That's what you get when you leave your knittings on the sofa.

Korea is taking over this place

2011-06-03T20:37:00.000+03:00

Today was another early morning, because of the postman. At 8 o'clock the doorbell rang and suddenly I was holding a huge package. And it looked like this once again in the hallway.

Another package from GMarket, my beloved shop. These days I don't know the prices of clothes in Finland, because I've ordered everything I need from GMarket.

I ripped all the packages open and surrounded myself with Korea (there's nothing better than RIP PACKAGES!).

And now everything is in order as you can see.

Then I started thinking, how many times I have ordered things from GMarket and Korea (tens of times).

And then I started to find Korean things everywhere.

The Etude House Pure Joy -toner (what a cute name!), The Face Shop Goodbye Dust -mist, BAS Bibiya BB cream as well as Innisfree Eco Natural Green Tea BB cream (I'm still trying to find out if I love or hate BB creams). All Korean brands.

White rabbit cotton puffs :D

This is something I got as a freebie with my Bibiya BB cream -order. I'm still kind of wondering, what is this? Home esthetic program? Interesting moments ahead anyway, when I try this "handpack" on...

It's impossible to get (Jardin's) Green Tea Latte -mix from Finland, so I ordered it from GMarket. I loved the taste of green tea lattes in Korea, but the taste of this mix resembles...fish? Also my Korean friend Hyunsik agrees with me on this! But I'm going to force them down!

My calendar for this year is also Korean one. There are lots of pictures from Seoul, the subway maps and enough space for writing :) I'm really happy with this.

This is how the fabric of my favourite dress from GMarket/Korea looks like. I'm saving it for my cousin's confirmation party, so can't post the whole dress!

Books about the language and the country. As well as Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the shore in Korean (part 1). One day I'm going to read it :)

In addition to these our walls are full of Korean art, my Korean tea collection is a big one, almost all my socks are from GMarket (cute good quality animal socks, how can I resist?) and I have huge amount of Korean face masks. 감사합니다 G마켓!

I'm waiting for the morning when I just start to speak fluent Korean.

Comeback?

2011-06-03T18:07:00.000+03:00

I might start writing again. I have some new photos, also new stories?

Just not now.

Advertising for a bike!

2011-05-14T18:32:00.001+03:00

Summer photos...

2010-08-27T21:04:00.000+03:00

...not in any order.

It was hot. The hottest place to be was a tram. I could feel the sweat running down my face in there.

Most of the time I was experiencing new places. Museums, libraries, restaurants. Streets, forests, beaches.

Now +10 celsius feels so cold.

Kuopio

2010-06-29T22:58:00.000+03:00

This is my Kuopio. First of all, the marvellous Anttila building, which still exists next to the marketplace. Hopefully one day someone blows it up in the air! Making the scene more beautiful are Hanna and Michael said in a German way.

I spent time with Nea and Moona, they're singing Moomin songs and creating nice outfits. We were also eating ice creams, eating good food and cheering up Katja, who had her 3 wisdom teeth removed at the same time. How is that even possible?!?

These two ice cream eaters wanted to spend time with me on the market place too. Too bad they're leaving Kuopio behind but coming hopefully for a visit often!

Rest of my Kuopio days I spent with this boy called Mika. First time for him to visit eastern Finland (how is THAT possible??) and I hope he didn't get too traumatised because of the mosquitos, my family and the dialect ;)

The views from Puijo tower amaze me every time. I know the city by heart but on a sunny day I love to see the lake and the small islands and where I used to live when I was small and young. "My brother is working in that building, my mom used to work at the university, see that red one over there, that used to be my school..."

I also met this glorious Jesus looking guy.

One evening the boat took us to a small island, where it was too hot to do anything except lie down. And listen to the iskelmäradio and eat soy sausages. I also saw swans.

No photos from juhannus, I forgot to take any :D Just at the cottage, eating, playing, eating, playing etc. At night everyone woke up because of the horrible lightning which struck really close and broke my uncles computer...I also cut my finger with a knife, but that happens to me every summer.

More summer photos soon :)

Somewhere in Canada

2010-06-19T13:22:00.000+03:00

Just to let you know about Juha's Montréal-blog!

I'm staying in Kuopio, taking lots of photos, meeting people, enjoying sunshine and just being. Can't upload any photos here now, but soon :)

Everywhere you are

2010-06-10T16:20:00.000+03:00

Birds are singing outside and finally a tiny amount of sunshine. Maybe the warm weathers are waiting for my holidays to begin in July?

I had a fastish weekend in Helsinki. Both of my older cousins graduated from the same high school at the same time and of course I wanted to be there :) Meet Vili and Valdís (and me)!

I've always disliked Helsinki a lot. I don't feel comfortable there, too many people and the atmosphere makes me feel sad everytime. Or in fact it must be just the atmosphere, because I felt extremely comfortable in the 3rd biggest city in the world, Seoul :)

But this time I went to Seurasaari just for a walk and it was special! It was so amazing that I forgot the time and missed my train back to Joensuu...Too bad I forgot to take my camera with me, I saw lots of birds, a girl fishing, old houses, sunshine, green shades, nice small paths, tourists, the most expensive cafe ever (tea 4 euros??? wtf?????) and interesting "art".

I want to thank Mika for letting us to stay at his tiny place for the weekend. First time to meet him and he feels like a close friend already :)

New friends, old friends. Saori, Sora, Chiaki and Hyeonjae left. I miss you all!

These summer nights are the ones I'm waiting for. This summer with Minttu, because Juha is leaving for Canada for 2 months :) I truly hope he's going to bring me lots and lots and lots of tea when he comes back in August!

Tidal

2010-05-23T11:58:00.000+03:00

Thursday evening, Shanghai. Dark photos, I don't like the flashlight. My Vote Bush -cards are still THE cards for Shanghai, I got them couple of years ago from the USA. My other cards are from Kennedy Space Center, my friend Teemu brought them this year. I like different kinds of card decks and my newest deck is going to be Tarot cards :) Soon! Next week we're going to play again before Sora goes back to Japan.

On Friday I enjoyed a brunch, I was meeting other people, who are working with multicultural stuff. There were too many forks and knives, so I didn't know which ones to use ;) Anyway I got the food in my mouth and a glass of white wine down my throat. Nice discussions, nice people, sunny day, what else can you ask!

When I came home, there were 2 firetrucks heading the same way as my bus. Of course I was worrying if it's our house in flames, but it was not...It was the tiny forest next to this building! I had my camera with me, so I HAD to go and take a photo.

Thank you brave firemen!

Right now

2010-05-20T18:07:00.000+03:00

My new camera is here! Pink and beautiful. When I received the package yesterday, there was one Snickers inside. Oh, it made me so glad! Just a small Snickers, but the amount of surprise and happiness of eating chocolate while walking outside.

Today I was showing an immigrant group around the library. People were interested, asking questions, borrowing books, smiling. Also I found something I didn't know I was looking for: Rise by Samantha James :)

More later, today card games with Sora and Minttu :)

"Oh you could tell me how you're feeling right now"

New camera incoming!

2010-05-19T17:14:00.001+03:00

So,

soon something new :)

Saturday

2010-05-15T22:59:00.000+03:00

Forget about the time just close your eyes

2010-04-23T15:37:00.000+03:00

This is where I work. Yesterday I could use the camera of the library and of course I had to use my chance and take some extra photos as well ;) I love how the light comes through the windows and roof, white surfaces and shadows. And this week I found out that I can continue working after my project finishes in September. I'm happy! Something always comes if you just let it flow.

I forgot to write about the visit to the Korean restaurant in Helsinki. It was the first time for me to go there and I'm definitely going to go there again. Kimchi was as spicy as I remembered, my japchae was excellent (mmm, sweet potato noodles and lots of sesame oil!) and the atmosphere was authentic, because just before we got in, a bus full of koreans arrived and came to eat, too :)

In the end I wanted to show off my Korean skills and of course it turned into an epic fail. I said
"잡채가 제일 맛있어요" (Japchae is the most delicious food) and the amazed waiter started to ask questions from me IN KOREAN. Of course I didn't understand and he tried to pronounce the questions as slowly as possible couple of times and I just looked at him and felt so stupid! In the end he said in Finnish that "I just wanted to know how long you've been living in Korea" and I said "2 weeks" :D Before my next visit to Korea House I'm going to practice a bit more...........

Another funny incident happened after the Batmud gala. One person mixed my character's name with my bf's character and after he saw me in the gala, he has been harassing my bf telling him "how cute you are, just my type of a girl" etc. I wonder when we should let him know that he has been whispering sweet words of love to my bf instead of me...But I don't mind, that guy was kind of creepy!

Wet snow coming from the sky, but I'll go to the quiz anyway.

(My favourite song atm, by Samantha James. Chilled and slow.)

No stories without a camera

2010-04-18T22:38:00.000+03:00

There's nothing to say without nice photos.

Plain text is boring.

Lately:

*I've been teaching young and old people how to write their names in Korean, Japanese and Russian. I got lots of help from my friends, my Persian and Chinese skills are not so well developed yet...

*I was in Helsinki and attended Batmud gala. Photos can be found from here, I represent myself in a couple of them. In the party I met another LIBRARIAN MUDDER! I was so surprised! I also got to know many people RL, who I've only known in the game before. I really liked all of them :)

*My love goes out to Ivan and Jon, they brought me amazing teas and maple syrup stuff from Canada.

*Now I feel like I'm getting sick. Maybe it has something to do with yesterday taxi line, I was standing in the rain for over 1 hour after 3 am. I'll try to fight!

Korean style decorations

2010-03-21T12:23:00.000+02:00

Big white stone walls and nothing to put there, that was the problem of this apartment for a long time. But once again Gmarket came to rescue and it doesn't look so white anymore :)

In Finland decorative wall stickers are extremely expensive (20 euros or more for big ones) and the selection is quite bad. Luckily in Korea the variety is much better and prices are very low compared to Finnish costs. For example the costs of my stickers were about 3 euros each! Of course some of the Korean stickers are quite funny with lots of writing mistakes (Bon Boyage?!?) and treacly love messages...But because there's hundreds of different stickers to choose from, it's easy to find something nice, too.

In fact I ordered the key stickers (above) accidentally, I wanted to have something green and leafy, but when the package arrived I noticed that I had put the wrong code into the shopping list...Fortunately I didn't get anything too romantic and pink and I was quite satisfied with the key stickers too (except there were also kind of note papers in addition to the key stickers and it says "am 2:00 beauty shop, pm 10:00 grace" in one of them...Grace? Beauty shop at 2 am? WTF?)

These telephone poles were something I ordered intentionally and now they're covering one wall in the living room.

I also joined Heiaheia. What's that? If you like exercising and want to follow your progress, you can join heiaheia and list all your activities there. It's kind of Facebook, but it doesn't have the same features yet, probably in the future though. I've never followed my training or the changes of my weight, maybe this gives me enough boost to start observing them :)

I'm waiting for Batmud's 20th birthday, which is held in Kaivohuone on 17th of April. To celebrate that I reinced out of a sudden and I'm playing a nuntarma librarian gnome at the moment :D My previous reinc was a nuntemplar ent and I made it to avoid any parties, but now I wouldn't mind having some...

Music of the moment: Marcus Schossow pres. 1985 - London especially from 2:30 :)

Puijo on my mind.

2010-03-15T11:43:00.000+02:00

Explosions! Once again we had amazing time in Puijo ski jumping competition :) This time our team consisted of me, Barun, Juha, Nea and Moona. It was the first time for the girls to experience the competition and I'm sure they'll join me again next year. Warm sausage (the only time of the year when I want to eat any meat!) with mustard and ketchup, people applauding and jumpers jumping, long liquorice strings, fireworks, snow, lights, flags...I remember the first time I saw the fireworks and ski jumping, I was in kindergarden and standing in the snow and how the biggest of the fireworks seemed to make a huge cage on top of me by spreading lights all over the sky :)

Next day we climbed up the stairs to Puijo (so beautiful view!) and finally up to the tower. Last time I was in the tower maybe 5 years ago? It was so funny to watch people ski on the tracks where I used to ski 20 years ago (!) and I could also spot Julkula, the city district where I used to live for 10 years.

I'm trying to save the battery of my camera (I loaded it at my mom's place) so I can take photos of Barun for the library photo manual. That's why I didn't take my camera with me to Latolankatu on Saturday = lots of good food and company, stories about first time skiing + evolving languages, Shanghai (of course!) and snow fighting.

The song of this week: Kpop. (After my visit to Korea I started to have special feelings towards kpop. Can't explain why, this music is not very original...)

다음에 또 봐요!

Stay there 'cause I'll be coming over

2010-02-23T15:29:00.000+02:00

HAPPINESS STRIKES!

Reasons, many. The most important -> Hyeyeon is probably moving to Finland for working here. Now it all depends on the company, but I have a good feeling about that. They can't decide not to hire someone who has special knowledge about LG and Asian markets. I'm just so happy I could explode! Then we can have tea evenings and Sirpa's fatburning on Saturdays and just talk talk talk talk talk :)

My job is also so great. I've had meetings with so nice people and we're planning on making library much more immigrant-friendly. There really is need for that! I'm planning on workshops, art exhibitions, library guidances for immigrants, leaflets about library in different languages etc. What could be better?

I'm studying Korean, I bought Korean keyboard stickers, I ordered Korean language books from Gmarket (finally in English and available international shipping!) and it all just makes more sense now when Hyeyeon is coming. She can correct my horrible pronounciation, especially the letter ㅓ...

My extreme favourite song at the moment. HERE. I've been listening to it for 3 hours now.

I can't take any new photos because I forgot the loader of my camera battery in Korea. So just boring texts and old photos until I get my wire back. More soon!

Just some photos and explanations.

2010-02-12T15:51:00.000+02:00

I'm still not recovered after Korea. It's some kind of reverse cultural shock...When I arrived in Incheon airport, everything was somehow familiar although I had never been there before. It was new but at the same time it was very easy to adapt and I didn't experience any cultural shock. Or at least if I think about that time now, nothing was a big surprise for me there.

Incheon airport, sunny and cold day. Hyeyeon, Hejin and Kitak came to take us from the aiport, I continued to Hyeyeon's place by airport limousine bus, other went by car to the guesthouse where Juha's brother and sister were staying.

2 photos from Gyeongbokgung, the biggest palace in Seoul. Snow was melting and it felt like Finnish spring. The palace area was very big so it took us couple of hours to walk around there. Then we were so hungry that we continued to the best food place in Insadong (my opinion!) -> Sanchon!

This was a vegetarian restaurant, whose owner is an ex-monk and the food is based on Buddhist traditional dishes. Floor was warm, food was full of surprises and good and the atmosphere was serene.

Our one-day-trip to DMZ was kind of sad because of the fog. When we visited 3rd tunnel, it didn't bother at all (what was bothering me was the small tunnel so deep underground, ugh!) but we didn't go to Dorasan Observatory, because there was just too much fog and we wouldn't have been able to see anything. These 2 photos are showing my best attempts to look inside North Korea. First one is from Dorasan Station, which is the closes railway station to the border (and there was a spooky feeling, because there are no-one travelling to North Korea and the station was almost empty except the tourists who were walking around). In the second photo you see a North Korean building and we might have seen a soldier there too!

Myeongdong, local department stores (we went in and came out as soon as possible, because everything looked so expensive there!) and the best shopping streets are to the left. So many cars, so big buildings...But it didn't feel uncomfortable, I'd rather say it was kind of cosy!

View from Namsan mountain, where the local Puijo tower (called Seoul tower) is located. Nice views over the city, which just continued and continued and continued to every direction. But I'm not so comfortable in high places, so I was mainly looking at people and wondering about things. Yellow bus number 2 which took us to the mountain was an interesting experience, we saw so many foreigners! During that trip there were days when we didn't see any. We didn't go to Itaewon (district with western shops and people), so that might be one reason.

Oh my sweet Seongkwan and Hyeyeon! I hadn't seen Seongkwan in 5 years and he looked just the same as then! My fall 2004 was very special because of these 2, we went to Ruka to try snowboarding and spent the christmas together at my mom's place. Here we are in Starbucks, drinking coffee and tea, talking about our lives. It felt so heartwarming!

Shopping street in Gwangju. Most of the signs were only in Korean there, in Seoul it was easier to find the places you wanted to go. But getting lost is also fun! (We didn't go to MacDonalds in Korea, not even once! Pizzas and other western food was very expensive there, for example a small pizza from Domino's was around 11 euros...)

Rice cakes, Gwangju. When I say something about rice cakes in Finland, people always imagine western style rice cakes which get stuck in your mouth and which have no taste. Korean rice cakes come in so many different shapes and tastes! I loved rainbow rice cake but also sesame rice cakes were awesome.

One evening Hyeyeon came home from work early and we decided walk 5 minutes to the closest Starbucks. She's wearing a scarf I knitted for her :) We were just talking and drinking coffee + tea (Hyeyeon is a coffee addict, but she tries to quit!) and after that we went to Domino's to buy that small, damn expensive pizza. And how impossible it was to get a vegetarian pizza! It took 10 minutes to explain what we want to have in it and what we don't want to have in it. Most extreme ingredient in that pizza was sweet potato mousse :D

Coex mall was one of the biggest shopping centres. I especially loved one huge bookshop and I bought 3 "Learn Korean" books from there. And in the end we found a cafe, where we could get something vegetarian! Despite of opposite beliefs, it's quite impossible to find vegetarian food from Korea. Many side dishes are vegetarian of course, but main foods usually have some seafood, fish or meat in them. Twice we ordered what we thought was vegetarian (and also our korean friends thought so) but there was seafood in both of the foods. So I just picked them out and ate the rest :)

Coex Aquarium was full of families, but I didn't pay any attention to them...There were too many interesting creatures to look at!

Our friend Kitak's parents have an octopus restaurant and the food looked like this. It felt so bad when they put these octopuses to boiling water alive and they were squirming under the vegetables! I didn't try (sometimes I'm happy to be a vegetarian), but Juha tried and said it feels weird in his mouth. All the others (koreans and japanese) loved the food!

Yetchatjip (old tea house) in Insadong. Birds were flying around us when we sipped our excellent teas (Quince tea = heaven). I want to have a teahouse like this in Finland please.

Just some basic photos from Seoul, taken by Juha because I was at Hyeyeon's place having nice fever (39 degrees).

Time for weekly quiz now. Hopefully soon I'm going to feel more normal. And I didn't buy a new camera, I really hated haggling and couldn't trust the salespeople. Maybe next time :)

Bye!

2010-01-13T23:01:00.000+02:00

So, I've been busy doing nothing. Completely nothing except knitting and sleeping and aerobiccing.

But tomorrow I'm leaving to South Korea for 2 weeks.

Photos coming later, maybe also new camera and lots of stories!

(Luckily my plane is a bit bigger than Moona's)

Catsmas

2009-12-30T19:33:00.000+02:00

Please meet Irmeli, the curious cat, who found a hole in the wall and crawled in there. Too bad the hole was full of sawdust. The story ends in the shower.

Irmeli also liked to play with all kinds of things, especially with the string of my camera. My mother got so excited because of Irmeli that she said she's dreaming about owning a cat one day. Thank you Helena and Aliisa for bringing Irmeli to Kuopio with you!

And then meet Urpo, the huge cat, which spends a lot of time outside although it's extremely cold. When he wants to come inside, he just jumps on the door handle to make a sound and we open the door. My brother's family bought Urpo from local animal shelter and he has been a big part of their life ever since.

So my catsmas was fine and this is how a christmas tree looks like when you watch it through a glögi mug...Interesting. I met my friends, visited all relatives and ate vegan ham as well as casseroles and pizza. And chocolate. The most memorable moment must have been when I played Iskelmä (Finnish schlagers) board game against my mother and her husband. It's like Trivial Pursuit but all questions are about iskelmä music. It was so absurd, but in a weird way it was fun as well. Except when we had to listen to the music. TORTURE! (luckily the clips were less than 15 seconds!)

I also spent some time in the trunk of my brother's car with lots of bags and the greatest suitcase I borrowed from my grandmother. Sometimes you need to travel in challenging surroundings to appreciate the pure comfortableness of a basic car, bus or train seat.

Tomorrow it's going to be the last day of work. Kind of sad, kind of happy :) It takes time to get used to the fact that I don't have to wait for the (too often late) bus number 202 in the cold ever (?) again. Last week I also experienced how it feels like to be in a cold, dark bus for half an hour. The bus broke down on the road and the driver wanted to save battery (although the fault had nothing to do with it) and so he turned out the lights and heating (and of course it was -20 celsius outside). So it was me and 9 other people sitting in the dark bus in total silence...And I was thinking "this is all so Finnish" :D

2 weeks -> Korea.

This month in pictures

2009-12-20T22:02:00.000+02:00

Press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to begin.

First there was no snow and it was warm. So much rain and no minus degrees! There was a forgotten shovel on the yard one morning when I went to pick up the mail.

Then I was going to Jyväskylä to have a small xmas party with my mudder friends. This weird fellow traveller wanted to show off in a bus stop.

In Jyväskylä we spent our time with Rock Band, when I got the microphone I didn't want to give it to anyone else. I also learnt to play the drums. Also sauna, extremely powerful versions of Enter Sandman and big scary guys.

I went back to work, it was finally sunny and got colder. Sunshiiiiiine! Beautiful trees around the library.

We had an amazing console game day in the library, 100 people visited and almost everyone was happy. I liked especially ski jumping but also Guitar Hero and Buzz :)

It was "a bit" crowded next to the doors, luckily only one backpack got mixed with someone elses and we took care of the problem.

Last weekend was time for our own pikkujoulut (xmas party) and I baked these gingerbreads for the event. I also made potato and carrot casseroles and rosolli (traditional finnish christmas salad). Thank you guests for your company and foods!

This week it got colder, around -20 celsius every day. I heard so much complaining, but I was feeling so great. Finally real winter, white trees, freezing nose and stars at night. The most beautiful time of the year :)

Thursday morning I had my last shift in the mobile library, it was so cold that my breath came out as a white steam. All my photos looked like this :D

The view from the front seat is nice and I liked to wave at the other bus or truck drivers :)

Today, cold wind. We had 2 Korean friends (Kitak & Hejin) staying at our place for one week and today we all woke up before 1pm and decided to go to the shop. Notice red faces and ultimate protection!

I want to wish everyone a happy xmas and see you next year :) I'm going to spend my xmas in Kuopio and have my last work week before New Year's eve. Then it's time to just wait for our flight to the land of hangeul and kamsahamnida!

Come Play Perfect

2009-12-03T18:48:00.000+02:00

It's finally cold here and in the morning, after waiting 20 minutes for the bus outside my fingers were totally frozen. But who cares! Anyway it's much better to have cold outside than never-ending rain and dark clouds hanging above your head. On this kind of days I specially enjoy crispy plants under my shoes and the sound they make when I stomp around. I had plenty of time to do that while I was waiting for the bus again in the afternoon for 20 minutes. Waiting is nice if your mind is full of thoughts and you have crunchy plants near you. (it's all about the attitude)

Today morning was crowded in the mobile library. Imagine a bus completely full of elementary schoolers. Most of them are pushing each other and giggling at sex books. There are 2 long queues and rising voices are demanding us to first make reservations for Simpsons comics, then renew all loans, borrow new books and show where are Goosebumps and Ella books.

So hectic, but so great.

Rest of my day I leafed through books of local school library. So cute old editions of Winnie the Pooh or Robinson Crusoe! Also (too) many religious stories made to look like proper adventure or fairytale books...In my opinion it's not appropriate to have "secretly" religious books in the library for young children to read, especially if the stories are full of preaching against nonbelievers. I just wonder who on earth decided to have those books in the elementary school library in the first place?

Lately I've been enjoying knitting, baking, aerobic, singing, games and sleeping. It's amazing how couple of free days can revive your body and mind completely! Tomorrow I'm going to sleep until 10 and pack my stuff and have a tiny journey.

Bis bald! (gr8 german l33t skillz!)

Why don't you let it happen

2009-11-22T11:21:00.000+02:00

We HAD snow. For a winter person like me it felt so good to be surrounded by white snowdrifts and the calming atmosphere that makes you want to light candles.

Now there's rain every day, black evenings and how it all makes you tired! I've been sleeping 12 hours during the weekends and I have no power to do anything efficient/diligent/sensible.

To put some colour in my life and to get me through these black days I bought red rubber boots.

I've always had the passion for jumping in the small water puddles and now I can do it without getting my socks wet. Why people are not using rubber boots more? They're the most practical shoes in rainy times like these.

I've also knitted colourful things like scarfs and dishcloths. I have big plans about knitting a vest, but I don't have time before christmas.

And one thing that gave me energy during these weeks was school children. I was teaching library skills to 12 classes of 7th graders and most of the youngsters were awesome! I rarely feel comfortable with babies or really small children, but when they get older, they start to have their own thoughts and they start asking difficult questions. Is there a better way to challenge often so stale and stable thoughts of older people? (I also read an interesting book about parenting, Tom Hodgkinson's The Idle Parent, which was excellent! Less work, more play!)

6 weeks left of work. 54 days left in my Korea Countdown. Snow has plenty of time to fall before I leave.

From grey to white

2009-11-07T13:43:00.000+02:00

This week has been like this photo: grey, spiky, dull, gloomy. I've missed the busses, had horrible classes to teach, slept badly at nights.

But there's nothing good friends, music and food (and snow!) can't make better. Also winning the quiz for the 3rd time in a row felt like the cherry on top :) And to tell the truth, most of the 7th graders are adorable and sweet and they are happy to come to the library and ask all kinds of questions. And I'm happy to help them.

Kent's new cd Röd was released this week and today I've been mostly listening to it. It's nice to listen to the new cd's from Spotify before buying them, but it's impossible to get the same kind of experience as when you listen to the music for the first time from your own cd. I listened to Imogen Heap's new Ellipse from Spotify, but didn't find the music interesting; only until I bought Ellipse from a salesman (who sells cd's to the libraries) I really concentrated on the music at home and it was amazingly beautiful.

I'm also thinking about buying a new camera from Korea, I'd like to be able to take good photos also inside...If someone has some spesific model/brand in mind that's both good and quite cheap (and of course cheaper in Korea!) then let me know!

Last weekend I had guests as well, Tuula and hiding Nelson. It was so funny to talk about cultural differences! This time Tuula sent me a message saying if it's ok that they're coming and I said yes. In Chile that's not how people do it, they just wait for invitation and go for a visit when they're invited. So Nelson was feeling a bit awkward, because I was not the one who suggested that they could come :) Also if you invite someone to your place, you should clean and prepare dinners and lunches and be a good host. First thing Nelson thought when he came to our place was that "oh, it's so messy" :D For me that kind of formal visiting is a nightmare, because I believe the best thing you can do at your friends' place is to relax :)

But we had great time anyway, that's the main thing.

Why breakfasts in local places (ABC, different cafes etc) are so horrible? I'd love to go and eat something fresh and good if I ever miss the bus in the morning again and have to spend one hour in the centre.

Tea and knits Saturday!

"Watch it closely you see it begin to flicker"

2009-10-23T15:07:00.000+03:00

This week I've seen someone trying to find something useful (food?) from the garbage bin next to a bus stop - TWICE.

This week on a local school there was a boy who was drawing swastikas and telling the teacher how he wants to be a skinhead, hammer all negros and have Finnish flags tattooed all over himself. This boy is 5th grader in an elementary school.

Those things have made me sad, of course. Doesn't sound like an affluent society to me.

Teabag had this message last weekend: You are unlimited. And there are days when I feel like it!
(You should, too!)

This week can only get better. I'm especially waiting for the quiz and all the shamefully stupid answers escaping from my mouth. How that kind of quiz can make you feel happy and foolish at the same time! And tomorrow, bubbly conversations between people who are here now but who might be leaving too soon.

Sunshine for the weekend, absorb some from this photo ;)

Cakey

2009-10-17T15:33:00.000+03:00

Today I was surfing around the net and looked for all kinds of cake blogs. It's so amazing what kind of cakes some people are able to do! And what kind of products there are these days for making the cakes look so beautiful; glitter spray, pasta colours to name few. Most of the time I'm trying to make all food as natural and E-free as possible, but today I decided to try something completely different. You can see the result below...

Shahram, my iranian friend turns 25 today and this cake should be his birthday cake.

I'd be very satisfied with the result IF ONLY I didn't read baking blogs and compare my "cake" with all those Hello Kitty and Halloween cakes.

What can we learn about this? NEVER COMPARE ANYTHING WITH ANYTHING or at least never compare the things you do yourself with something that's done by professionals.

Birds are eating rowan berries and flying like crazy outside. Maybe that's a wise thing to do, because it's going to be snowing later.

I'm mostly dreaming about some luxury hotel in Seoul, where I want to spend one night and see all the lights of Seoul at nighttime. So tempting! So expensive! So shallow!

Time to get going.

Blue wings

2009-10-11T20:52:00.000+03:00

So I've booked tickets to Korea now! And suddenly tiny excitement is starting to grow inside me, this time I'm really going there for 2 weeks! One travel guide came in the post on Friday and I've been reading it all the time, I also have some (old) books about Korea from the library at home. I'm trying to absorb all the information I can get before going there!

But that's all from my plans. Except that I'm going to watch Lost in translation this evening, just to enjoy the sceneries, which are similar to Korea :) My 4th time to watch the movie, which gets better every time.

(and I was cleaning today, also washed sauna for the first time. I never want to do that again, please give me just public sauna where I can go once a week and I never have to wash it!)

I keep my blog so that my friends and relatives can keep up what's going on in my life. But which blogs are my favourite ones that I read often? Or which pages I check almost every day?

1) Grand Narrative tells about Korean pop culture in an interesting way. I accidentally found this blog in summer and I've been reading it since. I like especially the writer's bloggings about Korean women and the world they're living in.

2) Liivian Talossa (in Finnish), just because I like the photos :)

3) Ravelry is for knitting addicts, countless amounts of patterns that are just waiting to be made for someone or for yourself. I go there and dream that I had more time to knit.

4) The Ecologist was a magazine which came to me until this summer, but the paper version was turned into e-magazine so I have to take my daily dose of Ecologist from the net these days. My favourite part of the magazine is "Behind the label", which explains everything you need but don't want to know about basic products, which are not good for you or the environment.

5) Blogilista (in Finnish) is for those days, when I don't have anything to read. Then I check for some fashion blogs (and it just can't stop amazing me how some young girls are so interested in fashion!) or any blog that has been updated that moment.

and finally

6) Osmo Soininvaara 's blog (in Finnish) is one of my favourite's because I like his books and most of the new ideas he has. The best part is the lively conversation which brings lots of different perspectives to the things he's writing about.

and

7) Kemikaalicocktail (in Finnish), which is just basic stuff for people, who are interested in environment and their own health.

Tomorrow there might be snow on the ground, so maybe these are the final times of taking this kind of colourful, stormy and leafy photos :) I'm waiting for snow SOOOO much, so let's hope I'm surrounded by white in the morning...

October moon and big plans

2009-10-03T11:40:00.000+03:00

Long time no words.

Busy busy busy b-u-s-y. I hope I had more time to be, like the title of this blog is emphasizing. Photos from Tampere are so old that I don't feel like putting them here anymore.

Besides, it looks like this now.

Not in the centre of Joensuu, but on the countryside. Winter's one breath away. And the limpid air has the scent of snow, which I totally love. Snow snow snow!

Earlier, I spent time with the children of my brother. Nea is 5, Moona is 4. My brother and his wife were enjoying the sun of Crete and after watching the aeroplane leave, I was adventuring with the girls a bit; first by train, then by bus and finally by car. We also visited the library, which was also a big adventure for all of us ;)

On the last sunny day of the autumn we walked to a local bird tower, everything was so blue and water was low. Huge reeds were filling the beach and we saw no birds. It was +19 celsius that day and the next day the weather changed suddenly, only +5.

To get through these busy times, I have something to wait for. I'm going to travel to Korea (please don't ask if it's south or north, everyone should know that it's (almost) impossible to travel to north!) in January. To spend time with my lovely friends, to experience the huge masses of people, to visit Panmunjeom, to eat kimchi and drink tea and soju (oh, the taste is so horrible!), to adore old buildings and temples and yes, I thought about stopping by at the local library :)

(photos from here)

I'm not so fond of travelling, I consider myself more like a person who likes to stay at home (and besides, flying is very bad for the environment...) and find interesting things from everyday life. I was travelling a lot when I was a child, I was in an aeroplane for the first time when I was 3 and I've been flying around in Europe at least 20 times. It's not much compared to people, who fly A LOT, but for me it's much.

All this time I've had bad conscience that Hyeyeon and other Korean friends have been telling me to come for a visit, but I've never had enough money or will to decide that this time I'm going...until now.

I guess you just know when it's time to go :)

"Deep river runs its course
to a warm horizon
shadows of falling leaves
october moon and rusty skies
ever changing feelings
seeds of autumn in my mind"
(Chicane : Autumn tactics)

But now back to this moment, there's apple pie to be baked, hats to be knitted, clothes to be washed.

Just one hour thing.

2009-08-31T18:26:00.000+03:00

I woke up at 6, felt SOOO tired and slept for one hour more. Life seemed so much better after that. How one hour can make so big difference. That's all, today. More laundry and Tampere soon.

Tallinn. And the presumable lack of vitamins.

2009-08-30T19:37:00.000+03:00

It's nice to think about my holiday week, it has been the most exhausting week ever. Not enough people at work, too much stress, just pure weariness. Upcoming savings next year mean just more work for people who have steady jobs and no work for people who work occasionally. And then there are wishes that library should be open also on Saturdays or one hour longer every day... I guess I'm just too young and I haven't understood how hard the work life is these days. Maybe I'm lacking some vitamins.

But my day in Tallinn was sunny, a bit windy, almost cloudless.

I was basically sleeping in the boat, waking up at 5.30 always takes its toll. Luckily I was not the only one, also Ivan was being a sleepyhead. He's my Canadian friend, my second time to meet him, last time I saved him from fainting and hitting his head. Sauna is too perilous place for some people!

Like last time I visited Tallinn, I really enjoyed the old town, beautiful buildings. I got the feeling I want to stay in one of those teeny hotels, where you can open the wooden shutters and watch out from the window early in the morning and see the tiniest alley and maybe birds. I also love inner courts, small shops and cafes, cobblestone roads, roasted almonds. The unevenness of houses, carefree atmosphere, something in the air that's impossible to find from angular Helsinki. Why we have to be so serious and grey.

I was eager to find the same shops from the centre which I visited last time. When it's impossible to find colourful clothes from Finland, it's a lot easier to discover them in Tallinn. There I'm not XS, I'm S. Also my tea collection got a lot bigger, dear old Pickwick's and Teekanne's and Yogi's. The same incense brand was waiting for me in the same shop as two years ago and now my home is full of jasmin and green tea ethereal feeling. We also decided to drink smoothies in a quite fancy cafe, mine had blueberries, mint leaves and lime juice in it!

After walking around for 8 hours the ferry finally started its way back to Helsinki. Oh, ferry didn't walk, we did. Before finally going to sleep, we managed to meet my aunt for food and pick up this handsome young German man Vladimir from the airport. But what happened next? I'll write about that later.

(don't look so angry Vladimir!)

Lost in the raspberry forest

2009-08-25T20:38:00.000+03:00

I'm back and still my mind is wandering through the streets of Helsinki, Tallinn, Tampere...I should divide my photos and stories in couple of sections. In the evenings I'm too tired to write anything long and thoughtful.

My brother and his daughters visited me before my holiday. We ran in the beach before it started to rain, played some badminton and went to the forest to find blueberries and raspberries. My favourite photo is above, Moona lost in the raspberry forest.

I really like the girls and appreciate how my brother and his wife have brought them up. They're not afraid of small things, they just have the courage to do new things. That attitude is very important especially for girls in my opinion. My mother was telling a story how the girls were climbing on top of everything in a local park and how she was afraid they'd get hurt. But trying your own limits is important and just staying on the ground would be almost as fatal in the long run as well :)

In Helsinki I didn't have my feet on the ground, in fact I was levitating.

From Joensuu to Kuopio, from Kuopio to Syvänniemi, from Syvänniemi to Helsinki. In the car we played funny games with my cousin, like "try to get your initials from the licence plates of incoming cars" or "let's mention some celebrities and always use the last name's first letter to start a new first name". The only problem was that almost all the celebrities my cousin could name were skaters :D Hopefully he didn't fool us...a lot!

Part 2 later, now time for late evening knitting and recovering from the first aerobic of this season...I love difficult choreographies!

FREE FOR ONE WEEK

2009-08-14T18:06:00.000+03:00

And it means travelling around Finland and meeting relatives and friends and stuff.

Hopefully the bus isn't as retro as this one, although the colours of the seats in this bus were pretty nice :D

I also bought new memory card for my camera. Instead of 16 mb and 50 photos I now have 4 Gb and I can take 17 932 photos :D The salesman in the shop laughed when he saw my tiny 16 mb...

Enjoy August :)

Friday - Saturday - Sunday

2009-08-09T22:05:00.000+03:00

Photos from Kuopio, starring Hyeyeon, Soyoung, me, Juha, my mom and Seppo. Tired berry pickers, extreme boating and a pancake called "Iceland". Now I have Korea fever and I'm planning on a trip there...Finnair flies to Incheon straight from Helsinki!

Bye bye, come back soon!

Fate or faith

2009-08-02T20:12:00.000+03:00

Just some photos out of focus. After total cleanover of my flat I've earned lots of tea and time for knitting. New Novita Puro yarn just sends me telepathic signals from my yarn box, "come here, come here, come here"...One hat is almost finished, another one is being planned :)

Have a beautiful week, I know I will!

That's what you get when you let your heart win

2009-07-31T22:18:00.001+03:00

I was coming home on Wednesday after 9 and the sky looked like this. Beautiful, beautiful sky and black shapes of buildings and trees. Tomorrow it's going to be August and it's so nice, dark but warm evenings and stars and a crispy bite of what's about to come. October moon and rusty skies, like Chicane puts it...(seeds of autumn in my mind)

This week was enjoyable, laughing and removing books at work, not-so-early-mornings thanks to Tuula and the best strawberries ever! Yesterday morning while waiting for the bus I bought one container of organic strawberries from the market place and talked with the sales person, he said their farm is not big and they're only going to sell berries there until the end of this week. So today I called to Juha and he went to the centre to buy more red sweets for me. The taste is just HEAVENLY! And after eating these, I really know how real strawberries should taste like. Not bitter, not watery, just yummy.

I watched Sam Mendes film "Revolutionary road" today and oh, the mixed feelings! The movie was excellent story about a marriage in the 50's, life so stuck on gender roles and expectations. But I felt both angry and sorry for the couple, who tried so hard to leave the "normal" life behind just to realise it's easier said and planned than done. I'm just happy the society is not like that anymore...Older people so often long for the "good old times, when everything was simple", but what if simple too often means lack of choice?

Now time for tea, thinking of the old times (when Hyeyeon was here, all the nights we danced, drank wine, played card games in our commune, watched eclipse of the moon, talked, talked, talked, did the things we now smile at...) and the music, how it brings back the feelings of those times.

"You know when you feel it
You know when it hits you
There's no mistaking when you fall
You don't anticipate it
And you can't calculate it
It just comes crashing through your walls

You lose all sense of reason
You have no sense of danger
It's like you're living in a dream.
It lets you float through crowds and
Makes you smile at strangers
It's just the greatest state of being..."

(Oceanlab - Sky falls down)

Waiting for

2009-07-27T20:18:00.000+03:00

My first tiny small flax flower! My other plants don't seem to be comfortable in my terrace (but I can't blame them, I also don't feel comfortable there!) so they are not making any flowers. I had to take a photo of this beauty, though!

This week is nice. First of all, my much loved friend Hyeyeon is coming to Finland next week! In fact she arrives to Helsinki on Sunday and spends the night at my uncle's place, but on Monday she'll be here! So happy so happy so happy so happy! I took 3 days off next week, so I can spend time with her and all our common friends. Warning, lots of photos incoming...

I also don't have to wait for the bus to get to work this week, because I can get a ride from our summer worker, my friend Tuula. Yay!

And my evening meal is (hmmm...was...) the best ever! Bread with avocado paste, organic pear, mysli, liquorice and sweet coconut chai tea :)

Also today at work I got one visitor I didn't expect; my ex-boss! She just wanted to know how I'm doing and we talked almost half an hour about life. What else is there to talk about :) It was so nice surprise, I felt warm the rest of the day. I also carried and removed so many books that my hands are hurting...

There is one nice girl who always comes to the library just before closing time almost every day. She likes to be the last customer and talk with me about birthdays, books, friends. I can somehow see myself in her, I was just like that when I was in elementary school :)

A bit of mudding and never-ending undead turning now, my beloved Conquer (also known as) Ivan from Canada is also coming to visit me in the end of August. Last time I caught him before he fainted on the floor after too much sauna, maybe this time I'll finally save his whole life! Und meinen Gurth (also known as) Vladimir treffe ich auch im August :) Wunderbar!

Somewhere over the rainbow

2009-07-23T19:53:00.000+03:00

Thursday. Week almost done, so happy that weekend is coming! Sometimes it's just so difficult to get used to late evenings or early mornings at work. If somebody came today and asked me to continue also next year, I'd say no. It's financially very stupid as well as in all other ways, but that's what I'd answer.

(These photos have nothing to do with my writings, they are from the forest where I was bitten by mosquitos and hit by rain drops, some kind of war monument)

Last week it finally happened, there was one customer at the library who went totally nuts. She almost attacked one immigrant boy, shouted so ugly racist things...When librarian went between them and told to the boy that everything is alright, the woman started calling names of both of them and acted threateningly. Luckily there were also other people at the library at that time and they came for help and finally the woman left.

It's very nice to work alone in the evening shifts, when there is no-one you can turn to if there are any problems. Librarians say that it's going to stay this way until someone gets stabbed or hurt badly...Every year there is talking about how to make work places safer, but nothing is done anyway. It's so different in big libraries where there are many people working in the same building, own caretakers etc.

But well, next autumn I'm trying to have 2 people in the evening shift almost every day. It just means that some of us has to work 3 evenings a week and that means -> no hobbies, no family time. Being home at 9.30 pm.

I bought a new dress! I like the hem :)

And this is something I got from Tanzania, Barack Obama wall cloth! Again lots of thanks to Matti and Merja. Too bad the cloth was too heavy and it dropped from the wall next day, I have to find a way to keep it on the wall :) Matti told me women in Tanzania are wearing this kind of Obama fabrics as dresses and skirts, maybe I should make my own!

But I made my own, this time green socks! It took only 3 months... Knitting is really something that makes you forget everything else. Just as aerobic, singing (I tried to sing this morning in the empty library, nice echo :D) and reading. At the moment I'm reading Rafik Schami's Damaskoksen rakastavaiset (The Dark Side of Love in English) and it's very addictive, it's hard to put that book down and go to sleep in the evenings. It helps a little that the book has almost 900 pages though, so it's too heavy to hold for a long time ;)

Now some tea, aimless tv watching and then reading and then sleeping. Updating this blog takes too much time! I always think I'm going to write about some spesific thing, but it's too difficult. At home I don't have to be in order! I can be as flat as this tyre which exploded last Friday.

PS. I tried to read the last book of Twilight quadrilogy, Breaking dawn, but after violent sex (the best thing that can happen to you when you have sex for the first time [after getting married of course!] is to wake up full of bruises and cuttings! oh gimme more!), getting pregnant (contraception? anyone?) and giving birth to a baby while dying just didn't quite create any interest in me. Oh my, I must be getting old and why I take things so SERIOUSLY!

Just a little bit

2009-07-08T10:10:00.000+03:00

I just found this buddha from work. Now it's going to sit and smile next to my computer, reminding me to relax and not to worry.

Others played volleyball last week, although it was only +14 degrees outside. I decided to watch and take a few photos, after that I was the champion of petanque!

Before...

and after. I had friends visiting me on Saturday, and what we did once again? Played card games and watched CSI Miami and ate so much! My favourite kind of weekend.

We also had one tiny visitor, it was so fast that I couldn't take any proper photos of it. Hopefully it will come soon again!

Now to work, it's raining so much, I don't know if I like it or not. But that doesn't matter :) I've been reading a lot, maybe next time some book recommendations!

Hobak jeon today

2009-06-27T19:11:00.000+03:00

I made one of my favourite Korean dishes today, called hobak jeon (instead of jeon it can be jun or chun or chon, depends on the writer ;)). It's very simple to make, just zucchinis, sweet potato, flour, salt and oil. I didn't make vegan version this time, so I also added eggs.

I had both yellow and green zucchinis and they were so colourful together! First I peeled the skin (not necessary) and cut the zucchinis into slices and sweet potato into sticks. I put flour (about 3 desilitres) into one bowl and 4 slightly beaten eggs + pinch of salt into another. 2 tablespoons of oil goes to the pan and gets medium heat (although it needs a bit help from you).

Then the messy part. Cover slices and sticks with flour from both sides and then put them into egg bowl and coat them with egg. Then the slices yearn to go the warm pan and get fried :) Yellow zucchinis really looked like slices of lemon in the flour bowl!

You should fry the slices as long as they get golden brown and then turn them and fry also from the other side. I'd say about 4 minutes on each side. In the end your hobak jeon should look something like this.

The best way to eat hobak jeon is to dip slices into soy sauce. So good and so yummy!

Our whole meal consisted of hobak jeon and salad made from tomatoes, cucumber, onion and feta cheese.

I'll write about something else than food later :)

Truly green

2009-06-18T19:26:00.000+03:00

Yay! I finally finished my green green sock (just one...) and the colour is so amazing! It took me 2 months to knit this one, it's just sad that I don't seem to have enough free time these days. I've been reading a lot and of course that time is away from something else. But during juhannus (basically this weekend) I'm going to start knitting the pair for this. Did I already say how much I love the colour? ;) It looks as green as the nature at this time of the year, just more tropical somehow...

When I woke up at 6, it was raining and less than +10 degrees. When I looked outside my window at work, it was raining. And when I decided to go to local hypermarket in the evening, it was still raining. So when I went to the shop, I looked this "cool" (that must be the reason they didn't ask for my papers in local liquor store, no-one under 18 would come to the shop looking this stupid):

It felt like an adventure to walk to the store looking like a ghost. I also kept seeing this boy with red umbrella wherever I went...Thank you Juha for not waiting for me :D

Tomorrow I'm going to cook malesian vegetable curry and bake vanilla muffins with thai basil. True Finnish juhannus food! I bought real English cider to drink with them, because Finnish ciders taste like artificial flavourings. Let's see how Cox apples have been turned into cider by Thatchers and pears by Maguires. Organic white wine is also good especially during hot summer days, so this bottle is going to stay in fridge for a long time...

Speaking of organic, I received a huge parcel from Germany today. It included my BDIH natural cosmetic stuff that I'm using on my sensitive skin. I ordered shampoos, shower gels, moisturisers, cleansers and tooth pastes and paid a lot (I got so many products I'll use these for at least one year), but the prices of these products are half as expensive in Finland. Germany is truly the paradise of all natural and organic products! The webshop I used is Beauty Center Europe, and everything worked well also this time.

The ultimate saviour of my red and flaky (rosacea) skin is this product below. Redness disappears when I use it and I don't look like I have any makeup on, because I don't like makeup stuff. LilyLolo has a stupid name, but it comes in a nice package and works, so who cares about names.

My plants are growing and I have 3 days off! Next week is going to be horrible, only 2 people working in 2 shifts...But I'm not going to think about it yet. Have a nice juhannus you all and enjoy it the way you want to!

Tired & happy

2009-06-16T20:07:00.000+03:00

My beautiful plants! I have one big sunflower growing outside and my new plants inside are kodinonni (happiness of home in English, I don't know the real name :D) and muratti (ivy). They're both so small and beautiful! Also my seeds are becoming plants quite fast, and I thought I was late :) Growing something just gets you back to the basics.

I had 2 visitors last week, Luppa and Tuula. Luppa seems extremely bored and Tuula totally surprised. Both had also other feelings during their stay in Joensuu.

I read two excellent books last week and I want to recommend! Maarit Verronen's Normaalia elämää (normal life) is a collection of short stories (couple of pages each), which make you think about the world and how normal something really is. Maarit Verronen is one of my favourite Finnish writers, her style is minimalistic and you just feel there's something behind the words.

And Ursula...Do I have to say more! Lavinia was once again so special experience that it's hard to put into words. I've studied Latin in high school for 3 years and we talked a lot about cultural history in those classes as well. This was kind of missing part of those classes! We always talked about Greek and Roman heroes (men) and how culture was at that time(basically through the eyes of men). It's easy for me to imagine strong women living there too, but too often they're excluded from the history unless they've been intriguing mothers of imperators or just beautiful.
Anyway, this story filled that gap and I read it on one day...I sat outside in the sun, inside on the sofa, in sauna, in the toilet, in my bed and just read.

Now I have Obama's Dream's from my father waiting to be read during juhannus (midsummer festival), because I don't have any other plans. It's going to be raining and cold anyway, so what's better than staying inside in an empty city and letting your eyes move from row to row...

Sun days

2009-06-10T20:14:00.000+03:00

Welcome the sun! For one month we'll have lots of different suns in our library. This one is extremely cute :D

2009-06-09T19:56:00.001+03:00

Last week I had a chance to go to the mobile library for the evening route. There were quite a lot of people (even first time visitors!) waiting for us as we travelled around with the bus. Lots of sand roads, fields, old people, children and sunshine :) The only bad thing was that there isn't a toilet in the bus, so I had to wait until I got home (so many hours!) Too bad I ran out of battery, so I couldn't take more photos of sunny scenes I saw. It's amazing, how it looks just like countryside just 4 km outside of Joensuu!

I've been reading Stephenie Meyer's Twilight -series and I'm sure I'm some kind of masochist. I somehow like the irritation the book evokes in me! Poorly written, full of christian values (woman should be at home and cook, get married at 18 and start to have babies after that, but OF COURSE no sex before marriage!!), empty characters (how sad is a girl, who rather dies than lives without his boyfriend and is all the time "not good enough for him"! Or a boy, who is so handsome and godlike, but "protects" (read = stalks) her girlfriend all the time), and forever continuous rain...The fact is though that these are the books teenage girls are so crazy about. Secretly I hope they're reading the book for the same masochistic reasons than I do :D

New (hopefully last!) book of the series (where baby conceiving finally happens and that means lots of bruises and wounds for the girl = that's the way sex should be?) is going to be published this October (in Finnish) and there are already 25 reservations for that book at the library. I don't know what to think, because it's GREAT that young people are reading, in fact it's AWESOME :D But I feel somehow annoyed, because there are so many better books to read, where girls can decide about their life themselves, where boys look normal and no-one is forced to get married or pregnant in the age of 18.

Yesterday a summer journalist (oh! memories!) came to the library to make a story about our summer quiz and "Sun and child"- exhibition. All places are surrounded by yellow suns made by local kindergarden children. This is already second time this year that my face is going to "beautify" the pages of local newspaper :D I'm not so happy to see my face (especially my rosacea cheeks :D) around, but I remember how hard it was to get people accept I needed to take a photo of them, so I don't want to be THE pain in the ass ;)

Ok, it seems like I didn't have anything special to write about, just something that came to my mind. What I've been doing briefly : ordering organic creams and shampoos from Germany (double as cheap as in Finland), also ordering colourful clothes from USA to celebrate the last days of custom in Joensuu, waving goodbye to Jinchul, AEROBIC <3, watching TV brainlessly, buying seeds (I know I'm too late to grow nice plants, but I'll try), reading a lot. I'm going to end my babbling in a photo of Urpo, my brother's cat.

See you!

But you don't have a clue...

2009-05-31T14:22:00.000+03:00

..how much we miss you Minhye! Have a safe flight and we will meet again, I'm sure. For me it still doesn't feel real that you don't come to our place and wait in the hallway and come to sauna with me.

This summer feels unreal also in other ways. I don't have any holidays and I've been so busy at work that in the evenings I've just watched TV brainlessly and then gone to sleep. I don't like this! I don't have time to meet my friends, they're doing all the nicest things when I'm too tired to do anything. I don't need all this money, I'd rather be poor but have time to do the things I enjoy the most. Now I'm spending my money on colourful clothes and special foods I could easily life without. Why there's no middle way? Less money and less work, I'd be happy with that.

After saying goodbye to Minhye in the early morning I went to the market place cafe to have breakfast and watch people. Pikachu appeared there as well and it wanted to have a little of my tea. Merja blossoms.

Last week I visited Kuopio and Jyväskylä. Sunny days, football, countryside, trains, flowers, lovely people, all those things I can't enjoy this summer. Maybe goodbyes make me feel this way and I realise once again what's important and what's not.

Moona hides her eyes, because then happened something completely different...

...they fell down!

I love Spotify though! All these songs I've already forgotten and now they're playing in my head and speakers. Yesterday Minhye, Teemu, Monika, Merja, Sejin and Shahram were visiting our place and we listened to horrible songs from Spotify, for example "Pikku-Merja" by Jamppa Tuominen, "Pikku-Taina" by Tapani Perttu and " Monika, Monika, Monika" by Reijo Taipale. Why on earth all those songs tell about cheating and evil women who have left the men :D Nice women don't deserve songs named after them?

Next week starts the summer season of aerobic, I'm already waiting! Although it means that I only come home to sleep...But I hope I have one evening this summer, when I feel like these Röyksopp "You don't have a clue" lyrics:

"It's late in the night, dancing is done
The music has died, you're ready to run

But you don't have a clue, this party hasn't ended yet
Not for me and you, now you're just pretending

You're hiding from yourself,
Yes you are, yes you are
Like golden rays of sun in the cloud"

Roses are red, violets are blue, I like you because you are you.

2009-05-07T18:27:00.000+03:00

Can't get enough of roses. First I got some, pink and yellow. Then we celebrated book and rose day (or as Wikipedia puts it, World book day) at the library on Monday, when it was the name day of Ruusu (rose in Finnish). We got lots of roses from local garden to give away to customers and there were an exhibition about rose varietes (there was one called "Green tea", too!) as well. These photos were taken today, still most of the roses are doing fine :D Big white rose below is called "Avalanche".

This week has been ultimately busy, we have lots of events for children (puppet theatre, fairy tale hours) and organising everything just takes all the energy. I'm still a bit sick, so in the evenings I fall asleep before 10...But all the others seem to be sick at work as well, no fever, but coughing and sneezing. What is this weird disease that seems to last for too long!

Last week was first of May, in Finland known as Vappu. Lots of people getting drunk, having kind of festival mood although it's not even warm yet :) Guess how I spent my day? Playing Left 4 Dead of course! It was free for vappu day, so I downloaded it and shoot zombies the whole day. No alcohol, no party mood, no friends, nothing social, just me and my headphones and keyboard. I was feeling quite sick that day too, so I didn't want to go out at all. But besides that I also read lots of books, knitted, made funny faces with Juha (Rubik balloon was the only one we had!) and stood in sunlight.

Some book recommendations -> Guy Delisle's Merkintöjä Burmasta (Burma Chronicles in English), Olimme kuluttajia by Roope Mokka and Aleksi Neuvonen (only in Finnish) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Puolikas keltaista aurinkoa (Half of a Yellow Sun in English).

I'm trying to gather my strength, next week I'll be working also on Saturday with first class elementary school children :D

I also finished one it-looks-almost-like-a-hat, originally called Spring Beret. Good for those days when I'm too lazy to comb my hair. Thank you Ravelry for giving me endless patterns of beautiful stuff to knit!

That's all. I hope that great success meets everyone and life is good.

Sick leave.

2009-04-29T13:40:00.000+03:00

I've been feverish for couple of days now, I just haven't had any energy to write anything.

I'll be back soon.

Är du lycklig nu?

2009-04-18T13:11:00.000+03:00

Early morning at the market place, people setting up their stands, so many things to be sold. I'm in the centre already before 7am and I think that's the best time to be there, when it's still calm, only couple of janitors cleaning streets, busdrivers waiting for people to get in, no-one is running.

This week, busy as always. There was one customer at the library, who complained about the small quantity of books in Estonian and said that it must be because "you have so many black people here". Where's the logic? People like that make me angry.

On Wednesday I also missed my connection bus, because the driver in the previous bus didn't let me out...There were 2 teenage girls, who travelled with flawed tickets and when the bus arrived in the centre, there was only 3 of us in the bus and the driver didn't open the doors and was shouting to the girls. I went to tell to the driver that I have to catch a bus and he should open the door for me, but he did nothing! So I had to stay 2 minutes in the bus and missed the next bus.

I guess that all that is unfair in my opinion makes me so pissed off. Life is not fair but it should be!

But small (and bigger) misfortunes are something I forget so fast. What I like to see are all the children coming to the mobile library and borrowing lots of books! In these photos the bus looks quite in order, but after one class everything is a big mess and we barely have time to put all books in their places before the next class arrives. Most borrowed books are of course animal books (especially about dogs, horses and dinosaurs!), comics, fictional horse books and Risto Räppääjä -books. And while the mobile library was moving, I had time to knit my everlasting woollen scarf...

Yesterday Esko was here! He's my favourite astronomer, who brings astronomy closer to normal people, both young and old. His books have been excellent and I like his way of writing, although sometimes I don't agree with him. His main goal, to make us understand how tiny creatures we are here in the universe, but how much we have already done, is very refreshing and I really enjoy his lectures. Also yesterday! Once in a while his jokes were (again) a bit too stereotypical, however his sense of humour is so self-ironical that it compensates everything :D I enjoyed especially the huge naked photos of himself he projected on the screen ;) People applauded heartily for so long time after the lecture that Esko had to say "please stop already, this is not North Korea" :D

Now I'm listening to (both Clark Kent and) Kent and the strong wind blowing outside. Weekends go too fast, I wish I had more time to just be...Maybe I should change the blog's name, too :( I have so many ideas that my mind is overloaded, my time is limited and I don't know if I can put some of them into practice. But it's better to have too many ideas than no ideas at all?

"It's time to go
hold my hand you should know
that the road we follow
ends the day we grow old
'cause there is no life
after you've given in
age can't define what we are deep within

Away from harm here in my arms
safe in my heart, my only, that's what you are"

(Clark Kent : In my arms)

Books books books books books.....

2009-04-13T12:19:00.001+03:00

Relaxing holidays are soon over. I should soon get back to ordering books (some interesting ones are being published this fall!) and forget my knittings for a while.

Meteorologists promised sunshine, but I haven't seen any sun. (Hmm, how many suns do we have?). I finished my "Kahdesti haarautuva puu" and that's why I'm still living in different worlds. I can recommend that book for everyone, although I remember enjoying it a bit more in English, maybe because the story was not familiar to me when I read it :) Ursula tells about a woman called Sutty, who explores a world where religion, books, old habits and ancient stories are forbidden. The life of the countryside people is still dependant on those old traditions and the rich culture is something Sutty gets interested in. The story is beautifully written and it really makes you think (which is sadly not so common in books these days).

I also read "Terveyden kiinalainen kirja" by Denis Vinokur this weekend and it was interesting as books about Chinese medicine always is. Chinese medicine (if not using tiger teeth or other ingredients got from rare wild animals) is based on thought about energy called Qi, which should flow around in your body freely. Stress, bad food, weather, too much/too little exercise, so many things can affect the flow of Qi and block it in some places and that causes different diseases. Unlike in Western medicine, diseases are treated by trying to change the way of living, not just taking pills. Food is for example one of the important remedies in Chinese medicine. This book told the basic things I already knew about Chinese medicine, but I guess it would be interesting to read for someone, who doesn't know much about the subject. There were also tips for meditating at home as well as meridian points which can be treated when you have certain illness.
The last book I read this weekend was Tommi Uschanov's Mikä vasemmistoa vaivaa? (What's wrong with the left wing?" and although I'd had that book borrowed from the library for over half a year (!), this weekend I finally grabbed it and started to read. Interesting facts and thought provoking ideas as well as good answers you can use against basic arguments used by politicians these days. Sometimes I really need to find this kind of books, which have something else to say than the normal political jargon where people try to hide the real thoughts inside the thicket of useless words.

I've been one month at the library now and now I know something about the reading habits of people using the library. Most of all, it's good that people read! And boys borrowing Ursula's books and women loaning books about organic gardening make me smile. But the fact is that women read mostly romantic books as well as detective stories, where men are most interested in books about war, both fact and fiction. Children still love Pippi Longstocking (Peppi Pitkätossu in Finnish) and funny Puppe -books by Eric Hill (Spot the Dog in English). Also comics are very popular, especially manga books.

That's all about books!

One thing before going to movies (Visitor!). I don't know if I told about Raw Gaia before, but I've been very satisfied with the products I ordered from there. Jojoba oil makes my flaking skin feel better, when I apply it before going to sleep and MSM Beauty Cream keeps my skin moisturised during the day. Ordering was easy and delivery fast and in addition to these I also bought spirulina powder (the smell is horrible, but it doesn't taste when you mix it with smoothies :D) Too bad there isn't any cure for my rosacea though...And antibiotics are still the last opinion in my mind.

Thank you, goodbye!

Wisely if I can't make it

2009-04-11T12:32:00.000+03:00

There is an airport close to us and I've always been dreaming of taking a photo of landing airplane. This plane is not landing, but taking off, all the same for me = I got a nice photo! Last weekend was sunny, springy, and full of new places.

This week I've been busy again and in the evenings I don't feel like writing anything here. I get enough of computers at work! I've been mostly making work shift lists, removing some old books and on Thursday I was in the mobile library (I got corrected that library car is not a proper word for it) and somehow I really like all the school children coming there and they're all so enthusiastic about books! They read the same horse books I used to read when I was in elementary school too :D

One other thing I did in elementary school too was to read a book in sauna. Yesterday I tried that again (when you put sauna on, it's not too hot to read there and slowly the heat surrounds you!) and it was awesome! One part of my ultimate happiness must have been the book I read though (that Ursula K. Le Guin's Kahdesti haarautuva puu, which I started yesterday).

Yes, spring is taking over, although yesterday it was snowing the whole day and the ground is all white here. Next week it will be +10, I don't know how to think about it. Instead of thinking, during this Easter time I'm going to eat mämmi and chocolate eggs and knit. I already finished a few presents from waste yarns and the colours make me happy!

I just found this nice Poem machine, try it! I'd call it hilarious. This is the poem I just made:

This is how it goes

crawl inside your mind
hope for sauna to pour cloudy Morning
Birds foaming
rabbit is frozen cold

Wisely if I can't make it

somebody talkative
sunshine inside you.

Animals in the wild

2009-04-04T11:48:00.000+03:00

Yesterday morning I decided to take photos of the animals I see every day. I came up with the idea because I didn't want to spend time with a man, who comes to me every morning at the bus stop and starts to talk about jesus. Some mornings it's ok, but not always :) Snowy wolf and woody fish can be found from the centre of my city and the rest of the animals from the library where I work. I love especially that big bear, stroking it makes me feel relaxed and when you climb on its back, everything looks small and you feel like you can conquer the library!

Last week as well as this week I attended different meetings. This kind of meeting culture is very new to me and for example I didn't understand to take blank paper with me to the first meeting. And of course because I'm so newbie in my work, some things the others are discussing are just not familiar to me and I feel like an outsider. But as the time passes, I'll get hang of it, hopefully!

It's also a bit difficult to understand that there's always tea and coffee and something to eat for free. When I was unemployed, I didn't have money to buy cakes or pies - at least not often. When I went to a cafe with my friends, I usually took just tea. I don't know if I want to get used to this kind of change - it's a small thing, but for me it tells about the way of the world these days.

Sun is shining, music is playing (Rubik - Dada bandits!), new Ecologist is still waiting to be read, too many books to be read. Off I go!

The things I see when I wait for the bus, part 1:

Ursula.

2009-03-29T19:57:00.000+03:00

I have never been a big fan of anything. But when I got to know Ursula K. Le Guin's books, I totally fell in love with her words and worlds. Her books are more than science fiction, her ability to make stories that are so full of meaning and feelings...I'm just deeply in love.

Last year I wrote a letter to her and explained how her books mean so much to me. I just felt like I had to do it, she should know how her books are meaningful to this small person in this small country. And despite being a busy writer, she answered to me :) I understood how it feels like to be a huge fan of something, because when I received the letter, I was so moved!

I'm collecting all of her books. I've found many from the removal shelf from the library and I've ordered some from internet book store. I've read all her books there are in the library. I just feel like I can't get enough of those worlds, where planets circle around each other and beings have no gender. How imagining different worlds teach us about ourselves.

When I was a child, I dreamt about writing. If I'll ever write something in the future, Ursula has shown me the way :)

Future library? Shadows?

2009-03-29T11:30:00.000+03:00

My week has been rather busy again. I had one meeting day, one training day, one library car day. I heard interesting things about how we could get young people to use libraries again...In Espoo there's for example game room and game evenings for young people and they're very popular, especially amongst immigrants. That's how I'd love to see library! Things are just changing - young people are not so interested in reading books anymore, so libraries should offer something they're interested in = dvd's and games. I'm sure the change is coming, but it might take a long time until it reaches us here :)

I'm not sure if library car is something we have only in Finland -> They're like busses filled with books and they stop at schools in day time and in small villages in the evenings. I used to visit one when I was a child, because it stopped quite close to our place then. It was very fun to see that still there are some people who are enthusiastic about books, particularly pre-school children ;)

It has been sunny and I took photos of the shades of the trees on different walls. Sometimes I feel that I can see beautiful things everywhere! It's just about the attitude :) And some days I just look at my feet when I'm walking forward and don't see anything special.

I haven't done the dishes in ages. And the ants are taking over the kitchen. Instead of doing anything reasonable, I use my new face cream from Raw Gaia and enjoy the scent, dream about other organic products (luckily pound is very cheap at the moment!) and listen to Spotify at the same time as I read Ursula K. Le Guin's Kahdesti haarautuva puu (originally "The Telling"). I love Ursula. Bye for now.

Early morning's bright sunshine it seems a bit different today...

2009-03-22T18:55:00.000+02:00

I love flowers. I bought these yellow tulips yesterday, because I'm starting to feel like spring. It looks so ugly outside, snow is melting, dog shit is smelling, roads are bare and icy...but I like the changing of seasons, although spring is my least favourite time of the year. Change is always good?

We had friends at our place overnight and now it feels a bit empty. It's Sunday evening again and tomorrow is another morning when I need to wake up at 6 o'clock. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but still it feels too early. I've had headache for 2 days now, too much stress before I get to know my place at the library. I'm trying to read books about being a boss and I find them kind of sad...Those books emphasize the fact that bosses shouldn't be friends with employees and I think it's very weird. But after this year I'll be able to say what kind of boss I am and if it's something I should do in the future or not.

I'm such a child -> I still love to walk over the icy parts on the road. Sometimes I get my shoes wet, sometimes not. The sound of breaking ice is just beautiful, kind of hollow, and all the sounds vary a lot. Maybe it's time to start to use rubber boots again :D

I have Spotify. Too bad they don't have enough good dance music, all other favourites can be found from there though :) Dinka, Kent, Moloko, Laika...Sub-Urban Tribe's First spring day! It suddenly came into my mind and this song is still so awesome!

That's all today. I'll sit on the sofa, drink tea and knit before going to sleep. Hope to see sun tomorrow as well as nice customers, friendly faces and cute army boys :D (my bus always stops in Kontioranta! Too bad I'm already so old and they're so young...)

PS. Ski jumping is over! What I'm going to do in the weekends now? And I should start calling to my brother more often because I can't see him on TV ;)

Sitting in different places.

2009-03-21T10:20:00.001+02:00

I've been busy and exhausted this week. So many new things! And also lots of sitting. I sit in the bus, in the bus stop, in my room, in all kinds of meetings, in the library car, in loaning and returning, in the restroom...

Things I like -> listening to music while working, being alone in the library, bus trips, Valintatalo in Kontiolahti, my colleagues, kind of freedom.

Things I don't like -> Being home at 21.30, thousands of new things sweeping over me all at once, sales agents, papers piling up on my desk.

But I guess first weeks are always the hardest and after that I get some kind of routines. At least I hope so! This weekend I'll just relax and eat organic apples and of course watch ski jumping, the last jumps of this winter! The sun is shining so brightly, it must be the sign of spring.

Puijo. Cards. Tea.

2009-03-12T21:14:00.000+02:00

Puijo Ski Jumping World Cup took place in Puijo on Tuesday. It's my annual tradition to go there and this year was no exception. I love the atmosphere, people shouting and screaming, colourful flags, everything! And my grandparents live right next to the hill, so I always go there and drink tea between rounds ;) Finnish didn't do so well this year and the winner was a big surprise (Takanobu Okabe!). My favourite jumper is Matti Hautamäki, because he looks just like my brother (very rational reason to like some skijumper :D) and he was in same high school and took same classes with me.

After the competition we came to my mother's place, had sauna and played Shanghai (one of my favourite card games!). We also drank tea Liang brought with him :) He was very lucky in the card game - second time ever to play it and already a winner!

This morning I tried a new tea called Matcha. It's green tea powder from Japan and I had never found it from any shop in Finland until now I accidentally bumped in it in Kuopio's market hall. The taste was very strong, but I love strong tasting teas :)

The day was very sunny and I bought some yarn and a calendar from Kuopio before heading in the bus to Joensuu. I spent my time knitting and looking at the white fields. Now I'll just wait for tomorrow morning...First day as a library boss. Scary.

Kuopio.

2009-03-12T20:56:00.000+02:00

These are my photos of Kuopio. First from the church, then some from the museums and in the end we visited Kuopio's market hall.

(I took this photo because this trilobite looks exactly like Babylon 5's shadow ships!!!)

5 km.

2009-03-09T21:01:00.000+02:00

Today I wanted to save 3 euros and walked to the centre instead of taking a bus. Walkway goes in the middle of the forest and I took my camera with me and took a few photos. It took me 45 minutes to walk 5 kilometres.

Spring is coming, so trees don't have any snow on them anymore and it looks very grey. Also the roads are starting to be bare, but still I saw many crosscountry skiers and the tracks seemed to be in good condition :)

I signed my employment contract today, so it's officially true that I'm going to be working as a leader of the library until the end of this year. I'm most afraid of all kinds of meeting I need to participate...And writing strategies! I don't know anything about that. So I have so many things to learn this year.

Last but not the least, I finally finished my pair of socks! It took me 2 months to knit them both, but it was worth it. The colours are lovely, green and purple :)

Tomorrow I'm heading to Kuopio to watch Skijumping World Cup. I'm going to take Juha and Liang with me, so more tea ceremonies coming!

China in my mind

2009-03-08T22:04:00.000+02:00

When I wait for the bus in the bus stop, I always have company -> birds. There's always lots of them flying around, stopping for a while and then flying, landing on some bushes and eating berries and then flying again.

Yesterday was an evening dedicated for China. I invited couple of friends to play Shanghai (one of my favourite card games!) and for my surprise, my chinese friend Liang brought some very special and expensive chinese green tea with him. His parents own teahouse in China and that's why also he knows so much about tea. We even had a true Kung Fu tea ceremony (without all the real "tools") and the taste of the tea was unearthly! The best tea I've ever tried! We drank the tea from small shot glasses, because I didn't have "real" small tea cups. Maybe because of the brilliant taste of tea, I didn't concentrate on playing and I lost all games...

I'm going to be too busy tomorrow, there are so many things I have to do and so many places to visit because I got the job. But before that, I want to wish everyone a good womens day with the photo below -> me between huge boobs! This snow woman can be found from Joensuu :)

Multiculture!

2009-03-04T14:49:00.000+02:00

Last Saturday was the farewell party for Yuki. We had invited quite a lot of people and almost everyone came to our place :) The good thing when you invite many people is that people form groups and just talk with each other. There was Shanghai group (photo above), Korean drama group and Fallout 3 group :D The guests came from 10 different countries -> Finland, Poland, USA, Russia, Korea, China, Japan, Nepal, Iran and Vietnam. The person who says that people from different cultures can't get along is totally wrong! We baked Karjalanpiirakka again, I also made laskiaispulla and rye-lingonberry porridge to celebrate the Finnish culture day, which happened to be in the same day.

Thank you Yuki, Minhye, Hyejin, Sejin, Kitak, Anton, Shahram, Daniel, Marko, Teemu, Monika, Barun, Merja, Anh, Liang and Maho for coming! I hope we can have another evening soon :)

Koli and bye bye Yuki

2009-03-02T12:40:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I went to Koli with my friends, because Yuki had never been there and it was her last day in Joensuu. The views were oh, so amazing! There was plenty of snow and the trees were completely white. We took the ice road there and because we had one Japanese looking girl with us, we could stop in the middle of the lake and act like tourists. Ice roads are very scary in my opinion, but this one was safe and when I saw other cars on the ice too, I knew that we're not going to sink either! So we jumped in joy! (featuring Yuki, Monika, Juha)

The day in Koli was also full of climbing, sliding and to our wonder we found something that we thought doesn't belong to Finnish nature...Pikachu! It was just sitting on a branch and of course we had to take a photo. We also saw more Pikachu's when we climbed up to Ukkokoli and there was also one Pikachu hiding under a tree with it's squirrel friend called Risu.

And today I had to say goodbye to Yuki. Last night we stayed up until 1 o'clock, just made Japanese food, played card games and went to sauna in a dim candlelight. I hope she got nice memories from Finland :) I feel like crying when I write this. Bye bye Yuki! (I'll write about work and Saturday's party later)

Announcement

2009-02-27T21:11:00.000+02:00

Meet the new head of the library, Taina! This is still so hard to believe...

How wonderful it is

2009-02-26T13:06:00.000+02:00

Yesterday we took the bus to the centre and it was so sunny! Our dear friends are leaving back to Japan and we wanted to buy some small gifts for them. The place to visit was Taitokortteli, where you can find local handicrafts as well as tourist souvenirs. I love the atmosphere in the old wooden building and small shop rooms :) And as I expected, we found everything we needed from there.

I also went to aerobic and how my muscles are hurting now! 3 weeks without any exercise really makes you weak. Next week I'm going to get myself in shape again :)

When I was in Kuopio, I decided to cut my hair (with tiny help from my mom and Yuki!) and now it's oh, so short! But spring means change and I'm not afraid of changes. I also got a job offer, but let's see what happens.

"How wonderful it is that two minds can meet". I got that card from Ursula K. Le Guin, one of my favourite authors. It's so true, meeting even for once can change lives and basically everything. Lifelong friendship is a beautiful thing, but short encounters shouldn't be underestimated.

People around me.

2009-02-23T21:13:00.000+02:00

I spent 2 days in Kuopio, visited my relatives quickly. I met my uncle, 2 cousins, grandparents, mom, brother and brother's children. In the photo above is Nea, 4 years old, and that photo makes me laugh every time I see it!

Also my friend Yuki visited Kuopio, she had never been there before. Yesterday was laskiaissunnuntai, so of course we had to go sliding (I have big bruises on my legs now...) in the evening. Today, just before I ran out of battery, I took a photo of Yuki standing in front of Kuopio Cathedral.

Now I'm tired after walking around in Kuopio for 6 hours! Next time Kuopio is calling for me when it's time for Puijo skijumping world cup in 2 weeks. I can't wait!!!

Yarn problems and green stuff

2009-02-20T14:49:00.000+02:00

If you want to practice your patience, I suggest you try making a skein into a ball of yarn. Yesterday I had my last day at work, so I wanted to make myself happy and bought a new, colourful yarn. I started to unravel the skein in the evening and found nice knots very soon. I continued this morning and finished my job 5 minutes ago. Maybe I just have the wrong tactics? :D But on the other hand, I find it very good to try my patience every once in a while :)

Today I'm going to the quiz with my exchange student friends. Let's see what happens, because 1) all the questions are in Finnish and 2) my walking dictionary travelled to Jyväskylä in the morning. Anyway, the main thing is to have fun, not to know the answers!

Oh, yesterday I had the greatest experience at the library. There's TV in the reading room and usually no-one uses it. Yesterday one boy came and wanted to watch skiing world championships and we gave him the remote controls and headphones. Suddenly there were many people who wanted to watch the same competition and the boy took those headphones off and just put the TV louder. People took chairs near the TV and listened very closely and celebrated when a Finn won :) And the TV is really in the centre of the reading room, where should usually be very quiet. I loved the feeling of people, who have never met before, coming together and also celebrating and smiling a lot.

And then, something to read about. Recipes, buying guides, blogs, facts. The Green Guide. Or do you want to support local farmers? Buy food and other products from organic food circles! Circles are working all around Finland and using them you make sure the money goes to the right place :) Some links -> Jyväskylä, Joensuu, Tampere. Usually organic food circles are part of university organisations, but they're not meant only for students. I've been ordering food from local organic food circle for 1 ½ years now and I've been very satisfied. Last time I ordered the things shown in the photo below, potatoes, carrots, sour cabbage, flour and honey. The prices are a bit higher than non-organic products in the shops, but you can just taste the difference!

Beloved Comrade

2009-02-17T20:49:00.000+02:00

Sun has been shining. The best winter days are in January and February, the whiteness blinds eyes.

I've been working at the library for 2 days now. I'm a professional librarian, but due to the small amount of work places I haven't found a permanent job. So I'm working at the library as a substitute if someone gets sick or something. At the same time I'm thinking of studying something else though...I should only decide what I want to do!

It's impossible to work at the library without glancing at the removed books. Yesterday I made the perfect discovery -> The book is called "Korean review" and it looks very innocent (see the photo above, the book looks alluring together with a big pack of candies!). When you open the pages you find out something is a bit twisted in here.

One text example explains it all : "The capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is Pyongyang. Here in this city, more than 1500 years old, is located Mangyongdae, the historic place where the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung was born and spent his childhood. Pyongyang is the heart of revolution and the glorious capital of socialist Korea. In Pyongyang resides the respected and beloved Comrade Kim Il Sung, the revolutionary genius, ever-victorious iron-willed brilliant commander and tender-hearted father of the people".

The book also has interesting headlines like "South Korea under the occupation of US imperialism" and "The great fatherland liberation war". Text tells about the great success of beloved Comrade Kim Il Sung's Juche idea, how it affects North Korea and how South Korea "is internationally known as a kingdom of tuberculosis and a kingdom of disease". I haven't read the whole book, but that's my plan for this week! This kind of propaganda can teach me a lot about history of dictatures and also about North Korea's present.

And I'm very lucky to find this kind of comical book from the library for free ;) But I have to wonder who took this book to the library collection in the first place and why it has been removed not until now!

I've been very lazy and I haven't cleaned in a long time. When I get home from work after 8.30pm, I'm too tired to do anything. I'm waiting for free and sunny days, when I can just hang out in my nightgown for the whole day!

Mind empty, me bed wake up morning tired.

Valentine's day party

2009-02-15T12:52:00.000+02:00

Yesterday was time for some serious student partying after (too) long time. I've hoped to meet new exchange students and I certainly got what I wanted :) I took 2 reinforcements with me, Merja and Juha. In the photo above they're afraid in the bus because of a crazy busdriver, who 1) shouted in Finnish to one foreign girl who wanted to buy a ticket and didn't speak Finnish and 2) drove so fast that the bus was sliding in all the curves.

Minhye came to the bus stop to take us to the party place and it was so crowded already! One room was full of Spanish people talking only Spanish (that's so common!) and we decided to stick with Shahram, Minhye, Maho and Mitsuyoshi. Shahram told me many interesting things about Iran, because I didn't know almost anything about that country before. Just Persepolis, Teheran, Persian carpets and mosques :)

During the evening we changed flats couple of times, because the meaning of the party was to visit and meet lots of new people. Also policemen were interested in our party and stopped by, but they left soon :( I also talked with Dan from the States, who could pronounce Finnish language perfectly, because he's singing in the university choir. His English sounded so beautiful too, I have some kind of weak spot for people who are native English speakers :D

I also met other great people, Anton (old friend!), Sejin, Roy, Liang, Alberto and all those others, whose names I can't remember. Memory overload! I really hope I can meet everyone again :)

After the party I wanted to go to a bar to dance, but the tickets were 7 euros :O So we skipped that part and came home after sitting a while inside. Now sun is shining, I'm hungry and I'm thinking of warming the sauna today! I love to take photos without the flashlight, because the sunlight makes it's own shades and shadows like in the photo below :)