I'll be home for Christmas

- and not only in my dreams! Tomorrow will be my last day at work, and on Saturday morning, early, I will finally take the bus to my mum and dad's. I can't wait.

It's been a hectic month, this December. My to-do list for the past few weeks was miles long, but now I think I've reached the end of it (until I remember something I've forgot so far). I'm still not quite there in the jovial holiday spirit: it feels as if I can't relax until after I'm packed and on my way to the countryside, and even then there are things I can worry about if I wish to (and make no mistake, I shall). But at times my heart soares and I hear The First Nowell in my head...

Happy Christmas!

Familiar

The other day I saw this girl in the bus I take to the university every day. She looked so familiar that I thought I must have seen her before: maybe she's on some course with me, or the friend of a friend, or maybe she goes to the same aerobics classes?

After some hard thinking, it suddenly dawned on me: she's the cashier at the local grocery store and I see her almost every day! It's sad, somehow, to realise how little attention you pay to people in customer service and how the transactions you have with them are so automatic you don't even think. (But maybe now I don't have to worry about whether people who came to the dry cleaner's I worked at last summer recognise me when they pass me on the street.)

Scheduling conflicts

I hate making time-tables. Normally I'm very good at organizing and keeping track of things, but when it comes to arranging courses my systematic skills come tumbling down. I might have ideas as to what would be interesting, suitable, or compulsory, but when I should jot down the course codes and write my name on the right lists, I forget everything. And if, by any chance, I should remember, then all the courses I thought I would take are concurrent (next term Monday from 10 to 12 seems to be the only appropriate time for any course, regardless of section, or indeed, faculty).

I withhold the right to not graduate within the designated time.

What I love about snow

- the way it sings under my feet when I walk on it on a cold day

- how it transforms even familiar objects into something fairy-like and mysterious

- its wintery fragrance

- its beautiful colours

- the way it softens the world

- the way it receives all the meager light our winter sun sends forth and then gives it back manifold

- how it falls in soft swirls and stays on my eyelashes

- the enchanting fact that each snowflake is unique

First snowfall

It happened yesterday. I woke up in the morning (having gone to bed in dreary November rain) to find the world beautifully transformed into shades of blue and white... How much more light there is in a world of snow!

After nearly five months of not writing in this blog I can cast a short, retrospective glance over my shoulder and state that my fluctuating level of stress has come down markedly; I have made a new friend; I have unexpectedly developed a slight interest in interpretation; I have learned a lot of Tauno Palo and Ansa Ikonen; I have re-discovered my love for knitting.

(Oh, I almost forgot: I have taken the first step on my way to stardom. Two weeks ago an article I wrote was published in Tammerfors Aktuell, a fortnightly publication in Swedish here in Tampere. I wrote it, ME, and in SWEDISH! Truth be told, it was corrected first by my teacher and after that even by the editor, but it was my name that stood in the paper!)

They're all going on a summer holiday...

...whereas I'm destined to stay put for all weeks to come. Isn't summer supposed to be the high time of freedom, beauty, truth and love (above all things, love)? But no! Here it rains every second day, thunder storms and hale showers keep one up at nights, there is no one to talk to, and to cap it all, Italy didn't make it past the quarter-finals. Plus the longest 'holiday' I get to have this summer is three whole days.

Now that I got that out of my system, I can mention some agreeable things that have happened to me:

The Good Luck Shamrock my friend P left in my care for the summer is blossoming. Beautiful, pale violet flowers!

My balcony is full of flowers and bright with rich colours, the sort only nature can create.

In a week I shall witness the wedding of two friends: a match made in heaven if there ever was one.

Behind the window I can see a beautiful, peaceful summer evening sky...

I had a lovely midsummer with my family (including an uncommonly prolific photoshoot with my sister):



Our lovely miss Nekku hovered around the grill in the hope of catching a stray sausage.




What is marshmallow but fluffy sugar? Not the most salubrious of comestibles, perhaps, but o so good! (And please note my use of Grammar Hell vocabulary there.)

The child that is born on the Sabbath day

It's my birthday today. My Dad told me that the day I was born was very hot and that he and my elder sister visited my mother and newly-born me at the hospital by bike. I was born on a Sunday, and according to that English nursery rhyme I ought to be 'bonny and bright and good'. Which of course is true.



When my sister left Tampere for the summer, she was concerned that I might sink to the level of watching Smack Down on tv and drinking beer (well, I'm not certain that she mentioned beer). I haven't done that, but I've entered a jolly bachelor's life so far as to watch football on the net: Portugal played Turkey last night and I was disappointed in the outcome. Italy will play tomorrow and I will be glued on to the sofa. Maybe I'll even get some beer.

A week ago I went swimming in a lake for the first time this year. In Finland, we call that first out-door swim 'throwing off your wintercoat'. I threw mine in the lake Näsijärvi in Tampere, and the waters received it with cold arms. By the lake is a public sauna, which you can enter for the fee of 4.5 euros. If you walk quickly enough, you can retain some of the sauna's hotness in you before plunging into the waters - a wise precaution in the early summer!

Monday, monday

I overslept today by two and a half hours. It meant I didn't have time to take a shower, have breakfast, or prepare packed lunch, but had to rush to the bus-stop ten minutes after waking up. I've been disoriented the whole day, but luckily things weren't too hectic at work... I looked terrible, though, because my hair badly needed washing and I grabbed the first clothes that met my eyes in the closet. But now I'm home. And I'm going have a cup of coffee. And eat some more of those perfect rolls.

Sunday rolls

Today I baked the best warm rolls I've ever made. They were smooth, round, and even-sized, and they tasted heavenly. I was torn between wanting to eat them and wanting to just admire their perfection.

I saw Mikael H and some Siberians at Telakka bar last Wednesday. It was nice to hear live music again, especially when it included a banjo, a mandolin, and an electric violin, which I had never seen before. I was there with my friend P, who knows the boys of the band personally. Wow! That makes her practically famous, doesn't it?

On the way home I saw mystery lights in the woods: street lamps hidden among trees so that only the light bulb was visible, lighting up the leaves encircling it. It looked like Caras Galadhon.

The wakening soil of spring

As I was walking home tonight from the swimming hall, I suddenly became aware of the pale green sweetness of spring in the trees around me, and the blackbird sitting on a bough above me, singing its heart out (like in that story of Oscar Wilde's), and it made me so calmly happy to be walking there and breathing in the soft air. I have been so preoccupied these past weeks, that spring has really stolen on me. So, I went and bought nine budding violets for my balcony; three yellow and three orange ones for the long wicker basket, and three plum-coloured ones for the small, round wicker basket. (Last summer I had such a lovely balcony in my home in Helsinki! It's one of the things I miss most about my former hometown.) I still need to get some ivy and some geraniums and busy lizzies (oh, I love that name!) - it will be wonderful to be able to go out to your garden and still be at home!

I wanted to show you a picture of my balcony, but the only one I had was mainly of myself having breakfast there with one red geranium. So, above there's part of my mum's garden from last summer! This picture was taken by my friend Anja.

Done - and hopefully well done

Yes. It was difficult. But now it's over. And I have to wait for two months to get the results! I think I will pass, but whether I get a good grade or not depends on whether I mixed direct and indirect objects or not... Uhh, I hate waiting!

Cram day

Multiple-choice tasks give me a false sense of security: the correct answer is there, you just have to pick it out! But with our grammar teacher and her oh, so nasty and treacherous ways you can never be sure... That's why I've been cramming today.

But English punctuation - let alone the use of modal auxiliaries and other niceties - isn't something you just cram. You have to learn it little by little, through active usage and by applying functional analysis to everything you read in English, so that your grammatical knowledge becomes, not a list of comma rules, but an integral part of language use. (That, at least, has been my excuse for not bothering to read through my notes for a second time; if I don't know it now, there's no way I'll learn it by tomorrow!)

The highlight of my day was eating the last piece of chocolate cake with ice-cream (although now I wish I had saved it for tomorrow; I might need it after the grammar exam). I love chocolate cake, and this was probably the tastiest cake I've had. We made it with my sister yesterday, and today it was already gone!

Sunny

In the morning, when I was walking along Kuninkaankatu on my way to work, it was so cold I had to wear gloves and still I was shivering under my coat. But after work I would have been glad of a tank top, a skirt and flip-flops. How can sunshine grow so much hotter in four hours?

My parents came today to take my sister's things to their place for the summer; my sister will be living with them until August. And I will be a summer-widow (of a sort)! I hope I won't end up not tidying up and watching Smack-down. Last time I was living on my own it happened.

Getting started

I argued with myself, trying to decide on which language to choose: my native Finnish, or English, the subject of my studies. They say we can only express ourselves fully in our mother tongue (I sign that), but for someone who is desperately trying to reach a near-native level in English, practice does no harm.

So, for the moment it's going to be English. (Who says I have to be consistent, anyway?)

I'm eagerly waiting for pennies from heaven to buy my own digital camera, because I do think pictures enliven the text delightfully. Until that windfall, however, I will have to settle for writing in as descriptive language as I can - we all need goals, don't we?

I was never a diary-person, really, but I like writing down little things for my own amusement. It makes me good-humoured, even when I have to write something irritating and contrary: if I try to make unpleasant things sound amusing, they stop bothering me (at least most of the time). Very useful :)