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 :)