In the middle of the darkness

It's the darkest time of the year. And the reason why it is even more darker here is the lack of snow. It's December and no snow anywhere!! It all mealt away in a second. Was the winter already? I certainly hope not. It would be terribble: no skiing, no skating, no snow war... no fun. :(

It's soon Christmas and the end of the year 2006. It's also the deadline of my thesis. I know I will be late but not a lot. If nothing totally surprising comes up... And it usually comes, just before everything's ready. :) The work has been interesting and at the same time stressing, tiring even devostating at times when nothing works out. And I've been thinking whether I've been even ready to do the thesis. I don't know. Sometimes it feels that the three and half years have gone by and I haven't learned a thing. How can I make the thesis which should show all the skills I've gained? But still, I'm working on it..

I've also been thinking of the future lately. I haven't got much studies left.. what then? I have absolutely no idea! My mom always says that the faith will decide what my destiny will be. It'll come.. I don't even know what I'd like to do.. and is the forestry really my thing? This year I've felt strongerly that this is my thing than ever before. But still I'm not sure. What if I made the wrong choice some years ago? Why didn't I apply for medical school.. or to study pharmacy. The two fields I desired.. what made me come to study forestry? I still don't know.. but still hope to figure it out someday in case I'll stay in this field. :)

Another topic of thinking: friends. The Christmas time is the time when I and my highschool
friends will be back in our hometown and again it's time to meet. Since we graduated and left elsewhere to study, the meetings haven't been the same. This is quite obvious.. people change, grow up. Sometimes I wish I could go back to the high school days... just to enjoy the careless atmosphere for a while. Not that I have anything against the people I've met during my years at the uni. They are magnificent as well. :) Too bad you sometimes get to know some features about the person you've thought as your good friend and you don't like the features. It's not nice because all the good moments you've spent will be set in the shadows of the bad thoughts. And if it gets further enough, your friendship will never be the same, if there will be any friendship left.. That's always sad.. :/

Okay, enough thinking in the middle of the darkness.. :) I bet the snow would light my mind again.. I'll be back before the year is over... to remember all the memories of this great year 2006.

Postcrossing

I came across Postcrossing through a magazine a short while ago and immediatly I went to the website and signed in. I thought this was something I'd like to try out. Postcrossing is a service that allows people to send normal postcards via mail to random places around the world. So it also means that you can receive a postcard somewhere around the world. :) So far 315689 postcards have been sent! That's quite a lot. And according to the webpages around 30000 postcards are travelling around the world.

The funny thing is that the country that has the most participants is Finland! There are more than from other countries and that makes a lot when compared to the population. So anyone participating outside Finland will definitely get a card from here. ;)

I've sent my first postcards already. My very first when to California, USA and it has already been received. So now I'm waiting to receive my first. I'll promise to tell you as soon as it gets here... Meanwhile take a look at the webpage (www.postcrossing.com) , you might get interested as well! :)

Winter wonderland

I wish I had been wise enough to take my camera with me when I went to my parents this weekend. Not that we haven't got snow in Joensuu as well, we do and lots compared to that it is early November. But it was something totally different in Ristiina: there were a lot of snow everywhere. The trees looked absolutely amazing! :) And on Saturday, the temperature dropped to - 20C so it felt even more like a real winter.

It's been quite ashtonising to get a real winter in early November. Last year the permanent snow came sometimes around December. Now it came quickly, too. Two days and there were snow everywhere. And it didn't make life easy, it never does. Lots of car crashes, cars stuck in snow especially in the south. :/ People are never fully prepared although we live in a country were we get snow every year.. And most of the problems (or should I say all..) are in the south. Well, there are more people and more cars but I still have to say that it's also the attitude, carelesness.

I don't know whether this is the permanent snow yet. It gets warmer again, starting tomorrow. There's over half a meter snow here so it would take some time to mealt. But we'll see.. As long as there will be white Christimas, I'm happy. :)

Reality tv crazy

Reality tv shows are here to stay. At least for a while. The two shows that are most popular and most talked in here: The Big Brother 2 and A Wife for Farmer (this was my own translations..). Well, BB is familliar show. People are locked in a house for a few months and they have to live there and do certain tasks every week.

This second version has already been a lot more crazier than the first one mainly because of the people are crazier. But one police case too.. :/ Too bad. But another show, A Wife for Farmer (Maajussille morsian)... that's kinda funny. There have been 5 men who are all farmers but each quite different from each other. And they are looking for a wife. The presentation episode was last spring (for obvious reasons I didn't watch it..) and after that women were able to contact via mail the farmer they wanted to get to know better. The farmers then picked up five each from the contacts who they wanted to get to know better. Now the women are down to two each and they've moved to the farms to get know the life of a farmer. It's so funny to watch. Especially as all the farmers are so different. There's this big farmer who got the most letters and has been in the papers all the time, audince's favourite. The there's a heavy farmer :D He looks like a real heavy man with black clothes and long hair. And the young guy.. 20 years old farmer who grows tomatoes and is seriously looking for a wife. :) But why not... :)

So, this is what Finns are watching from tv. Plus this weekend, the last race of formula 1.. :/ Or should I say, last race we can watch for free.. Damn you, MTV3.. :( Enjoy the autumn (anyway)!! :)

Source of the photo

Where were you 5 years ago?

It's funny how human memory works. I can't really remember what I did last week but I can surely remember what happened and where I was on 11th of September, 2001. I had a pretty normal school day at Senior High. We had an American exchange student in our class, Lisa, and she came to my place after school. I remember giving her some black currant juice to taste, my mom had made it herself. Then we talked how funny word "hoovering" is.

Around 3pm our time I took her to the local bank where her host dad worked. I got back home and my mom came from shopping and said that something had hit the Pentagon. I turned on the TV and saw it live: an airplane hitting another one of the Twin Towers. At first I thought it was a movie but no, it was true. It was 4pm. I watched all the news that evening and it was so unreal..

That day changed the history completely. The way I feel about the change is quite critical. It might be a bit cruel to say that the Americans were not only victims but they deserved it in a one way. The world is too America centered and not all people like it. I don't support terrorism but I think all the people should have a right to live in their way. If Americans had left Muslim countries be in the first place, maybe they had never attacked. Maybe nothing like this had ever happened and the world would have been left without another misery. We wouldn't have lost all the people that were in the building or got killed while rescueing. I would have forgot the day in the following week and never thought about it again. Now I'll remember it better than any other day in my youth...Picture was taken from here.

Silence

Sorry for such a long silence. My life has been pretty hectic for the past... well, a few weeks. First I had to calculate first results of the inventory we made in Iceland. Then I left to Lapland (Northern Finland) for a week. It was a course for school, to get to know forestry and its unique features in Northern Finland. I had never been to Lapland before so it was cool. :) Well, it involved a lot of sitting in a bus but still, it was great to see places I've never seen before. It was interesting to see the tree line: where there were no more trees, just tundra. We even made a small trip to Norway and saw the Arctic Ocean. Now I've been to all the Nordic Countries. :)

After we came back to Joensuu, the new students started their studies and I was tutoring them together with four other older students. It was nice to meet new people. :) And a shock to notice how young the new students are! I'm not old either but been here for quite a while... Then I started to work as an assistant in the field course of forest planning. It started on Monday. Actually, I've liked it a lot although I feel quite tired after the day. :) I've learned to much more myself while guiding others. There're still two weeks left, we'll see how it goes when all the counting and making plans start.

So, hectic time. :) I got back my flat and decorated it a bit different. There's still something undone 'cos I haven't had time.. But it's nice to be back in Joensuu, and to start normal life again. How normal it will be, I have no idea. :) Still, I miss my time in Prague and everyone I met there, it was great spring! :)

A couple of photos from the trip to Lappland...

Northern Lapland - looks kinda cruel.. but it was beautiful in its own way.

A coffee break. The men were diving old (several thousand years) trees from the lake to define what the climate has been like.

Forest fire in Kemijärvi, Northern Finland. The dry summer caused this and it was so hopeless sight. Someone said that it was a berry picker who lit the fire.. Poor man/woman must be feeling so guilty..

Polluted city?

Helsinki, the capital of Finland, is the biggest city here. Although it looks like there's a lot of pollution in the air in the photo, it's not quite the truth. Right now just behind the border in Russia there are a lot of forest fires. It's been so dry here so that they light up really easily. And the wind is blowing from the east so we'll get all the smoke. I smelled the smoke this morning in Ristiina too. I can't really see it here clearly but smell it. Near the border, in Lappeenranta, Imatra and Virolahti, the smoke has been so thick that you can barely see. So no signs of climate change? Hot and dry summer.. burning forests because of that.. :S

Source: Iltasanomat

My dears :)

I don't know if I can even admit this but guess who I missed the most while I was abroad? :) It's the furry creature in these photos. Oh well, I missed the other "creature" as well and often even more. ;) Here's Sissi, my parents' dog and "my little sister", yep, we often fight and play like siblings. ;) She's so keen on football and loves to play with Jari every time he comes here. Here the first photo was taken last summer when she came to us and the second was taken last month. She has grown up so much! But still likes to sit on my laps.. ;)

Sissi and Jari in summer 2005


Sissi and Jari in summer 2006

A day in Tallinn

I remember complaining that Finland is so far away from all the countries in Europe that it's so hard to travell anywhere. Well, there are a few exceptions... One of them is Estonia. It takes only about an hour and a half to go to Tallinn by boat. So on last Friday (July 28th) we took a boat to Tallinn just for a day trip to explore the city. :) I've been there several time before but my boyfriend Jari had never been there.

Tallinn is a different kind of city than Helsinki and Stockholm. In my opinnio the architechture is more Central European. Maybe it's because of the German influence when it was founded. It has changed a lot during the last years. I was there around ten years ago for the first time. There wasn't a lot of tourists back then, or well, only Finns. Now there were a lot of Americans, French and German. And we saw tourists group walking around the Old Town with a guide which I hadn't seen before. Also there are a lot of new buildings everywhere and more are being built.

The Finns usually go to Tallinn to buy cheaper alcohol and clothes. That's why there are a sort of a shopping centres near the harbour where pirate clothes, movies and cds as well as cheap alcohol are sold. So, walking in the Old Town was nice, just to see the sights and enjoy being in Estonia. But when we got back to the harbour, there it was again: Finns sitting with a lot of beer boxes and vodka bottles ready to go back home. Okay, I'm a Finn myself and I did buy some alcohol from there but so I did when I came back from Iceland. I didn't have 8 boxes of beer and 10 bottles of vodka. I have to agree on one French guy: Finns have spoilled the reputation of tourists in Estonia. :(

Despite of this, we enjoyed our day in Tallinn. We walked a lot around the Old Town taking some photos and looking at the sights. We took a look at the shops in the centre and found something for both of us. It was a nice day but too bad a bit too short. We still would have had a lot of things to see but maybe next time :)

New blog... it's alive!

I've been having two travelling blogs but now I decided to have a blog of my own life as all my travelling is over for now :) So I'll just write here whatever comes in my mind, in English and also in Finnish. I wasn't able to update the blog of the trip to Iceland becuase the Internet connection didn't always work so well. But I'll put here some photos sometimes :)

So I'm back at home in Ristiina, enjoying the summer days ( the weather has been great!) and already a bit worrying about my upcoming task this autumn: Master's Thesis :S We'll see how it goes...