Friday.

You'll have to forgive my tardiness. I'm a little behind on blogging as I've had little energy to do much of anything lately.

Last week, my goal was to get to page 100 of my "From Start to Finnish" language book by Sunday. I proudly reached my goal Saturday afternoon and gave myself Sunday off. Of course, this made for a difficult start on Monday as I felt too tired to study much. But anyways, let's go back to Friday.

On Friday, I attended my very first demonstration. [Yes, this may shock some of you who know me well.] Anne invited me to come along with her and I jumped at the opportunity to try something different and do something useful. The event itself was an anti-fur demonstration. Apparently the fur trade has already been outlawed in the Netherlands and Ireland and the people we walked with wanted the same laws to be put in place in Finland.

Personally, I think the fur trade was useful before synthetic fibers started being used for warmth and I can see why people would be attached to it historically. On the other hand, if you think about it, it's a little useless and causes unnecessary harm [aka. death] to animals and needn't be killed. So although I can't pretend this issue is something I think about on a regular basis, I saw merit in demonstrating against the fur trade and trying to incite some change.

I felt a little funny being there at first. It's really hard for me to separate real protesters from fake ones in my head but this was a challenge I knew I'd sort of have to confront while being there. By fake protesters, I mean people who just like to protest anything. For example, there were individuals at my university who were in favour of abolishing tuition AND the teaching assistants' strike to increase their salaries from $32/hour because this is Canada's lowest TA wage. UNBEARABLE! Those poor starving TAs... and where should the money to fund such wage increases come from if you abolish tuition... Anyway, I didn't mean to get all riled up. But I'm not a big fan of those people... so back to the anti-fur demonstration!
It was really interesting and I really enjoyed myself. I was a little sleepy and Anne felt the same. We were both in dire need of a nap but still, we were given a sign [I wish I had a picture of it] and we marched with it. We were both annoyed at one of the protesters who decided that drinking a beer while demonstrating would be a good idea. I guess Anne and I saw eye-to-eye on what should and shouldn't be done at these things. The march took us up the main street, down a secondary street and in front of a department store which sells fur. Standing in front of that store made for an uncomfortable 10 minutes or so as we chanted "Shame on you Halonen" in Finnish. [Halonen is the name of the store, and incidentally, the Finnish president's last name. But that was only coincidental.] We then headed back to the main square. There were some speeches but we ran home because after over an hour outside, our feet were numb from the cold.

It's hard to really reflect on everything because the demonstration was in Finnish so I couldn't tell how people were feeling. Anne mentioned there was some hostility in the air and people seemed pretty angry. Yet Anne and I both felt that the right approach would be just to smile and inform people, instead of being angry at them. Since everyone was there with friends, we all joined up in little groups and took what we each thought appropriate from the experience, and gave what we thought was appropriate in return. I'm probably not making much sense now and I have half a mind to delete this whole post but I'll keep it anyway.

Point being, if there are any policy changes, they won't be instantaneous but if you hear anything [Anne!] then let me know.


Post-nap, I hung out at home in the evening and then went to see Janne Laurila in concert with Anne! [It was indeed an Anne-filled day!] I was really excited for this show because I'd heard a few songs by him [ok seriously, just one but that day two!] and I liked his style. I was pleasantly surprised when he played a whole set and I enjoyed every single song. I guess it's handy he works at the bar right near my house and plays shows there pretty often. I definitely want to see him again.

That's it for my Friday update. I'll write more later but for now, I have a date with a handsome fellow named Juuso and his owner's sister, Nina.