Narration.

It's funny... I realized today that as I go through each day and events occur to me, I narrate them in my head as if life were a book. I'm not going to compare my life to a movie nor a TV series, because let's face it, people wouldn't stay tuned in for very long, but I think inside my head there might just be a book hanging out in there somewhere. So after being awake for 8 hours today, this is what I've composed so far...


I woke up at 9am this morning, a little groggy but nothing too serious. I started my morning routine much like any other day: bathroom, make coffee, stir yogurt, check Facebook, etc. Juha got up at the same time and started his own routine: bathroom, check Aamulehti [lit. translation is Morning Paper], drink coffee, eat breakfast, etc. He looked up from his computer at one point to announce that today is supposed to be slippery. Instinctively I told him to drive carefully.

My morning was a little boring but that boredom was necessary to complete some university applications. I had to write something called a degree supplement... basically, European schools are supposed to write this for you so you can send it to schools you apply to after you graduate. Since McGill is not a European school, I had to write my own and ask someone to sign and stamp it. The purpose of the whole thing is to describe the context of the education system in your country and the nature of the degree, program, its structure... etc. I thought it would take me the entire day but it turns out, it wasn't so hard. It just involved some copy+pasting from the McGill website and some linking information. I even found an awesome chart for the Canadian Education system that made me really happy! Click here to see this magical chart which won't actually impress you much.

After finishing the supplement, eating lunch, watching an episode of Secret Diary of a Call Girl, eating a snack and studying some Finnish, I headed to the university to print off all my application documents and photocopy my passport. Just as I was walking down this little hill on my way, I thought about how I haven't updated my blog. As if by pure coincidence, at that very moment I find myself sliding down this aforementioned hill smack on my butt and I can actually feel the wetness through my pants. Last time I fell, I felt embarrassed. This time I just felt annoyed. I brushed all the snow I could feel off and headed along. So much for driving carefully - try walking carefully when a thin layer of snow covers huge ice patches formed by the recent BLAH weather. This brings me to a new point about Finnish weather, after all the beautiful snow has installed itself all over the city, it has to go somewhere when the weather gets warmer. Since the sewage system can only take so much, once we start dancing around the zero degree mark, we also have to start dancing around pond-sized puddles and deep slush. This exercise and bit of extra caution tends to put people in a bad mood. Understandably since I don't think anyone likes to have their feet wet.

I made it to the university unscathed by any more ice patches, met Juha, printed all my documents and turned them in at the near-by post office. It feels SO good to finally have three-quarters of my applications handed in! Of course, I still need to provide them with proof that I did actually graduate, but I won't be getting my diploma until June 2nd anyway so no point worrying about that. What I am worrying about is my progress in Finnish. I've been learning a ton of words lately but honestly, who wants to discuss how wide, narrow, fat, skinny, long, short, etc, etc, a book, person or day can be? How about food in general? [as if I don't do that enough] Or even the weather... yes, I now am armed with at least a dozen adjectives that relate to weather, seasons and more! So yeah, I learned all those words and many more, but I don't really have active use for them at the moment. I could write some stuff on here but that would involve BEARING my soul to you all AND boring you to death. So for now, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing.

So many thoughts in my head!

Who needs the gym when you can go walking around Tampere for 2 hours every day?
Okay... so every day is a gross exaggeration, especially since this is my 9th day here, but you get the idea.
So when I don't want to stay in the flat all day or I need a little inspiration for my motivation letters (I have 6 of them to do, but luckily only 1 is due in the next month.), I go for a walk, explore and think. Today I learned the word "tilaa." It means space (as in, there are free parking spots). On my walk back, I learned the word for full: täynnä. I tried to learn both in one go a few days ago and failed, so this time, I did them one at a time.
I noticed today that the sky isn't actually grey. I would call it off-white...because it almost blends in exactly with the snow. It was just a random thought.
Also, I went to buy highlighters today and noticed that the woman was really chatty with the customer before me (although it seemed like she was business chatty- informing her about sales and such.) The woman in front of me said: ei, kiitos. So I knew she turned down whatever offer it was. When I got to the front of the cash, she looked at me and I thought MAYBE I would be able to understand something but, nope! It was my usual "deer-caught-in-headlights-whenever-anyone-speaks-Finnish-to-me" look. I can't really explain why this happens, but I'm sure I'm not the first person this has ever happened to. It would be so easy to smile and say apologetically: I'm sorry, I don't speak Finnish (I can even say that IN Finnish for God's sake!). But instead I completely freeze up and have to FORCE myself to mutter a few words of English. It might be the desire to want to badly to understand that I don't want to give away that I'm foreign. Let's go with that for now because I have no idea explanations.

In other news, our DNA (internet company) man has informed us that he has ordered our modem. Although there is no word on how long it will take to arrive, Juha and I take comfort in the hope that it will arrive soon enough... especially since every day we have AT LEAST one breakdown EACH, over how shit our internet is. Cind iti e lumea mai draga... (Romanian expression meaning: "When the world is dearest to you..." implying that something unfavourable happens then aka our internet stops working.) So if you're working why I haven't called you yet, chances are I've been thinking about you WISHING I could call you. If that's any comfort to you... and at least we have Facebook. Or you have Facebook. I sometimes have Facebook!

Also, my two packages finally arrived today and I just have to pick them up from the post office! I would've gone on my walk but since I had no desire to lug 24kg in 2 packages for over 1km, I haven't gone yet. I'll go when I can get a ride.

Funny story, I went to buy nail polish remover today and figured it would be "meh... like... 1€." I get to Sokos and I can't seem to find anything under 4.90€!! I found nail polish removed that cost up to 10€ (boys, this crap is usually 1$ and you can get it anywhere in Canada). So since there was no way I was paying almost 10 bucks for it, I looked a little closer. Of course the brand that had no English translation on it was the cheapest. The actual funny part of the story (well there isn't really one but I like the word for nail polish remover): Kynsilakanpoistoaine. The only reason I recognized it was because of the Swedish translation: Nagellacksborttagningsmedel.
Although I have to say, these words only look scary because they're stuck together but they're usually only long because they're compound words. Otherwise, it's not like dog is: eläinkoirapyrstönkanssa! (That probably doesn't make much sense but you get the idea...) Dog is just koira. (Okay, enough of Google Translate for now.)

And now, lunch!

P.S. I took a ton of pictures of the area but the internet is too slow to upload them onto Blogger. They're coming soon.