"This door is alarmed"

http://www.happyplace.com/4286/brilliantly-sarcastic-responses-to-completely-well-meaning-signs

Words

Comment to this post, and I will list five things I associate with you. They might make sense or they might be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your blog (or just add a reply back at me). Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

These are the words I got from Anna:

1. Baking

I’ve always liked baking. We’ve got lots of pictures of me as a little kid ”helping” my mum bake rolls and buns. At high school I took all the cooking classes I could, and always volunteered to be the baker of the group. These days I don’t bake as much as I’d like to, mainly because of all the dishes I have to do when I’m done, but I still like baking every now and then. Most of my friends have had the pleasure of trying my family’s famous mud cake, which takes you to Nirvana at the first taste.

2. Finlandssvensk (Swedish-speaking Finn)

Being part of a linguistic minority was never anything I thought about until I went to a Finnish uni. First there was some hassle with points before I even got in, and when I did, I realised that I’d been taking my language for granted until then. I also noticed that to people at my uni, I was very finlandssvensk, while my friends from school had probably always looked at me as being slightly more Finnish than them. But I also feel more finlandssvensk when I’m surrounded by Finnish speakers, and I have recently taken to play the finlandssvensk card to get out of things, for example, which I had never done before.

3. Shoes
The first thing you see when you enter my flat (in Turku) is a bookshelf full of shoes. Enough said.

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4. Turun yliopisto / University of Turku
I started at the Uni of Turku in September 2008. It is the only university in Finland where you can major in French translation and interpreting, the only uni in Turku where you can study translation (properly, anyway), and it’s in the city where I wanted to live, so it was the only uni I considered going to. I really like my uni, especially our little corner of it, and after having spent a term in another university I realised just how well everything works at the University of Turku.

5. Exchanges

It used to be “When I was on exchange...”, but since last fall, that doesn’t really work anymore. My first exchange was a Rotary Youth Exchange year in France, and my second one was a term on an Erasmus exchange in London. Both were great, but very, very different. At the moment I still have about three years of studying to go, so there’s definitely a possibility of me going on exchange again. We’ll see...

 

We heart it

Here are some of the lovely images I found on my new favourite site. Enjoy! 

Realisations

Today I realised how much I'm giving up to do what I'm doing.

Being away a lot, I have always missed out on things, like friends' birthdays, family events and such, but now for the first time I feel like I'm missing out on something big.

One of my best friends is having a baby next month, and even though I'll hopefully get to see him when I go home and visit, I won't get to see most of his first year, and share that with my friend.
She's also getting married soon, and I can't be there to help plan the wedding, and join in on all the fun stuff that goes along with a wedding.
Another close friend is going through some pretty rough medical stuff at the moment, and I'd like to be there for her, but it's not something that's easy to talk about when you only have a few minutes on Facebook or Skype.
Some friends will be away as well, and we'd be catching up online anyway, and the entire friendship I have with one friend seems to be based on an internet connection since we never seem to be in the same country, but then there's someone who's been away for the most part of a year, and I really want to catch up with her properly, face to face.
Finally there's my family, all the things going on with them.
And all the other things that are happening to the people in my life, all the things that are important to them.

I said before that "I can't be there". Sure, I could. But not really. No matter how much I'd like to be there to share all of this, I can't live my life according to what's going on in other people's lives. I'm sad to miss out, but no one ever said that you can have it all, and although I do regret missing some things, I know that for the most part I would not be happier at home than I am here. And I'll try very hard to be there for the really important stuff.

So to my friends, and to my family:

I love you. I miss you. I'm thinking of you.
I worry about you when things are hard for you.
I'm happy for you when things go well.
And I'm sorry I can't always be there for you.

And I know it sounds lame, but I'm always just a phone/Skype call away!

(Sorry if this sounds very cheesy, but I just had one of those moments, and I thought I might as well share)