New beginning, once again

"...but these stories don't mean anything, if you've got no one to tell them to..."

Basically, it's just a normal day. Nothing special, I don't even feel different. But it's the last one of the year, tomorrow it'll be another year and another beginning.

I'm not doing anything special this new year's, just hanging out at home. We'll go to sauna, eat, watch ice hockey and shoot some fireworks. Simple, and I like it. I don't have to really do anything, which suits me well. My brain is totally on a vacation mode, especially since on Sunday I gotta start cramming for a book exam on sociolinguistics, yay!

For the past few years this time of the year has been filled with excitement, and this year is no exception. Once again I'm thinking that the next year will be the best of my life, and it is, and then I top that with the following one. I just hope this pattern can keep going on like this, that there's no limit when it can't get any better. But with what's coming in two months, I have a feeling that the one to come might just be number one for quite a while.

2015 has been full of experiences, good and bad. Emotions, trips, friends, memories; I'll remember them for a long, long time. I am grateful for this year, as it hasn't been among the easiest; however, it's been a good thing. I've learned a lot, among other things that I still have a lot to learn. But above all, I do have people to tell my stories to, and that's really all I need to start a new year.

One more day...

...and I can go home!

This has been somehow a crazy fall, time seems to have disappeared in a blink. But now that I think about it, I've managed to do quite a lot; Spanish studies, board game day at my old primary school, two great concerts, Mom's surprise birthday cottage weekend, my own birthday party, organization work, meetings, events, a cruise, exams... So much everything in a few months, and so much everything in the past two days, that my brain is literally stuck. No wonder I'm having trouble producing this text, even though I've been wanting to write something for a while now.

Anyway, all the work of this semester will be rewarded tomorrow when I have the final task of this year. We'll go to a nearby school to organize a language workshop of Spanish, for which we today made some posters with animals, numbers etc and it was so nice to talk in Spanish for a few hours again, I kind of missed it even though the last time was about a week or two ago.  Funny how you can miss a language, although I assume I'll get used to that feeling in a bit over two months (!!!).

I cannot wait to start my vacation and do absolutely nothing but relax, have fun with my family and recharge my batteries. I am also looking forward to the spring, as I've got many things coming up before I go. As I left the subject organization board I took no time in getting myself the subcommittee chairperson post and very likely I'll join a committee of youth work at my parish, which is just like me. "I will not join anything for a long time now!" Yeah right. Anyway, it's gonna be super fun as there are nice events awaiting as well as the choir I promised to join. I have to say, it was almost accidentally and sort of as a bribe, but now I gotta live up to the promise. We'll see how that goes...

I cried a little inside when I set my alarm for tomorrow as it will cruelly start ringing at 6:15, which is the earliest I've probably woken up all year. But, after a few hours of speaking Spanish to kids I'll get to take a bus ride home. Countryside here I come!

The sweetest dreams

I'm totally a sucker for fairy tales. I cannot explain it, I don't know why I have such a strong reaction to them, but I do. It can be a book, a film, a song, a story someone told me or pretty much anything, I'm sold. The pattern is always the same, and I know exactly how it's gonna turn out in the end, but I cannot help but fall in love with the stories. 

The films I might watch again and again and the effect is never any duller. Every hardship is just as sad, every moment of anxiety is my moment of anxiety, and every ending is just as happy time after time. The weirdest thing is that these fairy tales make me feel happy, which I know is an illusion. However, I can't help myself, I buy it completely.

And even though I understand that it's not real, that the stories sound and seem perfect when in reality they would be painted with much darker colors as well, I believe it. I choose to believe that it is true and it's possible, 'cause how could something so beautiful not exist? How could such a sweet dream be just a lie?

Romantic dramas, romantic comedies, Disney films; they work each time. Maybe it's because I tend to feel other people's emotions so strongly that I live these tales so deeply, or maybe it's because of these tales that I feel the way I do all the time. But still, I'm mesmerized by the intensity of the words, the faces, the parts that are left unsaid. I'm inspired by emotions so strong that they change people, even if they were just acted.

I am a romantic, and in search of my moments I follow the ones of the others, hoping that someday it will be me under the moonlight, smiling like I've never smiled before.

I know I can, so I will

I am a planner, and I like it. It works in my daily life, it keeps me organized. It drives me ahead and somehow helps me stay sane in my crazy schedules filled with activities. But for some reason, the best, most interesting and exciting things that happen to me are almost without exception been more or less sudden ideas that I've made reality very quickly. Starting kickboxing, promising to take on the post of the camp leader with a two-month warning time, applying and moving to Helsinki to study, deciding to leave that and come to Jyväskylä instead, applying for exchange to Peru, just to mention a few. They've turned out to be among the best things that have happened to me, and I've really just gone with my gut on those. 'Cause really, when you know, you feel it to be right, you don't need to think it over and over and make a plan.


And it works, and I am so excited, and yes freaking out a little bit, but I feel like I am making my life happen. I'm taking chances and doing what I love to do, testing my limits and above all, I believe in myself enough to say yes when I feel like it's the right thing for me.

Say hello to the new chairperson of the Subcommittee of International Affairs of the Student Union of the University of Jyväskylä!

Wow, that's a long title. Luckily I might not use it in that extent all the time.

I'll start only next fall, as we're sharing the chairperson's post with another girl. I'll be away this spring and she will be away in the fall, so I guess the arrangement is kind of perfect. I can still have the break I really need, and then start slowly with something I am really interested in and eager to get my hands and ideas on.

So, that's my news for tonight. Funny how you think the year's basically over and nothing can happen anymore and I hit the biggest bomb of all.