finnish gibberish

kuinka piiiiitkä päivä voikaan olla!
tulin tänne eilisiltana yhdeksän maissa, ja loppuillan vietin jaredin kanssa höpötellen. nukahdin tosi nopeasti, suuri kiitos ihanalle nyquilille (yskänlääke, mulla on ihan tappokuumeflunssa päällä..). kun heräsin tänä aamuna, olin niin hämyissä. tiedostin ihan selkeästi, etten ollut suomessa, mutta samalla en oikein tajunnut, että missä olin. ei tuntunut utahilta, ei oikein miltään. ihankuin olisin ollut jossain paikassa x, josta ei ollut tietoakaan. skypettelin kukan kanssa aamulla, ja lähdin gatewayta kohti hakemaan puhelimeeni liittymän t-mobilelta (apple, lämmöllä muistelen tätä teidän unlock-systeemiä...). näin gatewaylla ELENAN, joka oli ihan parasta! ollaan ties kuinka pitkään puhuttu, että halutaan yhdessä olla utahissa käymässä, ja nyt se toteutui! ihanaaaaaaa
käppäiltiin ympäriämpäri, törmättiin mioon, hengattiin vähän liian pitkään iphonen unlock-paikassa levottomien myyjien kanssa ja loppujen lopuksi mentiin ostamaan mulle uusi auto! punaisen ferrarin korvasi tällä kertaa beige mazda protege, and i love it!
huomenna luvassa provoa, omaan kämppään muuttaista, ikeaa, urban outfittersiä ja temple squaren jouluvaloja. ah, i love this place. nyt nukkumaan, oon dead tired.

guess what?

i'm off!

surreal, sad, happy, exciting, weird, new, old, EVERYTHING. i'm off, seriously.

(kukka, your mama's juustosarvet are hands down the best thing in the world...thank her for me!)

hyvää joulua/merry christmas/god jul/feliz navidad/joyeux noël/merii kurisumasu to you all, whoever and wherever you are. i hope you all are surrounded by the ones you love, i know i am!

156

"You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you." Frederick Buechner

last night, 3:42am henna and i sat on the edge of my bed, both crying. we had just realized that those were the last hours we'd have together in a long time. this morning she left. we hugged for a long time, crying again. she left with her cheerful goodbyes.

tonight, at 3:42am i stood at the guys' hallway, saying my goodbyes to anton and jii. it felt surreal to hug them after spending almost every evening at their place during this fall. hugs, door open, "see you guys soon", door close.

4:25am, i am trying to get myself to sleep, knowing that i have to wake up for work in 3 hours. my last day at the job i have been working at for 5 years and 2 months. (ok, i'm stoked!)

can someone get used to this kind of changes? i think it's sad if yes. i know that this is all good, since i'm not doing it every year. the sadness i feel while saying goodbyes just tells that i've had stable and dear relationships that i'm going to miss, since it's not possible to nourish them as much when i'm 3800 miles apart. but i couldn't imagine putting myself through this many times in my life. maybe some people have a gift for that. if that's a gift? i don't know. i really need to get some sleep. i have no idea what i'm writing right now.

more farewells

after tonight i couldn't do anything else but crash on the floor and cry. i'm staying strong, i am! sometimes this all just hits me way hard.

11 mornings and things are changing

today she left. my faithful friend for almost two years. she traveled 54 000km with me, which is more than the earth's circumference. she listened to the same music as i did (such good taste she had!), she heard many many secrets and felt many tears falling down on her. she got stuck in the snow a few times, but never left me alone in the middle of nowhere. she got to know so many friends of mine, and got us to places like sweden, kuopio and turun saaristo. not to even mention the hot summer days when we drove to the beach three times a day. during those days she was way too hot to hang out with. she saw kisses, she saw hugs. too often people laughed at her and made fun of her, especially during the first year we had had each other. she was a little bit sick at first, until we took her to the doctor and she was fixed. to me, she was always the best car i could ask for.

i know, i shouldn't cry when i see my car drive away with its new owner, but i couldn't help it today. as they left, i had hundreds of memories flash in front of my eyes. piece by piece i'm losing aspects of my life in finland. luckily i know that i won't lose my family and friends. ever.

i don't really even know if she was a she or a he. we just called her traktori, peto or ferrari. but i hope her new owner will take good care of her (he probably thought i'm a crazy girl, because of all the stories i started to tell about my car before i gave him the keys.... trust me, no one wants to hear those)

nobody knows you the way you know you

i've had a life full of happy, but REALLY random events. those make me wait what's still in store for me. i've had the craziest weekend, and i can't help but laugh about it (and i think that kukka and anton agree with me on this one......).

random life.

elena leaves to utah tomorrow morning, and it's weird to think that the next time i'll see her will be there. in two weeks.

it's 9pm, and i'm off to bed. last night was epic, and we got two hours of sleep... tiiiireeeeed!

all is full of love

tonight: i loved to see elena, to get lost while trying to find le bonk, i loved snowy helsinki, i loved all the pretty people at le bonk. i LOVED the tallest man on earth, i loved the fact that his support, idiot wind was a female copy of petteri. i loved the tears that ran down my cheeks when kristian matsson sang about being homesick. i loved to make an analysis of a guy who was standing next to me - people are so easy to read sometimes. i loved kebab after the gig - not to forget the man who made the kebab, his unibrow, "kun on väsynyt, suomi ei toimi", nrj's greatest hits on the radio and the men who came to the same place and talked about how they just got out of prison. i loved to take the night bus home with elena, and the driver who fell asleep. i loved to talk about awkward moments and utah. i loved tonight. kiitos elena, puss och kram (halaus, ei roska)!

surroundings

oi maamme suomi

today, i've been happy to be a finn because:

-we've had an extra day off due to our independence day! happy birthday finland, i love you♥

-i've gotten to eat fazer's blue chocolate with gingerbread and drink glögi all day long

-the view outside is b e a u t i f u l.

-traditionally we gathered up with some friends to watch the president's independence day party (=judge the women's dresses) and not-so-traditionally we made sushi (and guys made pizza)!

-my car got stuck in the snow... ok i'm not so happy about this. why do we have to get so much snow that my car isn't able to handle it?!?! :((( it was definitely interesting to dig the car out with kukka and her dad....legendary.

-i've got the best friends around me.

i'm very grateful that i have gotten to grow up in this country. it's given me so much. utah has some big boots to fill ;) but i already know that it'll do a great job.

random text at 2:40am.

what a day:

-woke up automatically at 6:30am with the "dang i have to go to work soon"-feeling, even though it was my first day off in a while. working too much, maybe??
-christmas shopping (got lost to the h&m and zara's men's sections again.....oops)
-finding out that i am going to be an aunt next summer*!!!!!!!
-independence day ball, i was dj'ing and dancing at the same time. fuuuuun!
-our great attempt to go out to tavastian lauantaidisko after the dance..... we ended up at mcdonald's, eating chicken nuggets. grrreeeeattt successss!

*leaving feels weird. weird is the perfect word for it. it's not that scary or sad, it's just weird. it's weird that people here are going to stay here, their lives will go on, the only thing that will change is that they won't see me that often. it's weird that my life will change so much at once, but no one from here will be seeing it. it's weird that i'm going to be missing out on such big things, like henna's wedding or my brother's kid's birth. i want to be the best auntie laura in the world for that kid! i don't want to be a strange random lady from the other side of the world who happens to call her brother every once in a while.

but of course i know that this all has to happen, because, well. life happens. and i'm so happy. i'm happy for manu and his girlfriend, i'm happy for henna and antti, i'm happy for every happy thing that anyone i love will experience. at the same time, i'm happy for me, too. i've got all i could ever ask for, and more.

happy, haaaappy laura!

it's 10:45! i'm going to bed! and i've done the same thing every night this week - woooot! i've noticed that after sleeping well and enough, i'm much more creative and spiritual, i dance at work and i sing and laugh twice as much as usual. and i listen to barry white. now that i think about it, maybe i should go back to sleeping 5 hours per night...........

or maybe it's the christmas spirit that makes me so happy. or the fact that i've got 25 mornings until i start my biggest adventure thus far. (or that drunk whose pants i saw fall down today.....nope, cannot be that one)

bonne nuit!

jbiebs

tonight = a perfect mixture of finland and the united states; preparing a thanksgiving (friendsgiving was it??) meal for tomorrow and going to the sauna for an hour, dancing to waka waka and of course, since we're in finland, we had to go and run in the snow. with only our towels on, naturally. oh, how i'm gonna miss this crazy country and its traditions

the rest of the night can be described with this (kukka and anton, this one's for you!):

my sad life part 904850439583

today, it happened again...something that shouldn't happen. i was waiting for the tram in front of stockmanns, and since we've got this nice snow storm in helsinki, i decided to go in for a few minutes. i opened the door, and realized i was in the middle of men's cologne section....which doesn't ever mean anything good, unless if i am actually buying something for someone. suddenly a few minutes turned into...well, a much longer time. like always, some employee came to ask me if i needed help, and as always i thought of what to say to them; "no thank you, i just love sniffing these colognes for an hour at a time", "no thank you, i'm looking for a cologne for my imaginary boyfriend" or simply just "no thank you". i ended up saying "no thanks, i'm just looking around".

i've noticed that i get into the same situation whenever i wander through zara's and h&m's men's section. is it sad that i like to look at men's clothes more than women's? yeah, i thought so. someday someone will be so lucky to have me buy him clothes and colognes instead of myself, ha!

oh, happy thanksgiving you all :) remember to be thankful, especially for the people around you!

"If, for example, you come at four o'clock in the afternoon, then at three o'clock I shall begin to be happy."

last night i was laying on henna's couch. 2:32am. i was looking out the window, listening to henna and antti breath while sleeping. the sky looked orange, some snowflakes fell down from the sky. what a perfect last sight of kuopio, i thought. what a perfect last feeling. feeling of love, friendship, trust, happiness. feeling of sad goodbyes, hope of happy reunions. i was thinking about the best moments i had had in that city during these years, my dear hometown. i realised that almost all of those moments i had spent with the people i spent the weekend with. i love you guys, so so much. you know who you are.

this weekend was all about wedding planning, tears, hugs, bets, engagement pictures, traditions, sleeping back-to-back with henna (of course!), playing crazy alias, cooking tortillas and fajitas, reading the little prince (that's a link), girls' night, my home ward, hatsalankatu, siilinjärvi. i saw my best friend try on wedding dresses, which we've been waiting for since we were little girls. i couldn't resist walking on memory lane a few times, just wondering how much we've grown up. two of us girls are getting married in the beginning of 2011. mari is almost done with school, she's so hardworking, i admire that so much! i am moving to utah in 34 mornings. we all are going to do such big things with our lives.

this morning, at 8:24am i told kuopio goodbye as we took the exit towards helsinki. i'm a girl with many homes.

laskee uudelleen.........

randomness: i just booked my visa interview. for tomorrow morning, which is in about 10 hours. to make things even better, i've lost my voice, hence i sound like a tiny dinosaur (ok who am i kidding - my boss kept telling me how i sounded like him when he was 13..............). hahah, i'm so looking forward to this! it'll be interesting.

how did i get to this point? well. being sick and going to sweden isn't apparently the best match. but stockholm was great, once again. i had the best time with the best people - old and new. aki's swedish never let us down and stockholm's traffic was horrible (loved getting lost... i mean.. sightseeing tour on sunday). on our way back home we ate a big bag of chocolate and i got bruises in my wrists. i had also missed stockholm's temple, it felt like home.

i loved every second of it. this was a great last trip (in a while) to stockholm.

and of course.... buahah:

yö, natt, night, nuit. bussi, buss, bus, bus.

jokainen matka yöbussissa on seikkailu. jännää, miten oma mielentila säätelee koko kokemusta niin paljon.

väsyneenä läsähdät penkille ipod korvilla, nojaat ikkunaan ja suljet silmät tirkistellen säännöllisin väliajoin, että missä mennään (toisaalta välillä voi myös käydä klassinen nuku pysäkkisi ohi-skenaario). koko muu bussi tuntuu olevan aivan toisessa ulottuvuudessa, koska itse olet unen ja valveen rajamailla. jos ipod on jäänyt kotiin näinä päivinä, on bussimatka hyvin pilalla.

on niitä kertoja, kun kaikki on hasardia. bussissa on lauma humalaisia nuoria, joilla hyvää (ei aina niin hyvää) juttua riittää koko matkalle. kysymyksiä satelee, ja välillä toivot, että voisit jäädä pois seuraavalla pysäkillä. toisinaan on pakko laittaa ipod salaa pauselle ja kuunnella muiden juttuja, naureskellen yksin. jos hyvä tuuri käy, niin viereesi istuu vilhonvuoren kohdalla kevyesti haiseva laitapuolen kulkija, joka alkaa kertomaan elämätarinaansa. ihanaa.

sitten. on näitä öitä, kun istut penkille ei liian väsyneenä, mutta et liian pirteänäkään ja tarkastelet ympärillesi; ihailet helsingin ja moottoriteiden valoja, tarkkailet töölön ja kallion ylihinnoiteltujen asuntojen ikkunoita ja ulkona liikkuvia ihmisiä. ipodista tulee sigur rósia ja ajatukset liikkuvat sopivan harmonisesti. universumi tuntuu läheiseltä ja halattavalta.

i WILL survive

water, snow and hail (all at once)

-2 celsius

the freezing helsinki-wind that no words can describe

makes walking outside very enjoyable.

LOVE it!

lately:

-note to self: don't buy any new shoes or clothes (except for a few pairs of proper european skinny jeans... and some clothes from zara. and h&m. and monki.). you still can pack only 20 kilos with you = mission impossible
-i'm the worst at staying in bed when i'm sick. hence i've baked a red velvet chocolate cake, meringues and cooked some delish food. and maybe hung out with kukka (paras viikonloppu, nainen♥), anton, touko and jyry a lot....maybe.

-26.10.2010: äiti saa kaiken vaikuttamaan niin helpolta. tai, paremmin sanoakseni, tekee kaikesta sen arvoista. en voi käsittää sitä taitoa. aina kun minusta tuntuu, että seinät kaatuvat päälle, äiti pitää niitä ylhäällä niin pitkään, että ihse jaksan taas pitää niitä ylhäällä. viime aikoina näitä hetkiä on tullut ihan tosi paljon. sormeni ja varpaani eivät riitä laskemaan niitä iltoja, kun murheissani istahdan työhuoneen sohvalle häiritsemään äidin työntekoa, kyyneleet silmissä, tuntien halua luovuttaa tai murheita milloin mistäkin. kun olen vuodattanut kaiken stressini, sanoo äiti pari sanaa, ja ongelma on ratkaistu. it's amazing. she's amazing.

mulla on jäljellä seitsemän viikkoa ja kuusi päivää. jokainen päivä on yksi vähemmän, ja joka päivä kaikki alkaa vaikuttamaan todellisemmalta ja todellisemmalta. olen huomannut, että olen aloittanut miettimään asioita lähtönäkökulmalla. nämä ovat viimeisiä kertoja, kun kävelen suomalaisessa syksysäässä. kohta en enää käytä k-junaa helsinkiin mennessäni töihin. puhumattakaan ajatuksesta, joka muistuttaa, että pian en näe näitä ihmisiä joka päivä. mitenkä selviän ilman heitä? i've tried to save the goodbye-feeling for december, but it's so hard. i'm feeling it strongly already.

-two of my bestbest friends got engaged on the same day; i'm so happy for you girls♥♥

-registering for classes: check. i will die for boredom in 1st year swedish... what was i thinking?!

-4.11.2010: how often do we want things to go our way, which is usually the easiest, most convenient way? what if things don't go like we'd prefer? do we become discouraged and quit? i've been thinking about what i've done previously, and realized that too many times i haven't seen the beauty of the situation, the possibility to grow and learn patience and humbleness. now i realize it. and i am so grateful that everything hasn't gone the easiest way.

-we're going to stockholm for soulnite on friday! excitiiiinnnggg

-49 mornings. yikes.

-wrapping to a blanket and listening to music.

photobooth love

this is what you get when you buy a macbook pro and use it with your friends:
you have been warned. (i've got like 200 of these pictures + a million videos on my computer. you guys, i'm gonna be looking at these when i miss you in utah!)

normiperjantai

So, a normal train ride back home. Happy about the weekend. Exhausted from a killer gym class(again). I decided to check out my BYU page, like I've done every two seconds for the past few months. Little did I know that this time, when I opened the page it would be a tad different than ever before. Why? Well, folks. Here's the deal.. I'M GOING TO BYU!!!!!
My heart and soul is filled with pure gratitude, and I feel like I could burst into tears of happiness again and again. I am SO happy. Every single thing I've had to do to accomplish this has such a big meaning now. I can't believe it!!
(and let me tell you, that was the longest train ride ever...I mean, how can you sit quietly for 20 minutes after hearing something like that?)

Wow. Ok, now i can go and celebrate anton's birthday...dinner and a movie, here we come!

mitämitämitämitämitämitä?

i've been wondering why some people are trusted with such big things to go through. i mean, i know that we don't get more than we are able to handle. i have always tried to look at them as blessings - that's how we're shaped into diamonds. that's how we grow and learn to love others. but still, why is it that some people just seem to have everything on their plates at once, when some people don't really even know what it feels like to worry about something big. it all has a purpose, but our visions are so limited.

the other thing i've been wondering this week is mothers' love towards their children. where i work, we get a lot of little kids as customers; last night a mother and her two daughters came in and bought some stickers. i was so impressed in the way the kids respected their mama, and vice versa. oftentimes you see parents who are grumpy towards their kids, but this mother was glowing with love and tenderness. the way she spake to her kids was amazing. seeing them was inspiring - there's something so beautiful in a mother who has clearly gotten the idea of motherhood. i'm lucky to have a mother who has done that.

today ruska and i went to tallinn for the day. we finally got pedicures (it was about time to do something to these feet, seriously.... walking 60km per day in new york for a week didn't treat 'em that well), shopped a little bit and just talkedtalkedtalked. i loved it, i needed it! now i need some sleep. 3 hours of it apparently isn't quite enough...... öitä!

i hope you like pain!

there's this creepy man (anu and anne, you guys know who i'm talking about! the one who stands outside our store for hours) i see in helsinki every day, in the most random places possible. every day, i'm serious. and frankly, it's freaking me out! it's been going on for a few years now, and i am pretty convinced that he is a. stalking me (since my life is sooooo interesting), b. planning on killing me (since i've done so much harm to him) or c. my future husband (i highly doubt this one).

creepy man, if you're reading this, please stop stalking me/planning my murder! thank you.

today was: getting my wisdom tooth pulled out in the morning, loved it...noooot! also, house in provo: check. now i should just find out which school i'm going to attend...... interesting, yeeees!

this made me laugh (along with my half-numb face):

the day we wore black

what a weekend. the funeral was beautiful. peaceful. (not to mention frigging freezing!!)

i have felt the kind of empathy and love i didn't even know excisted - the kind that exhausts you just because it's so powerful. the kind that makes you cry over and over again when you think about what the other person is feeling. i wish i could've stayed in kuopio with poor grandpa. i.love.him.so.much. things will get easier for him, right?

let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

the day when the first snow came down.

the day when petteri and i ate a whole pack of ben&jerry's (ok, he got 1/3 of it, i 2/3.....).

the day when i wanted to give up.

the day when i finally finished my application (i wish i will never ever have to face this kind of bureaucracy again..until i apply for my student visa).

the day when i walked like a duck, thanks for that gym class two days ago. hahaa

the day when i listened to this while walking in downtown helsinki and felt so good:

i ♥ you, craigslist

one-way ticket: check.

(i've bought MANY tickets in my life. but never ever have they been only one-way. scary.)

tonight i took the night bus home and was literally praying through the whole ride; the driver was most likely drunk. at least he smelled very strongly like alcohol, didn't know how to count my money and ran a red light. to name a few things.

now i'm home safe, it's 2:30am and my muscles are SO sore after hitting a gym class with a killer routine. i can only imagine what tomorrow will be like...... yay. now some sleeeeeeeeep.

bonne nuit!

random fact:

i feel like eating sushi. the end.

10/10/10

this week has been great!

work, henna in helsinki, sleeping back-to-back (the traditional thing to do! we've been sleeping like that since we were 10), talking on my carpet for 5 hours straight, late nights, early mornings, sami's birthday, wall street the movie, movie night with ruska, crafting an epic card for sami, the wedding singer (pure love!!), apartment hunting, payday, galna dagar, new pants & sneakers, HAI!, gym, cold mornings, abba-karaoke, sauna, feeding apples to horses, tons of fruit salad, dancing, finglish (speaking finnish with english grammar. i'm sadly pretty great at it without even trying..), the official coke competition, the most vivid dreams ever, autumn colors in finland, a peaceful sunday with dad, sunday nap (and the vivid dreams continued.. this time i had moved to salt lake with dad and i was riding around with a red scooter. salt lake looked like time's square.), and lots of this song:

mummi

she passed away last night. i'll miss her terribly.

she was taking care of me first, later on i got to take care of her, for at least a little bit. the beauty of life. now it's time to move on. our family has been through quite a lot this week.

0700 kuusi puusi viisi piisi kaksi paksi kasi pasi kasi pasi kolme polme ja nelkku kelkku

äöäöäöäöäöäöäöäöäöäöäöäöäö

so many feelings at once. we've got this 15-year-old girl helping us at work for two weeks, and she probably thinks that we (=kirsi and i) are crazy people. i don't blame her, though. i would too, if i would see two people getting teary eyed every 10 minutes.

this week has been insane because of so many things. i should drive back to kuopio tomorrow, but i don't know if i have the energy to do so. on the other hand, grandpa needs so much help right now. dad has been teaching him how to use an atm. how to do laundry. how to go grocery shopping. i can't understand how anyone can survive alone after 60 years of marriage? that's SUCH a long time to live with someone! i can't even imagine what it feels like when the other half is suddenly gone.

i want to go see mummi in the hospital, sit next to her bed and just talk to her. she has been unconscious since monday. paralyzed and brain dead, but her big heart is still beating. there has to be a reason for that. we just don't know it yet.

to make this entry a bit happier, here's a list of this weeks pros:

+i get to wear my winter jacket! i've never ever had one i would like this much!

+the best friends & family anyone could ask for

+my fisheye...i love it more and more every day!

+a nice letter from uvu

+florence and the machine - cosmic love

+gc starts on saturday!!