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!