Joyful summer

Finnish summer  is probably the happiest day of the year. It comes and goes without you even noticing. After seeing all the drastic changes of the temperature I surely understand that statement. In some areas earlier this week it even snowed to be more precise. What a joy to be in Finland! I start to miss those summers I used to spend in Greece unable to move my little finger because I was too terrified to face the amount of sweat a simple body movement could cause. Not to mention the burning when I would put Greek yogurt to cool it down ( it actually helps by the way). God bless yogurt!

Even though I don’t like extremely hot weather summer still should be summers and winters, winters. I really cant feel the summer fever yet! I curse the day I didn’t pack more warm clothes with me. The coldest it got yesterday was 6 degrees which is like a Greek winter to me. Despite the bad weather though we still celebrated midsummer. This year our fire was significantly smaller than on previous years ( click here to see pictures from last summer's midsummer). It was more like a barbeque-type-of-thing which I found cosy enough. As long as there were enough sausages I was happy! A million mosquito bites later though I decided to give up and went inside to warm up.

the sun decided to come out for a second

 The trashy novels I read while on holidays. I am the kind of person who can't stand books with a big meaning that take me a week to figure out what it was actually about. This instead was quite the oposite...I probably should stop reading crap like this...oh well!

I think I will start wearing these more frequently if this rain doesn't stop! Don't they look stylish? :P I really hope this weather gets better...I really do!

Happy summer everybody! I hope I didn't totally destroy your mood :)

 

Karoliina

Quality time

Hola munchkins! It might be Friday the 13th but I haven't had any bad luck so far, phew! Not that I believe in that kind of stuff, but it's still a relief!

As to continue with my exciting life there isn't much to talk about unfortunately. I have been trying to find myself some hobbies or at least something to keep me busy so I came up with painting. I had some old paints somebody had given me ages ago so I thought to give it a try. Bellow you can see the result of my great inspiration. Before you start judging I haven't painted anything for the last 8 years, so I have the painting skills of a 12 year old (as you can probably notice). I got really excited when I finnished my moomi themed painting so I decided to show it to my mom and my sister. Immediately they told me why does nuuskamuikkunen (in English snufkin) have an amish beard? In case you wonder why he has an amish beard it's his hair!! Now I can't look at the painting the same way I did before...maybe I need to find another hobby after all :P

 To leave behind my painting I decided to go to the library and these babes came along with me.

Some trashy novels in English and Spanish to maintain my level in those languages and then some movies to kill my time.

Gladly I had the honor to have my mom visit me for a couple of days so we went to my grandfather's summerhouse to spend some quality time in the middle of nature. Even though we went there just for a day it was still relaxing and we were lucky enough to have awesome weather, yey!

Me passing out in the sun hoping to get a small tan. I think I have to accept it that that day will never come.  

Lazaros sent me this picture today so maybe it's about time to embrace my paleness.

It's bed time now!

Hopefully the rain will stop by tomorrow! Fingers crossed :)

 

Bye munchkins <3

 

Karoliina

 

Happy Sunday!

Hello strangers or friends or whoever you are! Job hunting has been keeping me "busy" for the last days, but sometimes it feels like I have had too much time for myself to think about random things. I am definitely having this phase again of "what the hell am I doing with my life?". Other days I just keep reminding myself that I am only 20 and I don't need to have everything all figured out. I am sure I will be laughing at myself looking back in ten years (that's the amount of time I give myself to gather my shit together), but for now I am just frustrated with myself.

I guess it's hard to be again in a place where I don't want to be. I miss being outside without having the rain hit my face in the middle of the summer. Now I am just trying to send as many e-mails as possible for open work positions, but the rest of the time I just feel like doing nothing. My best friend has become my computer, stalking people's lives on facebook (creepy...) and watching Plain Jane on MTV (yes, I admit it I love that show :P). Maybe I need to get a bit more active...maybe!

To end this post, here are some pictures to cheer the mood a bit ;)

Now I am going to eat some ice-cream, watch some trashy Tv show and try to feel good about my life.

 

Karoliina

Thanks for the lemonade









I am officially unemployed people! "Supposedly" I had a job interview to my old job yesterday, but it turned out that she just wanted to see me so she could tell me that she doesn't have a job for me (?@#*%!?????). The thing that makes me mad is that she let me wait all these months, when she could have told me from the beginning what's the situation.

 

Either way...after my little break down yesterday, I decided to pull myself together and find something else. Job hunting is on! Gladly I have amazing friends and lot's of chocolate to cheer me up! I can't say that being back to Finland started on the right foot, but things could be a lot worse I guess. On the bright side I can have some summer holidays if I don't find anything :P

 

 The person who has been cheering me up and sharing chocolate cake with me :D

Here is a lesson for me at least:

 

"You cannot tailor-make the situations in life but you can tailor-make the attitudes to fit those situations."

 

Will I ever learn??

 

 

 

Karoliina

Finlandia

The travelling never ends in my case. Yesterday night after 17 hours of travelling I landed to the country of Angry Birds, Sauna and Santa Claus (for those who didn't get the hint I meant Finland).

I am sure I have confused most people of where I have been going and what I have been doing. Don't worry though, I am more confused of my life right now than anybody else. Despite all the crazyness I feel more determined for my future. This year is going to be different as I have decided to settle down in one place for a while. Surprising, huh? I didn't think I would say this, but it's about time to stop the moving around.

I must admit that the biggest change though has been my mysterious man! He was a bit offended as I didn't write anything about him on my blog, but the truth is I hate people who post stuff about their relationships on facebook all the time. I don't like showing off and I guess that's the reason why I tried to avoid writing things about him on here. To be honest though, he is the best thing that has happened to me and I am so happy to have him in my life.

The only bad thing about him is that he looks way too young for his age which makes me look old :P

 On my last days in Greece my father took us one day to the mountain. Here they are laughing about something funny I suppose.

 I even got to go the the beach at least once before leaving!

 I was trying to take a picture of the sea, but couldn't see anything as the sun was too bright. Sexy knees it is then!

 mysterious man

Leaving Greece without having Greek food would have been a crime. On my last night we went out with my English teacher Denise.

 Gladly Akis and Marianna travelled with me to Finland as they got a job offer from there so I didn't need to travel alone. We got a super cheap flight with ryanair for 20 euros to Oslo and from there we changed the airport and got our flight to Finland. I have a love/hate relationship with ryanair as everything is so cheap but paying 30 euros for the bag was a shame. Gladly I didn't have any issues with my bag as it was exactly 20 kilos. I have become an expert after all these years ;)

 Akis and Marianna

 Finland!

 This is what it feels like being in Finland. Either I am too short or other people here are just too tall.

 On my first day back in Finland we went to see the Tove Jansson exhibition which would have been nice if I hadn't had the need to pee all the time. It kind of ruined the experience, meh!

 After the exhibition we came back and my sister taught me how to make filo pastry

 Spinach pies for dinner! Wohooo

Let's see how I will get any sleep tonight with this light!

It's strange to be back, but I will get used to it sooner or later!

 

Karoliina

 

 



Life back home

 

 

Well, hello there!

I haven't forgotten you my dear friends. Even though, I know that mainly my family and friends read this so to keep this blog updated I will give you a short review of my past three weeks of being back home!

 

Seing familiar faces again was such a comfort after all the moving around! I love travelling, but I would never be able to do it for a year or six months like I have seen other people do it. Maybe I am too weak or something,  what can I say!

 

Going to Athens to see my friend Foteinh was also great as I had missed that crazy chica so much. I keep saying that if we lived in the same city everybody around us would go crazy. Even though we are both petit we can be quite loud, trust me!

 

Arriving to Volos or the place I have been calling home for the last twenty years, wasn't too bad either. My brother was there as well with his two kids and his wife so there was lot's of noise and things going on to keep you busy. We also had Amir (my brother's friend) visiting us for ten days and I tried to show him around. I can't say I did a good job, but I did my best.

 

I was lucky to be here for Easter as well. As every year there was lot's of food, red eggs, Christos Anesti and Alithos Anesti going on! How I see it, Greeks tend to be more alive during Easter holidays. You see it's a BIG thing here and we take it very seriously. Mageiritsa, kokoretsi and arni (=lam) are three words you will hear a lot during Easter here! It took us about a week to eat the whole lam. No need to guess what food we were going to have the next day...the answer was lam!

 

 After all that food it was time for me to be more active so I started dance lessons again to keep myself busy. It was raining a lot as well the last two weeks, but it's good to have some rain. Now that the weather is getting better I am thinking of going swimming! Fingers crossed that I wont get any sunburns this year!

 

When it comes to my life in general the final conclusion is that I am happy! Love happened and it changed my life in a positive way ;)

 

That's all for now!

 

Karoliina

 

 

Pictures from Athens

Actually my trip didn't quite end straight away when I flew back home! I visited my friend Foteinh in Athens that I met in a hostel in Florence more than a year ago. We have been good friends since then and after a year of not seeing each other we finally reunited in Athens to spend some girly time with her sister Eleni and her friend Marilena :)

 

Kostas playing some guitar for us

 Sintagma

break dance wohoooo!

Eleni, Foteinh and Marilena

 Bad hair day 

My Greek Goddess

 Parthenon

Now I have been back home for three weeks which is good for a while as I had the need to stay in one place.

As about my future plans please don't ask me as I have no clue! I am getting somewhere I think...but I don't want to say anything yet as my plans constantly change from time to time.

 

 

Karoliina