April

music: the kooks - shine on
mood: contemplative

I am getting back to my chronological order, or at least I am trying. I left you in the middle of April after exhausting two weeks. As I already mentioned, after some weeks of being entirely bored by university, my courses had started again while Meli and my mum were here, so I had to skip quite a lot of lectures. After a weekend of relaxing, I started studying again. The courses were quite intense and tiring, with lots of due dates for reports and presentations all at once. Leaves me with the question: Why can't they schedule their courses so that you are busy for some time every week and not that you are bored for some weeks and busy 24/7 in other weeks?
The worst was a week with computer class each morning and each afternoon without lunchbreak and after that week two seminars in one day.
Well, I got through it and with decent grades (so far) so I am happy. Today I officially finished all my assignments so I am free for the last two weeks of my stay!
Also the last weeks of April got me into being disciplined mood. I started going running with Lisbet and we managed to keep it up for about a week, but right now our morning routine is somewhat lost. I really want to start again because I figured it was a lot of fun and somewhat addictive. Also started going swimming and worked a lot for school (necessary!).

Running and going for long walks is very nice now because spring arrived in Finland. We discovered lots of things that were hidden beneath the snow, such as siderails, bushes, ashtrays,... The trees got new leafs, the flowers started blossoming, the birds started singing, the hayfever started.... honestly, my nose is running like crazy now. The meds I am taking are really good for letting me sleep but work only so far to not make my eyes go crazy, otherwise they are quite useless. Have to find something else!

We went for really nice walks and discovered great BBQ places near some of the lakes (where we lost Gio, see last post!).

Concerning parties:

In April, it was Julia's birthday, but she was in Germany by that time. We wanted to have a party anyway so we celebrated Julia's birthday without her and made a video! It is too long to post it here but it was really fun!

In the end of April, Liesje left us. She had sort of a goodbye party week which was great but the fact that she left was sooo sad. On her last evening, we made a quiz about all the people here. We managed to get from the idea at lunch to the powerpoint with about 90 slides in less than 7 hours so that was quite an achievement!

The saying goodbye really sucks and it really got all of us thinking how fast the time is passing. Now it is less than two weeks until we are all gone and it gives really mixed feelings. I guess I will go on whining about that in the next few posts so I quit it now.

Anyway. With saying goodbye to Liesje, April sort of ended and Mai started with the celebration of Vappu, the Finnish Labour Day. Wait for it...