Back on Track

October 28, 2009

            Wow. It feels like it’s been a while. Perhaps I’m becoming a habitual blogger cause I think I was going through withdrawals. I hope it’s not contagious. Though, from the looks of my friends who’ve all started blogging, I’d say it is!!! I’m actually quite glad. Because now I have stuff to read as well.

            Today was very productive. I think I breathe easier when my abilities are put to the test (and I pass of course). I finally woke up before 1 or 2pm. This was a nasty habit I caught last week on my break. I would fall asleep around 7am and wake up at 1 or 2pm everyday… sometimes even later. Shameful. I know. I didn’t realize how much of a hermit I was last week until I came back to the studio and everybody greeted me with big smiles asking where I had been and how they’d missed me. It feels good to be missed sometimes. Especially when you feel like nobody notices or should notice.

Well, this morning I woke up and went to the studio and got my competition design printed out and mounted and filled out my entry form before class. After class, I went with Aulikki (my professor for just about every subject) to the post office to mail it to Sweden. We rode in her car. I think it was a Skuoma. I can’t really remember. It was green. That made me happy. She was kind of an intense driver and the fact that I didn’t really know how the roads and traffic worked kept me feeling like a baby in a car seat… pretty helpless. We arrived with no scratches. It was a good time for me because I got to talk to her about a few ideas I had been thinking about for some of the courses and she put my mind at ease about some of the things I had been worrying about. I’m used to worrying at UNCG, but it doesn’t seem like anybody worries here. And even when I worry, things turn out to not be such a big deal here. We had to drive around Oulu for a few minutes until I got wireless connection because neither of us remembered to get the address for the place in Sweden that I had to send my competition to. She was very giggly and reminded me of an old friend who does silly stuff in situations that could be turned stressful easily. I liked it a lot. We meshed.

            After my posti experience, I went back into the computer lab and sat next to Brittany while I whipped out two presentations for tomorrow. I hate presenting. I find that I try to act like I don’t know English well. For one, nobody else in the room knows English well except for Brittany. And second, it buys everybody else time when they speak slowly and search for the right words in English to say. It makes my presentations fly by… so I turn into a Latina woman or something when I get in the front of the room. That’s slightly embarrassing. Most people here have thought that I was either from Spain or Brazil though… so I guess it works for me.

            I went to Stockman after I finished my presentations and bought some baking soda and baking powder. These were the last two ingredients that I needed to make my homemade buttermilk pancakes… so I thought. I forgot that I’d run out of eggs so I ran to the store in the last few minutes before Bible Study and got some maple syrup and eggs. I then biked over to Bastian’s house for Bible study. It was really intense today. We’ve been studying Revelation. We read through the scriptures, watch a DVD on the scriptures we read in Revelation by David Pawson and then discuss everything. You can imagine there’s a lot to discuss. Luckily, I’m in a room full of people who know the Bible intimately and we find ourselves in all kinds of scriptures searching for the real truth. I know a few of the people in the room have studied Revelation several times before also. I think today we got hung up on a topic that has been debated a lot and it had my head spinning for a while before everybody started backing down and realizing that maybe some of the details will never be explained to us and sort of sitting back and taking comfort in that. Leave it to Bastian, our German comedian to really lighten the mood. He reminds me a lot of my dad. He has this funny way of laughing and joking at things. We talked about persecution and tribulation a lot tonight and after 3 hours of sitting relatively quietly, he laughs out loud and says, “I’m still trying to figure out what these words mean in German.” I love my Bible study and the many personalities in it. Oh, and also, I'm almost always guaranteed to get a fresh jug of Kombucha from David. YUM!

            I got home from Bible study around 10:30pm. I hadn’t eaten yet and I went into the kitchen and whipped up those homemade buttermilk pancakes. I made so many! I only could eat like three before I was full. That’s what happens when you don’t eat all day. It’s okay though. I saran-wrapped them and put them in the fridge for tomorrow.

            Coming to the end of a day like this leaves me smiling. I feel accomplished and I had fun the whole time. There were a lot of little things today that made me happy:

•my classmates expressing their affection for me

•my car ride with Aulikki

•a kid almost hit me with his bike while doing a donut on the ice

•Judy asking me to sit next to her on the couch at Bible study

•I got in the zone while listening to my iPod and closed my eyes on the way down a hill

•making homemade pancakes that rocked with Canadian maple syrup

            In other news, the sun now sets at 4pm. Well, if you can even call it the sun. It’s more of a distant glare that fades pretty quickly. The bodies of water are beginning to freeze over. I’ve been practicing riding my bike with no handlebars (I wish that song didn’t come to mind when I say that). I enjoy using my bike light and human reflector device. I plan to seriously go shopping sometime soon for gifts. I’m getting into my schoolwork more and more. My room still smells like Christmas and Gingerbread. I’ve watched so many movies online lately; my favorite was Law Abiding Citizen. I found out that the shampoo and conditioner over here is actually better than the Paul Mitchell stuff I had shipped from home (sorry mom and dad). And last, but not least… I really love singing Finnish worship songs.