goodbye Hello

End of a semester. A time to let people leave. A time to say goodbye. A time to say goodbye, but also see you again. That's how the student's life rolls year to year. Every half a year you start a new era. This time it is different. Different in better and worse. People here have become your new family. You get used to their customs and they are there for you. As soon as you get to know them better, they leave. Most heartbreaking was to see my dear BTC and movie friend Janne say goodbye. On his last week, we finished our task of tasting all the special beer boxes we found from this city. Result was that Belgium kicked Holland's ass. I still remember when we sometime on the first days set our eyes on one of the boxes on our bike trip.

After watching the movie Knocked Up (funny, but don't remember why), we headed to Speeltuin for 3 of my flatmates' b-day party. 5 roomies and 4 of us born in December, good thing that they had a combined party..

Next day Jolien, our buddy tutor finally cooked some Dutch food for her buddy tutorés, and it was yummy! It also looked simple to do, so probably even I might attempt to do it. Or not, since I would need to peel potatos, which I don't like to do.Then we went bowling, I'm sorry Janne, but I will never be in your team again, since you want to have fun and not have the Finnish competitive attitude. Pff traitor.

So came the day, which I waited for and stressed about; a formal Christmas dinner. I don't mind wearing a dress, it just isn't my thing, but understandably I took the most essential clothing (skinny pants and band shirts) with me in my 20 kg luggage. Therefore I did some treasure hunting and had stuff from at least 3 different people, dankjewel for that! Biking in the cold in a dress wasn't that nice, but awesome food with awesome people warmed me up and so it was already after 4 when I got into my warm bed.

And it was already after 8 when I had to get up from my warm bed. Filming in the cold didn't have the best timing, but luckily we had great actors and production team, which made the shooting last only for 5-6 hours.

watch out for the poop and ice falling

naturally talented vitali

hilarious marieke

richard, great in eating fries

producer

camera woman

editor

director loca jara

poor vitali

 

Party later in the evening at the Achter de Lange Stalle (their first and last? :D) brought up some more memories from the first days. Sadly had to leave earlier, simply was just exhausted after our wand battle with Chelsea. Stupifying and being stupified is energy-consuming.

STUPIDFY!

Sunday, bloody Sunday! Why do the weekends come to an end? It was time for me to finally visit the Graphic Design Museum with Janne. Really nice place and definitely going there more often, since I do have the museum card! The museum visit was followed by another nam nam dinner by Jolien. Which was then followed by having fun with white powdery stuff.

We planned to have a (first) last supper with the flat mates, but no one talked about later on, until they had called me many times and yelling where am I. Well, I managed to hurry up for the relaxation and looking back session. Even though you guys drive me crazy sometimes, I still. Yup.

Fifth day of farewell. Long farewell it was. It first started with great sledge time at school! That was just what I needed. Then off to the edit suite to finnish an assignment, but OOOPS my lecture was not at one it was earlier. *SIGH* Nothing else to do, but off to Janne's then! And from there to the train station, the sun was shining and it felt like spring break in Finland, just 20 degrees warmer. Finally the dreaded moment arrived; bye bye to one of the most incredible persons I've ever met. Janne, one of the few persons I was able to rely on over here and I will miss knocking on his window! He promised Henna that he would go jogging with her and with me continuing our BTC and going to the best indie club back home in Jyväskylä! One must have a balanced life. 

knocking on the window for the last time

miss you dear erg mooi friend <3

You usually tell the people, who leave that you will see them again. Most of the time it just does not happen. But I am absolutely certain that these are the people when after saying goodbye to, I will again say hello.

A week in an extended glance

Week 49

Monday:

Happy Independence Day Finland! If I were there now, I would have a free day. But no, I am stuck in school until quarter to ten. Never have I stayed that long in school, not even when we had with whatever student union zeppelin  free food nap time meetings. Bieber after the first class I went back home to sleep. I had my matrice in Judit's room, since the night before Judit and Nuria were paranoid of someone entering the house, so we had to all sleep in one room. After a really nice nap, Judit had noticed that we had our presentation turn in film analysis. Pontiac darn, once again another proof that the weeks pass by so fast that you get confused when you have to do an assignment. Anyways going to the class demolux Judit thought that the teacher would kill us, luckily he was really understanding, but in a very suspicious way, which made us think that he will kill us after the class. Still alive! Then started the painful 4h+ editing. Hope pineapple to be ready earlier, because I really wanted to join our lovely dinner with the Finns here in breda. But surprise surprise technology slapped monkey in our face. Just as we had everything nicely edited, exporting the footage back to tape caused the problems again. School was already closing, so we had to leave. Judit went home depressed and I went to fill my stomach. There were mashed potatoes, steaks, salad, karjalanpiirakka (blond rice bread thingy) and glögi imported straight from Finland! The evening was really strange; being surrounded by only Finnish people death! My tongue was put in a weird situation and watching bad Finnish parodies made my brain tickle. Still clothes made me miss Finland. It was good when coming home to notice that the course I failed was raised with one whole number, Liverpool winning and El Nino having a nino.

while suffering in the edit suite

after suffering

from russia with love

Tuesday:

After school me and Judit went to get her laptop, as soon as we left the IT place owned by a friend of ours, something got stuck in my chain, so it broke. Long way to the centre, but it was enjoyable when we had nice solitude conversations. When the chain was being fixed, we noticed the really really beautiful Christmas decorations! That probably means that I have not been too often in the centre lately, which must be fixed. After dark paying for the repairment, the seller offered us chocolate, what a nice marketing tactic! I think I will be paying more for the repairement than the whole bike by the time I leave. Later on in the evening we had a dinner with our international coordinator and the head of a degree program in this really nice restaurant De Kolonie. Another moment to incredible notice a big Christmas tree in the Grote Markt. Food was yummy and they ordered also a bottle of wine. Seemed that the staff in the restaurant were extremely interested of us, when we spoke a weird language. Pity that I don't have a picture of our coordinator getting her food served in a flower pot... Once coocky weird situation again with only Finnish people. Mistä näitä senttejä oikein tulee?! It was kind of refreshing to meet people from JAMK. After that me and Henna went to the Irish pub (where they thought that we come from Eastern Europe, because of our dark hair, but still were doubting due to our language) before we left home.

Wednesday:

Class cancelled yei! But still a big challenge ahead; exporting footage to the tape. GRRR. After many hours we were able to do it! You should have seen me and Judit jumping around and being amazed and shocked when the tape started to roll. However, wins brings losts; our audio got all messed up. When you see someone punching you hear the punch later. *Sigh* It was time to go to Janne's place to eat the leftovers from Monday. White, other Finns like Henna and Piia were there too. We played nice Finnish card games and horse we went later on to Speeltein to celebrate Fin(n)ish before Christmas party. They hadg glühwein and self-made Fisu, which was even more terrible than the one I made. Spy more Finnish people dmaksldmsalmdasmdmldas. Finnish music like Lordi, Kaija Koo and TikTak. mdalmdlksamdoasmdamd. My brain is going sewer.

in our comfort zone

Thursday:

Werewolves of Wakkerdam. Really fun rolegame at Martin's. Basically union people sitting in a circle, getting a card saying what role they will have; wolf, villager, innocent little girl, seer, bark, mayor and so on. Wolves try to kill others and others try to survive. Quickly summarized.

Friday:

Lobster, yei we got our redo assignment from last block done! Well , we had it ready, but the good old story of exporting back to tape messed everything up, but not this time. Great exchange students 2, capture device 2. We hope to beat it by the fourth block. It was time to relax. Hectic week. Kill Bill at midnight to set the Christmas mood. Try to watch a movie normally now, when you've had to study all things about camera angles, plot etc. Impossible. Wasn't tired yet, so I wrote another entry telling about my b-day. Finally at behaviour 5 AM, I went to sleep.


Saturday:

WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS! Finland dominated in the final against Sweden in floorball's world cup. Sweden had dominated for captain a couple of decades I guess and now after our second gold, we really are in the top and hopefully will stay there for a while. Final wasn't that exciting though comapred to last time two years ago, which I drill missed due to my team's own games. Then it was time to go to Janne's place again to  watch two movies; Cloverfield, a movie which gave me severe headache, because of the shaky camera and Lion King, my favorite movie, which is makes me cry and laugh. After that we went to Louise's abomination place to celebrate her b-day. It became a save the balloons event for me. From there to Speeltein and back home again.

saudi-arabia, main sponsor of team finland

funny face

Sunday:

Was really waiting to bake cookies with the others, but sadly got cancelled. Well more time to do my assignment. No, more time to watch movies. UP yeaaaa. Very nice, very nice indeed, eventhough hammer I slept for ten minutes. The day passed by listening to Christmas songs, eating a big box fries from the local fries place, which I tried the first time, not the best ones. Also trying out dresses for the upcoming Christmas dinner, which I am waiting for! Word.

Paul McCartney - Wonderful Christmas Time


Today at Imagineering class learned about F-R-E-E writing. Fast. Raw. Exact. Easy. And thanks to Ville, Pepijn and Jordan for the random words they gave every now and then.

Gefeliciteerd, you're always 21

I don't need to worry about having a supervisor on a Swedish boat cruise anymore, but probably I will not be winning free cruises now.

I can get in a bar in the US, but most likely I will not be visiting that place anytime soon. Unless I go to Canada and cross the boarder.

Anyways, country number four to celebrate my birthday. The Philippines, Finland, Sweden and now The Netherlands. Hope to spend it next year in a new country, if that happens, then something had gone right. Well, soon we will see, since it feels like yesterday, when I pretended to be a juggling bartender in bar Shakers.

pro

Birthday a day, when people give presents to comfort the celebrant for aging. December first, "world AIDS day" and this time "hug a Finn day" too. I did hug a Finn a day before and after, but on the actual day they fled to the forest.

Beginning of the end of the year started with watching Pan's labyrinth with my flat mate Judit. In the middle of the film, after midnight my other flat mates came in the room and started singing; a good mood to go to sleep in. Not too glad to spend half of the day at school, but I maintained the good mood by listening to Ace of Base and reading people's b-day wishes on Facebook. It was also time to change my ringtone into the Coca-Cola one.

I did a small test on Facebook by not letting people post on my wall. The result was that this time there were less wishes; maybe some people have realized that it is more or less fake to wish a half stranger happy birthday or a thing called "inbox" is unfamiliar. That leads to a theory of people posting something in someone's wall to just draw attention. Just talking in general, don't you dear reader get offended. Most of the wishes were written in one of my posts, then in my pictures and inbox. One actually tagged me in a post, which I thought was creative, congrats! Social media, an interesting thing, isn't it? Perhaps I should focus my thesis on it.

After school it was time to go home. A present was waiting for me on my pillow; Alice had bought me something, firstly I was happy, because it made my day better, then worried when I noticed it was a CD (over a 100 CDs back home and having a similar music taste with Alice made the chances of owning the CD already), but in the end relieved, when it happened to be a 2CD album of Radiohead's greatest hits. AAAAA.

grazie alice <3

Instead of having Indian dinner and going bowling, I decided to grant myself with a day of relaxation. Didn't turn out to be a success, since school work for the next day were slapping me in the face. However, doing groceries with flat mates in the new Jumbo close to our house was believe it or not, nice X 100. Thinking about what food to buy, keeps your thoughts somewhere else.

Already riding our bikes there was a lot of fun. All of them yelling how cold it was and only because of me they had to suffer now. Take that as a compliment XX. And yes there is usually snow during my b-day, was amazed of that happening in a country of rain, how lucky.

the weather followed from finland

One way to lure them there was the free food what we were about to get, but not really. Only tea and coffee what you can normally get in some of the grocery stores. However, when paying our groceries we did get an apple pie! Guess, the Dutch are not that cheap as they say.

party in jumbo

Rest of the evening I spent with articles to be read for the next day and practising our pitch, but at the same time enjoying the delicious apple cake and Franziskaner brought straight from Germany! People wishing earlier have a nice birthday in Jumbo, well I did.

   

mmm

mmm

The next day school from 9-17; our film idea got a green light and the last hours I slept in the editing room, trying to recharge batteries for the evening. With Troy we bought snacks and drinks for our combined b-day party, in which we expected to have about 30-40 people. Stress, stress, stress.

With the help of Judit and Nuria the walls got some life. They also made tasty brownies, thanks mmm. People were late, as always, (more food for us). Also Troy was late, eventhough I told him three times not to be late for his own party. There you have it; reminding people more than once makes them forget.

gracias judit & nuria

Cool indie music list with Spanish music. Janne bringing a special box of world of beers. Dutch people giving lovely presents. Dancing with woolen socks in a cottage. Offering self-made Fisu (eww.) Quiz with random questions e.g. what did Jaleh do during a school trip to Helsinki? Throw up several times, because of a small unknown gift from Spain! Yup people had fun.

 

presents

wine from Gerry X

flat mates

 Did I ever imagine my birthday to be what it was? No, it was even better. Thank you everyone for making it a memorable event.

Song of the day

Fun Fun Fun

They say a picture says more than a thousand words. Who can honestly write that much of one picture? Of course it is possible, but you would have to write a lot of nonsense. Subjective nonsense. We will never be able to pursue the world as it truly is; we are blinded from the objective reality by our personal experiences, culture and present state. And blurred vision of all the time we've spent playing Farmville and Mafia Wars (you know who you are).

Speaking of reality, how can you know if everything truly exists, that it's not a dream or anything? For a reality check, people usually pinch or hit each other. So, pain is the answer. Pain is what you get when you do all of your assignments on the last week. Pain is what it causes your wrists when writing your assignments and additionally chatting about the weather in Finland. Pain is repetitive strain injury.

Therefore here is a 23000+ word essay of October 24th just to keep the pain continuing ie. knowing that all this is real.


Part I Kermis

doppelgängers

 

 

the sky is being torn

first time on the ferris wheel

 

 

the prison in the middle. the prisoners had fun watching other people have fun

the plan was to win this..

but i forgot that i hadn't played floorball for a while

"let's go here, it will be so much fun!"

or not

50 m high

beautiful view and jordan screaming how that all was my fault

we had to be up there for a while, since someone down had puked

had still all the blood in my head the next day

survivors

time for serious investments

they were worth it

britt's face tells everything (good thing we didn't eat before the ride)

good pasta, but italian food is not my thing

Part II BredaPhoto
An annual internatonal photo festival. Some of the pictures were in the Chassé Park, which reminds me of Lutakko in Jyväskylä. The park looks so empty and boring without the pictures now.

it was easy to notice something finnish

 

It was a fun day.

Something gezellig, something random

Time flies. Especially after you've turned 18. If someone wishes to disagree, you can always check the last texts I've written. My poor two readers are still stuck in August, when it's already November. By the way I will be turning 21 in a month and I will have the chance to go on a boat cruise, without a supervisor. Of course then we will not be winning cruise tickets anymore. Call on me.

Because of the clock running faster than me, I will be writing more about what has happened lately and at some point also of the first days here. You will probably get confused of the dates and people I write about, but no worries you will get to learn more about them perhaps on Christmas or the Christmas after it.

Anyways let's start our story with the 23rd of October, a Saturday. It is raining cats and dogs. Did I really use that cheesy saying we learnt in our English class? Well, it hadn't rained like that for a long time during a weekend (note during a weekend), so I didn't sleep that well, because it felt like someone was shooting with a machine gun at my window in the roof. I usually like it when it rains during my sleep, but with Rambo around, it is terrible. So the rain seemed to never stop and I felt good since I could just relax in my room  with a perfect excuse to watch 30 Rock and Grey's Anatomy and listen to rainy day music.

Rainy day music according to me. Rainy day music according to Jordan.

Then Jordan started to message me on both Facebook and Skype, probably it's an American way to overuse the social online media. He invited me to join him, Jolien and Troy for dinner at a Dutch restaurant called De Borenstampott, which serves three course meals for 7,5€ and all I can do is look outside at the rain. I really didn't feel like getting wet, but I still try to do what my friend adviced me to as much as I can; don't stay in your room, if someone invites you somewhere. Besides, I didn't have food in the fridge anymore.

Off I went and luckily it didn't rain that bad as I rode my bike to the centre. As I entered the restaurant gezellig (=cosy) popped into my mind. It is one of the first words I learnt last spring, but only know I remembered to use it.

troy, jolien and the gezellig restaurant

There were so many options to choose from, but for starters it was obvious for me to pick pea soup, since I missed it so much. As main course I took mashed potatoes with meat stew and vegetables. I didn't expect it to come red and as a big portion, but as my father taught me when I was little that you have to eat every single rice. So I was able to finish the food, even though I could have been rolled out of the place. I wanted to finish the others' food, since I don't like food being thrown away, but now I had to give up. However, there is always room for dessert, which was home made pudding. All in all the dinner was lekker (=delicious) and place supernice, which meant that I found the perfect place to bring people coming from Finland to.

pea soup

you know what this is. unfortunately there is no picture of the pudding, due to it disappearing somewhere so fast

 After that we headed to Albert Heijn to do some groceries. As few moments earlier I explained how I needed to get myself a Toy Story toy from the toy store, by chance I noticed that if you buy stuff for 15€, you get one. Of course I forced everyone to combine their groceries together, so that I could have it. But for my disappointment that campaign started on the next week. Pff.

Then we headed to Janne's place with Jolien to make some plans for the autumn break. The idea of having a list of random cities and picking one randomly had been in our thoughts for a while, so now was the time to do the first part of it. Before that we came up with a million euro idea (euro is stronger than dollar), which cannot be revealed, but you'll know more about it when the movie comes in 2018.

soon to be millionaires

 here!

or here?

Having planned something for the autumn break and Troy joining us, we went bowling. It is pretty cool that you can bowl after 11 pm here. Jolien being a great buddy, she offered extremely tasty oliebollens to her buddies as we went through the carneval on our way to the bowling alley.

Bowling was again a lot of fun as always. They called me grandma, because of my unique style; slow-moving, but effective. Sometimes.

turn the volume up to hear the comments.



Until next year!