Suomi

 It happened after my ex-boyfriend moved out and I asked myself where is my life heading now. I thought about a lot of things to do - changing jobs, go on a Europe-wide trek on foot or by hitchhiking, move back to Hungary, jump in the Thames... I was also free to do things i didn't do while my boyfriend was around and could criticize and mock my quirkiness. I started watching movies and to knit while standing up and doing little leg-exercises, bought food he didn't tolerated like salami, and dug out my meager collection of snowboard movies. Which are either full with finnish guys or are made (partially) in Finland or both.
I've always had a soft spot for Finland and everything finnish. Being Hungarian, i knew from a very young age that the only country where they speak a language even remotely similar to Hungarian is Finland*.  I also loved the fact that they had beautiful forests and beautiful architecture, and the men are blue eyed and blond haired (which are relatively rare in Hungary so i always found them exotic ;) I ended up studying Swedish and Estonian at the university, then came to the UK to learn English - maybe i will write a post about these detours in the future. So this summer I asked myself what are the things I really want to do in my life, and staying here wasn't one of them. Going there, getting to know the country, learning or at least trying to learn the language was. That settled it. I bought a textbook and started to gather learning material on the internet, and started studying a month ago.
I haven't studied a language from the start in a long time and now remembered how hard it is. The one year of Estonian studies are helpful sometimes and a burden at others, both owing to the similarities between the two languages, since they are much closer to each other then either of them are to Hungarian, I'd say like English and German to Persian. It is also one of those languages which make me laugh all the time because they just sound funny for the unfamiliar ears, like Chinese, Swedish and English**. I also love the fact that it has a lot of words who mean something entirely different on another language, i think they are called homonyms.

These few I gathered today:

hinta - fin price, hun swing (the playground toy)
lanka - fin yarn, hun gentle slope
ovi - fin door, hun  kindergarten, nursery
te - fin you (2nd person plural), hun you (2nd person singular) - Hey, we are relatives after all! :)
on - is (to be, 3rd person singular)
helmet - pearls

So, here's for me doing something crazy and too big and completely non-sense again.

Hyvaa ilta! (Good night!)



*At that time, Estonia was part of the Soviet Union and not an independent country so nobody talked about them.
**  Yes, English. I remember i found it sounding ridiculous when i started to learn it at age 9 and dropped it because i felt too embarrassed to say all those funny words out loud in front of other people.

31

Yesterday, i turned 31 years old. I had the day off and spent it with doing absolutely nothing of worth :D Or almost nothing, as i did my food shopping and tested a telly and did opened a book...
I did go out later with my cousins and a friend who's visiting them and had a quite good night in my favourite (read: the only one which i can tolerate) club, then crashed at my cousin's place.
Best part of the night was when the other club opposite the one we were in had a firedancer performing on the street :) Thanks for the show :)

Get-together

 August 20th is a national holiday in Hungary and on that occasion we had a "little" get-together yesterday in the local park. Didn't knew there's so many of us living in the town! It was nice to meet with so many of them and speak hungarian. Everyone was supposed to take care of their own food only but as is good hungarian custom everybody bought more then enough and shared it with others (yummy meatloaf and cakes...) Of cousre we had some palinka too :) Most people stayed until the park closed but i left quite early so missed the fireworks. Also, this was the hottest day of the year so far (and probably will stay so) we actually hit 30°C!!!

Still alive

Still alive... knitting, working, the usual stuff.

Painted my nails on friday - first time in years :)

Current knitting project: a striped jumper. Bought the yarn at Hobbycraft last weekend for half price. There were about a dozens colours of this yarn (bamboo-nylon blend) and i couldn't choose so my cousins wife did it for me - she picked out pale pink, magenta and yellow. I do like this combination actually but couldn't imagine it on myself - so it's good someone else deciced on them for me :)

I'm using the Incredible Custom-Fit Raglan pattern again. Did a swatch beforehand, then washed it - and it grew to twice as wide as soon as i put it under water. It went from 24 stitches on 10 cm to 19! I was a bit surprised as i'm used to yarns grow lengthwise but not sideways, but then remembered this is a bamboo-nylon blend, not the usual wool.  

Friday

Here i am again, sitting at home after phoning in to my workplace and telling them i can't go in todaysorry coz blah blah stomach problems blah blah depression blah sorry blah blah. Lately, it's happening nearly every week. Last week i managed to go in every day, this week was just mental. I literally had to fight through the first two days, gave up for tuesday afternoon, and went in wednesday looking the same as i did the previous two days. Yesterday was okay-ish but i think having to work with someone in my state took the toll on my colleagues and they were as morose as i was. Today, i was sort of ok, at least compared to the start of the week. But i gave up. I shoul've put out the rubbish and just couldn't do it on time. My stomach started to hurt - lately, it hurts every morning. It gets better later, but i'm tired of it. I also misunderstood a text P. sent me - damn my english is still not good enough.
So i gave up. I just stood in the kitchen surrounded by rubbish bags. Then i phoned in and gave those stupid excuses - which even tho are true, still make me feel like i'm lying (Had to look up how to spell that. Argh.)
I decided i'll be a good girl. I'll do all the chores i should've weeks ago but couldn't bring myself 'coz "i need the weekend to rest". I'll sort all the papers and official stuff that's laying around. Ask for an appointment with my gp coz i never, ever had problems with my stomach and now i do and it makes me worried. Maybe even go to the shop so i don't have to drag P. out tomorrow.

But i'm still just sitting here, angry at the telly coz they don't have any soothing-nature-documentary on any channels we have. Yeah, that's the biggest problem with life.

Saturday, blah blah

It's amazing how two cr@ppy workdays can totally get me down even in spite of the weekend.

Hightlights of the day: starbucks has they christmas season menu on which means pecan and caramel cheesecake + after 6 hours of playing P did pass the laptop to me so i could play Simcity.