Home sweet home!

Here I am, back at home where everybody around me are talking the language that I so perfectly understand,but which sounds so weird right now. I know I've heard finnish all the time while I was in Asia, but now when everybody's talking it everywhere I go, all the time it just feels so unreal.

My last days in Sydney and Singapore didn't go quite like I had planned. I got sick. Great! On my last day in Sydney I was way too weak to do anything but to look like one of those homeless who slept on a park bench...Trust me it's not too comfortable a place to sleep....Then on the way to Singapore, I got high fever. Not too much fun to fly when your freezing, you can't swallow or hear or talk and the kid who sits infront of you has decided to be the next big kickboxer and to practise all the way to Singapore so that flying attendants nearly threw him out of the plane. Then I just spent 2 days in Singapore under the covers on a couch feeling like I was in a freezer eventhough there was +29C (+84F) inside the apartment.

Well I managed to fly back to Finland and see a doctor and I'm finally feeling alive again. Well, Now that I'm home and have 4 monhs and pretty much nothing to do, if you have the same problem and you're bored, just feel free to fly here and come to say hi! I promise you'll have an authentic Finnish experience. My travels are over for a while (eventhough my friends just told me about these dirt cheap flights to Latvia as a one choice for a little summer trip they would want me to do with them) and I intend to enjoy this Finnish atmosphere which feels actually quite nice for a change. Hip Hip hurray for home!

But what happened to the kangaroos?

Jihaa ! Here I am in Sydney. After sitting 10 hours on Gulfair's plane (yeah, someone said I must be brave to fly with airline from Middle-East, but that actually was a great experience, good service and everything!) I was so ready to just get to our hostel. When we did arrive to our hostel, what did we see? 2 girls with a short thing that I guess you can call a skirt on, waiting for some customers to pass by. Nice! I must have picked the right neighbourhood when I made the reservation through internet. Oh well, my mom thought the whole thing was merely hilarious and just stated that at least we know what to do if we run out of money! Trust me, just my mom could say something like that, in a situation like this! I know some moms of my friends would have freaked out and wanted to go to a different place, but not my mom, she is way cool with things like these. Then we met our room mate who is actually working as a somekind of reseptionist for a adults agency...Great, so what could be the theme of our trip?

During the first day we were supposed to go and see the famous opera house, but we never got that far, cause we got stuck in a shoe sale!! Yes, typical women...But I really needed new shoes for my brother's wedding! Today, which is a second day here, we found our way to the opera house and we wook a ferry to Manly beach anjd just enjoyed of Australian lay back attitude and breathed in this fall air (Yes, we are down under and the summer is over here and turning into a fall...)

We haven't figured out tomorrow yet, but that's exactly what I'm about to do right now! But if I won't see a kangaroo soon, I'm starting to doubt am I really in Australia...

Here's just some pictures from my stay here in Singapore. I don't have much to write right now, it has been just raining for a week and we have been watching tv, that's it.

This is so typical picture of Singapore. In downtown there are lot of skycrapers and all the buildings are a bit different shaped, unlike in Finland where every building looks like a box... 

Singapore can be also very colourful. This picture is from Clarke quay where there are lots of restaurants and night spots. 

This is a first christian cemetery in Singapore. It might be a bit weird picture to put here (I mean who is interested about cemeteries...)but somehow I like it. 

Outi pretending to be a bambu bear... 

Here's a picture from Sentosa. We just love palm trees with Outi. Unfortunately everything is man made in Sentosa. Palm trees are brought here from who knows where, Sand is brought from Hawaii and even the stones are fake ones!! I mean how pathetic is when you have to have fake stones... 

"Twins" Outi and Annu, Milla and I going out (what a surprise...) 

On the way to ladies night. I have a bottle of traditional Finnish drink which is kind of like liquoricevodka. Thanks Milla for bringing that as a surprise! 

Our wide grins aren't the main point in this picture...It's the badges me and Outi's sister Anu have in our bags. What mine says? Warning I have an attitude and I'm not afraid to use it. Cool! What mine says? I smile because I've no idea what is going on. Sweet! 

Here's our lovely school. It's actually so big that there's only half of it in this picture... 

Class mates Claudia, Gayna,and Belinda. I do look like a blond when you compare to these girls, although I refuse to be one.  

This is one of our school's food courts. There's maybe 6 or 7 of these. You just order your food from the different booths and eat it outside while birds are flying over your head. 

Ben and Jerry rules!! We had some ice cream in the zoo and boy were we happy... 

Fantastic! Someone had left shoes just for me, maybe it wasn't Cinderella though... 

Yes, Milla thought that this poor guide definitely needed a hug!! 

Katja and I in a ladies night. What a team we were, we definitely had that Saturday night fever!! Even John Travolta would have been pale... 

About Singaporeans

Have I evet told you how I feel about Singaporeans? Well here it comes, whether you like it or not. They are the most naive people I've ever met. They haven't been anywhere and it can be real hard for them to understand that there's a totally different world out there compared to theirs. One of us told to her classmates that she had been engaged and lived with her boyfriend for 3 years. And guess what her classmates asked horrified, "You didn't kiss with him, did you!?" Then they have asked that "what happened to your eyebrows?" when one day my friend hadn't put make up on. Some muslims also asked from my friend that did she have big boobs because she ate pork and if they would eat it would they get bigger boobs!!

They are also very rude at times. They ask you personal questions and stare at you and they try to get into elevators and metros before people have been able to come out. They won't give their seats to older people in a bus and the most irritating thing is that they walk extremely slowly and stop in the middle of street with out a warning to think about something so that you'll bumb into them.

It's not like they all would be annoying, but somehow after my period here I don't think Asia is a place for me. This is a beautiful area, but there's too many people. I guess sometimes you just have to go far to start appreciating the things about your own home country. The first thing I'm gonna do when I get back to Finland is that I'll just eat for 24 hours, Finnish home food rules!!, jump into car and drive around to see all of my fantastic friends, go to sauna and just enjoy the fact that there's only 5 million people living in Finland scattered around the 6th largest country of Europe.

Done and over with!

My challenge is over. I read those 1024 pages of Gone with the wind in 5 days. Although I have to confess that I did have a one day brake, during which I read a book about Simon Cowell's life. Interesting guy, I must say and way too hated for his honest comments. So now I must figure out the next challenge. Hmm... How about going home? That'll be a challenge after being gone for a year again.