COLLECTIVE EMAILS (1/2005)
(Subject: This is the only way to reach Czech Republic, England, Italy, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland - and Kouvola, Finland, at the same time)
My dear friend,
how are you today?
Happy New Year, I think I had thought to say. Again we've survived one more. This year I'll be twenty-two. Twenty-two - and I still remember when I was a sand-eating bundle as if it had been yesterday...
Well, I don't. But a good amount of other things I do remember. Some might say that at the beginning of a new year it's good to look back and think about the bygone year - but for me any other time is just as good for reminiscing. Some might say that if I lived a bit less in the past and in the future and a bit more in the present I might actually grow up and start understanding facts of life. Bollocks, I say, even though they might be right.
And last year? It was all right, mates, just all right. The summer was one of the best summers in my life (as was the one before it). The spring was one of the worst. The autumn was like they usually are: cold, candle-lit and ambiguous.
During last year I studied more than I should have, fell in and out of love (in reverse order, though), learned many interesting things about languages, translation and literature, played the role of a narrator in a play, moved to a lovely flat in a wooden house, learned to play the Ugandan xylophone, began doing fire circus and founded a fire group at the university, went to Spain and the Netherlands for the first time in my life, worked at the PieMaker for the last time in my life, bought a djembe and joined a group of drummers, made new friends, met some of the old ones, and so on, and so on.
Many of you I haven't met for a long time, some of you not for a couple of years. So it goes. I'm not sending you this mail simply because I happen to have your email addresses. I don't know if you believe me, but I do think about you often and wonder what's going on in your lives. Some day we'll see each other again, and then you'll tell me everything...
The lectures just started this week after a long holiday. My special friend left Finland after our long adventure together, and I started contemplating reading books like "Litteraturens historia i världen" (a course book in Swedish for God's sake) or "The sorrows of young Werther" (which is, of course, a book I should have already read at this mature age of 21 - as well as all the rest of Goethe´s work, I suppose). The holiday was great, though. We spent Christmas at my summer cottage on a lake in the middle of nowhere with my friend Tiitus and her boyfriend Jason and my dad's dog Saku, and there was a lot of snow and we made a hole in the ice and bathed in the sauna and "swam" every night. Me and Tiitus prepared all the traditional dishes (with the men being outside chopping wood, ha! - traditional food with traditional gender roles =). the truth to be told, neither of the (so called) men knew even how to make a hole in the ice, so that me and Tiitus had to show them), and on the Christmas Eve we had a lovely dinner. And I have to say I was happy to spend Christmas away from my family (or anyone's family, for that matter) and relatives for the first time in my life - it was oh so peaceful for once.
On the 27th we flew to Amsterdam and spent eight days there, and I quickly fell in love with the place. It was so pretty and quaint and unique with its bicycles and canals and bridges (not to mention the coffee shops, head shops and other things you go to Amsterdam for). We stayed at a squat nearby the centre, and on the New Year's Eve the squat people - there were about eight people living there - threw an amazing party.
Now it's getting late and I think I ought to go. I wish you all the best; take care of yourselves.
I hope to see you soon!
all my love,
-Tuulia
posted by Tulipa @ 19:22
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