For the ones who had time to worry about me, I am totally fine.

I am shocked and exhausted…but I am coming home.

A finnish friend of mine, Jussi, visited Brussels as one of the last spots of his interrail, so we met by a cup of ice coffee last Wednesday. Feels ridiculous, that we have not seen each other in ages while both being in Finland… and then we meet in a café HERE.

I took off to Paris on Friday. For a while it seemed that I might not – somehow I had managed to book such a train ticket that I should have printed out the confirmation e-mail (before this, all I’ve needed when picking up Thalys tickets has been a code). Well, sometimes it is handy to be blonde – playing stupid in front of the train manager got me into the train without buying a new ticket (double the price as my first one was), which would have been the normal way to handle this kind of an occasion.

The train was packed with people. I sat next to a woman who was propably in her seventies, and once we got started with the conversation, we kept talking until our train arrived at Paris Nord. She had travelled in like a million interesting places, told me stories about Africa for example, and was really interested in Finland and our culture. We also changed opinions about tourisms negative effects on the economies of countries like Cuba for example. I was in Paris before I even noticed.

Never stay in a hotel that’s north from Gare du Nord. Never. Unless you are very keen on Indian people and urinating on the streets.

Weekend went past really quickly, sightseeing mostly (or in fact I did see the whole city, as I visited tour de Eiffel), and enjoying what the variety of restaurants in Paris has to offer. But I got to admit, I still have not seen Mona Lisa! Yet, I dunno what’s the big deal with the painting, I know by heart how it looks like. And I’ve also seen plenty of Japanese tourists and their cameras, so…

On Sunday we went to Disneyland!!! Gosh, it was fun, the park is absolutely lovely and I felt like I would have been ten again. Now I just feel like watching all my favourite Disney movies…like Peter Pan, The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and of course the Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy! I bought some Tinkerbell stuff, surprise surprise! Oh, I got to eat my favourite breakfast in Paris, a large cup of café au lait with a croissant! Três bien!

On Monday I ate in this Italian place by Lac du Genval, a mistake! The food in that place is TOO GOOD, I felt like a stuffed pig afterwards. I noticed that I, by accident, used three different languages while having conversations with the waiters. Nicely done.

In Finland I am used to taking all the plugs off the wall whenever there’s a thunder. For some reason, it is not necessary in Belgium (anyone to explain me why’s that?). I found this out after Keasar wondered why all the lights were off and the tv was not working when he came home on Monday.

I keep on making longer and longer walks with the sticks and a backpack with some weights in it. Today’s walk took me 3,5 hours (after cutting away like a half of the tiniest toe on my left foot I was really able to walk as long as I wanted to, FINALLY). I love walking in those forests…I saw like a million of those gigantic snails we have there, loads of little rabbits and about twenty deers altogether.

Laura has been a bit sick today, so she stayed home. Hopefully she’ll be fine on Saturday, as they have a Fancy Fair at the school and the kids are gonna perform a Jungle Book dance! Laura is Baloo. She loves to dance and perform so it is really important for her to be able to participate.

I ordered some new Lonely Planets today and will. for sure, visit a book store a.s.a.p to get something to read, I am dying to get something intriguing to read. Like any Yasmina Khandra or Paolo Coelho book would make my day now.

Well, someone’s off to bed now, I’ll add some new pics anytime soon.

I was shopping with a Swedish au pair Camilla yesterday. I think we are the only au pairs here in La Hulpe. Anyways, it was fun, some of her friends joined us too later in the afternoon. I bought an absolutely lovely pair of shoes and I finally found some socks of my size!

I’ve got loads to look forward to now, as it’s Paris next weekend, then Antti is coming over and when I go to Italy, I’m gonna meet my girl Sara-Sofia there!!! She’s travelling with her folks and when I’m in Venice they are nearby. It’s gonna be so much fun! Miss u my luv, see you soon!

After a little discussion with Erja today we decided that as they are all gonna travel so much on August it makes no sense for me to be working here then, so I’ve got one whole month off which equals a longer Interrail than I at first ment to do. Grrreat!

Laura comes home from school at noon every Wednesday. Yesterday, I picked her up and took her to have lunch in “McDo”, in other words in the local Quick. It’s amazing how a crappy burger and a portion of tasteless french fries can make a little person that happy There’s a bouncy castle beside the patio, which naturally made our visit even more fun for her (and more stressful to me, as she was about to jump over the edges on her every third bounce and I ran around the freaking castle like a maniac, trying to catch her every time). After that, I took her to a playground nearby by bike. With her three years and eight months, Laura has decided that she is capable of doing basically anything on her own, and unfortunately she found a track that’s been made for way older kids and requires a lot of strength and balancing. Well, guess who went that through with the girl, carrying, lifting, catching, supporting…when we got back home after a few hours I felt like I had been exercising for the whole time

Both our fridge and freezer are broken. The temperature in the freezer is just low enough that we can keep stuff like yogurts there, but nothing stays good in the current cupboard that used to serve as a fridge. For a few days I’ve had to be quite imaginative when fixing up something to eat for Laura…gosh I hope they’ll do something to those things soon.

My Belgian cell’s not working either and I think I have some sort of a virus on my computer. Why do these things travel in packs?

At first, congrats to all those friends of mine who successfully passed the Finnish Baccalaureate this spring, especially to my cousins Niina and Meri and also to Jaakko, who’s still working hard, studying for the economics entrance exams now. I’ll keep my thumbs up on the doomsday!

Last night I opened the TV a bit before midnight to see if there’s any watchable coming. I’ve got Belgian, French, Dutch, Italian and Spanish channels, but guess what! The first thing I heard was someone swearing in Finnish And who else would it have been that dear old Jarppi from the Extreme Dudesons. I’ve seen the movie before but it was really really odd to hear them mostly in French now. They swear a lot and quite a bit of that had been left undubbed…so here’s one more reason why Finnish swearwords are so well known abroad, don’t you think?

We had a train strike or something like that here yesterday, so I missed my French class. Alliance Francaise is located right next to several EU office buildings, and I should have tried to get to the city during the very busiest hour…does not sound like a very good combination, does it, considering that no one was able to take the train! I can just imagine how bad the jams have been.

I feel like taking a train to Cologne this weekend But we’ll see.

I missed the stage of Bruno Vandelli, I missed the Brussels nightlife…basically what I’ve been doing…well, sitting at home, sneezing, sleeping, watching Sex and the City and collecting aphorismes for my friends wedding candies or whatever they are called.

Well, at least Finland did beat Sweden yesterday! I did see the game, but without Antero Mertaranta it’s hardly the same thing. After the game we emptied a bottle of sparkling wine and had tipsy conversations about the Bible for example

I have started to drink black coffee, can you believe that! Me, who’s been a total latte-addict. Another mysterious thing is that I’ve started to eat breakfast! Yes mum, every single morning.

Some bad habits maintain tho. I recently bought three pairs of shoes.

I had my eyebrowns and -lashes dyed on Friday and when I went to the beauty salon I got introduced to the cosmethologist as Erjas daughter Like in our French class when we had to tell our pair about our families and then represent the other persons family to the whole class…well, I know for sure what I told to my pair in French about my real family and my family in here, but somehow she managed to mix these things and in the eyes of my classmates I then ended up having  Syrian father and a four year old daughter, I have also been in the army and I’m only nineteen now

Laura made several questions about my family a few days ago. It is funny how she even thinks stuff like that. But she is a very smart girl indeed, learns things amazingly fastly (also if you give her a bad example of something ) and is very active and enthusiastic for the most of the time. Today we’ll take her to a circus, I believe she’s gonna love it!

Off I go then, to get a bit more bored.

The following weekend should be nice, I believe. I have a modern jazz course in Brussels, the teacher’s called Bruno Vandelli and based on some videos I’ve seen I’m gonna like his material and style. I’m also gonna make myself familiar with the nightlife in Brussels, accompanied by some Swedish girls (we’ll see just how fluent my Swedish is after a drink or two. Oh well, in my case probably A drink .

Sweden brings ice hockey to my mind, all of us two and a half Finns here are having our thumbs up for a Finland-Sweden match this weekend! I was laughing with Erja that it’s gonna be a great excuse to drink beer, eat sausages and shout like animals. I hate both beer and sausages and I still have a sore throat but I promise to do my best

I miss studying. Really badly. And I would so love to study politics and law too. I applied for the possibility to do a minor in European Studies at the uni in Helsinki, and whether I am accepted or not should be clear in two weeks. What’s killing me is that no date has been specified! Time should go faster.

Well, June is gonna go quickly, I’m sure of that. It’s Paris in two weeks! And shortly after that trip Antti is coming to Brussels and La Hulpe. Then I’ll go to ITALY <3, and I also have one four-day stage of modern jazz in June with Sylvie van der Eecken. She’s done a lot of ballet and thus her jazz classes are really really technical.

In a blink of an eye it’ll be July then.

Antwerp Zoo is right next to the massive central station, in the middle of the city, but the area was really peaceful and quiet. Lions, tigers, elephants, giraffes and even a tiny little kangaroo…it was really relaxing to spend a few hours there. Gosh I love penguins!

I love architecture and old buildings in general, and Antwerp was as gorgeous as most of the old European cities. I still have to pay at least one visit to the city as I haven’t seen Het Steen yet. It’s a medieval castle next to the Schelde river in Antwerp.

Though it’s been hot and I’ve not felt totally healthy ( I can hardly speak in the mornings and my throat is aching) I haven’t given up on sports. Yesterday, I made a 2 hour walk and today it was 2,5 hours. You should see my tan now On a weather like this, it is really handy to have a tiny gym of your own in your room – I can exercise later in the evening (when it’s not so freakin’ hot!) that I could if I went to the country club, and might thus even get something done.

Today’s been a day off once again, I dunno why actually. I think that tomorrow I might take Laura to a park or something. We’ve been there a few times and she loves to feed the ducks and mallards. And I get a good laugh of course, as when we run out of bread the birds begin to chase us, and that really pisses Laura off, so she shows off her finnish-arabic temperament…I really pity her future life-companion, that guy has no other choice than to obey

Laura’s Finnish keeps getting better and better. She’s even started to pronounciate the R:s in some French words incorrectly, like she should pronounce the letter in question if she’d speak Finnish! I am particularly proud of the fact that she can say “Helinä-keiju” (=tinkerbell) in a perfect Finnish accent, as it’s a difficult word indeed for a native French speaker. I have this fixation about fairies in general and I have a large Tinkerbell earring on my right ear that she keeps looking at and playing with.

We’ve got some guests coming over so I’m off now and I’ll get back in the business later.

And P.S, way more people visit my blog that I would have imagined, but where are all the comments?! I wanna know who’s reading this stuff

Minister of Social Affairs and Health in Finland, Liisa Hyssälä, is now putting even more pressure on Finnish students. She wants them to start reproducing themselves as the primigravidas here are nowadays too old and the age structure in Finland is thus distorted.

Excuse-moi, but WHAT!?! I do not know in which century Hyssälä thinks she’s living, but demanding something like this is absolutely reasonable. The culture in these issues is changing slowly but steadily, for fewer and fewer people nowadays starting a family is topical at their twenties. People might be career-oriented or have other ambitions to reach before they want to settle down. There might not be any room for a spouse and kids in their life, and some people are never ready to take that responsibility, they want to keep their independence and concentrate on other aspects of life. I believe that in the 21st century you are allowed to do that. Or you should be, at least.

If I ever have kids, I want it to be when I reached my ambitions when it comes to career and even in exploring the world and this life in general. I want to be in such situation in my life where nothing keeps me from being a good parent and concentrating on my kids and their well being. And I need to be ready, for christs sake, a grown up myself. If I’d have to guess, I’d say it might take at least for a decade before I’ve reached that point.

Does the minister really want parents who are not ready to be parents yet? Yea well, why don’t they start demanding a baby in every two years from every student in addition to their study attainments in exchange to the lousy study grants we are getting? Who cares if this people even want to be parents. Or better yet, we could forget the whole sexual equality and educating women at all, they could just get pregnant as often as possible…and when the parents get old and are not able to take care of themselves anymore, the kids could do that for them and we’d save some government money. Hmm, this does sound a bit familiar, aren’t they doing this somewhere already? Oh, right, it’s the underdeveloped countries that have this kind of family policy.

All my friends back there at the Uni, would you guys seriously wanna start a family already? Do you feel mature enough? And am I the only one who feels that Minister Hyssälä does not quite see our point of view to this topic?

I don’t say that it is impossible to combine family and studies or career but surely, the ones who are able and willing to do that, are doing it already, they don’t need Hyssäläs orders for that.

At this point of my life, I love kids only as long as they are not mine.

This year I can neither prepare the breakfast nor even give you a hug. But you know you’ve got all my love and respect. In Christina Aquilera’s words I want to say:

O mother, I thank you
For all that you’ve done and still do
You got me, I got you,
Together we always pull through
We always pull through
We always pull through

I love you mom

You are for sure my favourite person to laugh, cry and fight with. Thank you for being but a great parent, an irreplaceable friend too.  You remember that book I gave you the other year? Read it through today. Happy Mother’s Day, I miss you a lot.

Yours,

Inka