I can be who you want me to be, but do you want me?

While I'm doing laundry (and trying to figure out how the timer in the washing machine works) I have time to drop few lines. Like about more recent and less exciting stuff than traveling around the country.

Firstly I have to say: I really love being here. I've met amazing people from all over the world. That kind of people and persons who - I thought - to had extinctioned ages ago. I've found nice way of living life. I've found loads of things to do. I've found new passion to my life.

I really love Sheffy. Everybody's been asking how I find the city and what I think about it. It's amazing, so green, so small and still so big. It's more attached to nature than most of big cities. I love how hilly it is and I love the small and rare views out of the city to the other hills surrounding the city. City View Cafe at the union is one of my favourites cause the view from there is just breathtaking.

I really like the British (of course there's few fockers in the mix but now I mean over all the people I've so far met). It's funny how polite and friendly they are. And I really love the fact that all problems are solvable. When back home most of the places would kick me out or told to come back next week or look it from the net or phone some weird number - here all the problems will be solved at the moment or at least huge effort will be put into the trying of solving the thing out. I love how the people in shops and other service thingys really seem to enjoy what they are doing. I've seen only one or two sour faces while I've been here. And if something goes wrong, oh my! The amount of apologies! Or the sorry's I've got just walking in the street. If someone even thinks they might be on your way they're shouting sorries from meters away.

All this results sometimes in a bad feeling about being rude, cause I didn't realize to say sorry to the gentlemen who I almost made to take few extra steps. Or forgetting to say please in the bus when I'm just flashing my student card to get the right ticket. Or remembering to start sentences "Could I have/I would like to have.." instead of "I want..". And sometimes all this gets very tiring.

It's also really tiring to speak and communicate via foreign language all the time. Oh, the times when I've wished I could say my things in Finnish. I've talked relatively little Finnish (I've even talked more Swedish!) here, but when I do the effect sticks with me for a day or two. I struggle more with English when I've used even a little bit of Finnish. That's why I don't use it that much and find it quite irritating when people want to communicate in Finnish with me. But I have to admit that sometimes I do play the "I'm foreign!" card to the table just to get on easier. Among the Brits it takes sooooo much more energy to keep up than with exchange people cause we tend to talk loads slower and use more plainer and easier vocabulary.

Most irritating things atm: British keyboard, omg! Who the fock invented that one!? Most loveliest things atm: the weather (early autumn! oh!), amazing shopping possibilities, New Leaf-salad bar at Union, Union (!!!!), "Luv" and certain, very very! lovely persons!

You gotta help me out, it's all a blur last night

Yep. And then there was Oxford. I went there, saw a bit, found it posh and that's pretty much it. The city was very basic, but to me it seemed like there's nothing else but the University. And we got kicked out of one of the Colleges :D That's the part of the day I really loved. Otherwise I didn't like the city (but to be honest.. I had quite massive hungover and sleep deprivation going on so, that may explain a bit but not all!). Here are the pics:

St. Mary's Church, centuries old as everything is in Oxford

Fancy windows

Iris, lovely as always, going up to the bell tower for a view over the city

Radcliffe Camera, some sort of library says wikipedia.

All Souls College

Gate to the College. Only Fellows can enter, us mortals have no chance in hell getting in there.

Some library, loads of signs to be quiet.. even on the yard!

Smart people (or just rich and from the right family and the right school)

Me and one of those people

Inner yard of The Queen's College.. And next is how we got kicked out of there

Taking a group pic somewhere where you definitely shouldn't be..

Angry security guy yelling at you..

Get your camera quickly..

And run!

..and run a bit more, just in case!

Funny houses + Iris, Denise and half of Melissa

Half of an old house and a half of Denise

In the Harry Potter staircase.. also a staircase of Christ Church College.

Iris and Melissa

More Harry P scenes..

And more. And all the bloody Chinese. And Italians! Argh!

Vittuuntunut turisti.

But you say "That's exactly how this grace thing works"

Reporting continues. Now for the London weekend which was already weeks ago. Shame on me for laziness and sever lack of time to keep this more up to date.

In the tube on the way to Hyde Park

Tourist under the Marble Arch

The weekend started epicly (again). On friday was Marianne's birthday party where I left early to get loads of sleep before I had to catch the early morning train to London. In the end I went to bed around midnight. At 3.10. am our fire alarm went off. The next 15 minutes or so me and everyone from our block spent outside freezing our arses of and wondering what's going on. Turned out that some bloody fresher was cooking in the middle of the night. Very lovely.

Elizabeth was home

Art in the park

Entrance to Saatchi gallery

The other majorly negative moment of the weekend was when some idiot decided to kick Nuutti when I was trying to take photo of him in front of Marble Arch. Now I know that Fluffy Polar Bears fly pretty well when kicked. I might slightly lose my head and do little screaming at the guy who did the nasty deed and ended up being at least slightly sorry for what he did. Or I just ended up to be a funny story going around UK.

Poor bear after his flight

Souvenir from LDN

Camden, newly weds taking pictures on the bridge(!?)

The highlight of the weekend was definitely Mumford and Sons. The gig was amazing, so much more than I ever would have expected. The music really hit me straight in the face. The lyrics, the melodies, the way they performed it. The feelings going inside me, all. They were just pure amazingness. So touching, so realistic and almost ironic, so everything, so life. Very boringly said: no words can describe it.

And otherwise weekend was really nice one. I met loads of nice people (hey to them if someone is reading!), learned modern English ("I could do with a crisp pint of strongbow"), got new shoes (yay!) and had good time. I just love London and everything what's going on there. But in the end it's also very tiring and I was so happy to be back home in Sheffield. It feels like home everytime more and more.

A dreamer dreams she never dies

Now something completely else: Manchester! And without any footballisms!

So last Thursday two Finnish girls and one Slovenian girl headed out of Sheffield early in the morning to explore the city of Manchester (which is a quite difficult name to write! My dear MacBook: I love you and your autocorrection program!).

True. And one part of the solution in uni.

While we were on the bus on our ways to the Sheffield railway station we realized that no one had had the time to do any research about the city and we didn't know anything about the city or how we would/could/should spend the day in there. Fortunately we found a map stand out side of Manchester's railway station and got our first directions from there. Till we found signs to tourist info and got a real map and loads of advice about what's nice in the city.

Nice wall in Chinatown

The first thing we noticed that definition of a park is different in Manchester compared to one in Sheffield. In Sheffield park is green space with grass, trees etc. In Manchester it was more like concrete opening with a fountain and 5 trees. And I'm really starting to realize the greeness of Sheffield when traveling out of the city cause other places are so much more gray when Sheff is really green.

Newer parts of the city, looked really fancy

But back to the day in Manchester. The lovely ladies in the tourist info gave us tips about nice museums and interesting buildings. During the day we visited tree museums: The Manchester Art Gallery - very interesting exhibition on uppermost floor, The Museum of Science & Industry - under construction/renovating and really badly organized and The People's History Museum - very nice and interesting, I'm so going there again!

Tourists playing with art instillation

Entrance to Museum of Science and Industry

The museum was under.. umm.. something and mostly closed.

Funny hats! People's History Museum

For the old times sake: Once member of Lyseo - Always a member of Lyseo

Emma playing with puppets

Mojca and Emma trying to choose a song

We also spotted few nice buildings like the Town Hall and the John Rylands Library. The library was very nice building: they had combined an old building with a new one really nicely. And I like libraries. They're smell nice, are quiet and full of books (lol). People in libraries are focused on what they are doing and they are so calm places. I love to spend time in our Western Bank library, it's a normal library unlike the IC which is library for cool people me thinks.

Nuutti on a statue in front of Town Hall

The Town Hall

Lane on the side of the Town Hall

Inside the library

Fancy windows

The meeting point of old and new

But back to the day in Manchester. Again. After culturally educating ourselves we headed to the shopping district of the city. There was the wheel of Manchester (looked very much alike the one in Sheffield.. just saying!) and the girls wanted to go for a drive. I stayed put and had awful time with too eager pigeons and hence on the next night I had horrible nightmare about huge pigeon in my room trying to attack me.

The wheel

After surviving from the pigeons we went and did little shopping. Everyone bought themselves a pair of shoes. I so needed the new pair: all my shoes have suffered severely from walking the hills up and down in Sheffield.

Before leaving we decided to take the long route to railway station and go and try to find a Banksy from the city. After getting lost once we found it and I saw my first Banksy! Yay!

And again. It was so lovely to get back home to Sheffield.