I didn’t sleep well last night. It could be because I tried to sleep earlier than usual (12:30a.m vs. 3a.m or later), continued reading book right before sleeping (as if I didn’t know the new words in his books would tease my curiosity to no end), was nervous from the sudden responsibility, was being cold (I think I need to ask a maintenance man to come and fix the windows), or all of them combined.
It was nice to wake up to An Rei’s encouraging comment and Dean’s post about our “collaboration” two years ago though. I think I have the tendency to like sweet words and sweet names people call me, especially from those who I know won’t sugarcoat what they say. I like the whole comment An Rei wrote to me, but the main cause for my smile must be her last sentence: “You will do just fine honey”. Boosted up my confidence, and added a drop of sweetness. I also thought about Doina’s “sweetie” and Ieva’s “darling”. It doesn’t mean I’m more special to them than other people, maybe only some certain level of closeness, and more like “sweet and cute” purpose.
The “collaboration” with Dean was a MV which was filmed to participate in a competition for VSAF (Vietnamese Student Association in Finland) forum. It was quite embarrassing, so I’ve never shown it to anyone. It was fun, though, which was the main reason why the MV was made anyway. I myself wanted to try participating in it, I had a good time filming it with Dean and Antti, and up until now I still don’t regret the decision. I nearly forgot about it until Dean told me to read about the comments people wrote about me, that some of them said I must be a pretty girl although my face wasn’t shown clearly in the MV (Dean had to secure this point for me to accept the whole deal). I have some certain point of view on compliments about appearance now, but it’s nice of them to think like that about me, of course. Plus, people seem to enjoy the MV. Dean is happy, people are happy, I don’t have any reason not to be as happy as them.
Then I went to school to borrow bus card from Van and went to Tampere. The person who gave me the new residence permit card was a woman I’m already familiar with. I don’t think she remembers me since she must have met way too many people day in day out, but I remember her face quite well. Not only because of her face, of course. She always looks kind, smiles often, is attentive and caring and careful, while remains professional at the same time. I like meeting nice people. (Who doesn’t? : p)
I came back to school for Working Finnish class. Again, it reminded me of many things I wasn’t sure before. And Raija praised me, she said my Finnish is very good, and it seems she likes my emails written to her in Finnish. It made me feel rather shy, but it was good nonetheless. And Majik came to ask jokingly: “How long have you studied Finnish? 10 years?”. : D Later on when I chatted with Mikko, he also said that I’m not at the level to ask easy questions anymore. I just feel really thankful for all of these encouragements. Although I think people are thinking a bit too highly of me for my Finnish level, I hope I won’t disappoint them but try to work harder to match their expectations instead.
After Working Finnish class was the Tandem meeting. We had in total of 5 people, which was the perfect group size for me. I was pretty hungry and tired already by the time we started (4:30p.m), but the meeting was so nice that I was very willing to stay much longer than I had planned (we finished at around 6:10p.m). We played in total of 3 games: drawing in rows, who am I, and guessing the word. We kept playing for as long as we wanted to, and had muffins to accompany us (two girls baked those before they came, the muffins were chocolate with mint flavor and were still hot when we ate). Overall, it turned out much better than I expected, felt like I worried over nothing. It was warm and comfortable, like the mix between a girls’ night and a school-camp overnight. I really enjoyed it. I hope others did, too.
In the evening, I shared a photo which was taken on our first Tandem meeting two weeks ago.
Our first Tandem meeting, two weeks ago. My group was making shapes for the activities we like doing: playing volleyball, playing guitar, reading, jogging, swimming.
Oanh commented on it, saying “Kaunis” (beautiful), and “Aurinko Chi”. “Aurinko Chi” (“aurinko” = “sun”) is what Vlad called me when all of us were still in Lärkkulla. When I asked why he called me that, he said: “Because you are a good person”. Not a word about my appearance or anything like that, simply because I’m a good person. That nickname touched me also because my name means “all good things”, and I could interpreted it to the sense that I was being the sun that brought sunshine to people around me at that time. I think Oanh likes it, too. She called me that even more than Vlad did, and she thought about it to remind me more than I did. I miss Lärkkulla again now. Me, Oanh, Khoa, Olga, Vlad,… all of us. Khoa called me today, and Sofia replied to my message. I hope our connections will never break away.
One last thing for this long post. Thanks to a person on isubs-squad, I found the song I liked in Running Man episode 164 – Goodbye to Romance by Lisa Loeb. The voice and the melody were both nice, it caught my attention right from the first time I watched the episode. And the lyrics were made green in this video. :”)
Of November 