Valentine's day + updating

"Life is Beautiful" // weheartit.com

I hope you all have had a chance to spend this day, Valentine's Day, near to your friends and the people you care about. For me, Valentine's day has never been a special day and I've never celebrated it in any special way. Maybe I've always taken it for granted that I have friends and other important people around me all the time. But today, it hasn't been like that.

"Cinderella in the Making | BELEZA" // weheartit.com

How many times have I heard people wishing happy Valentine's day today? Well, many times. Okay I've also done the same, but on Facebook. Not directly, face-to-face. To anyone. I've given zero hugs, zero kisses. I've got zero hugs, zero kisses. I'm too far away from my friends to hug them or kiss them, or even to wish them happy valentine's day face-to-face. Realizing that made me miss Finland quite a lot. It made me miss my friends, family and relatives even more. It made me miss J even more (how is that possible?). Even though Valentine's Day isn't such a big happening in Finland (compared to the UK, for instance) and it mainly emphasizes friendships, it has still felt a bit wrong that we couldn't spend our first Valentine's together with J. After all, it's called Valentine's day and well, it would have been so wonderful to do something a little bit special with my own Valentine.

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Okay, enough about Valentine's day.

I guess I haven't told about last weekend yet. Last Friday I had the morning classes of Spanish economy and nothing else. I was sitting there with one Finnish girl (from my home university too) and one Polish girl and we ended up talking about all these weird Spanish habits, like not going out (to a bar/nightclub) until 1 or 2am (why so late?!). Weird rhythm for all of us, but we decided that that night was the night we were gonna make it.

Well I got home before 11am and the time went sooooo slowly.

I took a nap.

I took a shower.

I ate.

I went to Mercadona (local market, like S-market or K-market in Finland).

And still - time didn't go any faster. I had a good mood about going out that night and I didn't wanna lose it. It just felt so frustrating that I was supposed to wait so many hours before even thinking about getting ready or going out.

Later I invited some people to our house for pre-drinks and so on, and eventually we were just hanging out and drinking here; me, Ksenia, three other Finns and one Italian girl. It was fun! We left the house after 1am (so late, I would have been ready to go a lot earlier) and headed to Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias (<- link) to a nightclub called MYA. The night was fun, a lot of dancing etc. but I kind of lost my party mood at some point because of one incident (not gonna discuss it now). Eventually we took a taxi and came home at 4.30am or something like that. But the club was great!

My hangover wasn't bad on Saturday but I was just tired as I didn't sleep well that night (or should I say "that morning"). Well I'm not gonna even start to write about Sunday because you already know my opinion about Sundays. boring boring boring.

Yesterday I had the classes-i-love-the-most - French. But it wasn't that terrible because I met a girl from Ireland there. We can speak English there and help each other - speaking French is not the only way to survive anymore. My spring became many times easier and more comfortable! Thank god, you can't imagine how relieved I am. The teacher cancelled Tuesday's French classes (what a pity...) so I only had Marketing classes today. That's it.

And a small update: next week we are going to the Andalucia-trip! We are gonna see four cities: Jaén, Granada (two nights there), Sevilla (two nights there) and Cordoba. The trip lasts from Wednesday (or the night between Tuesday and Wednesday) 'til Sunday. Yay!

"tigers" // weheartit.com

"madmguillotine" // weheartit.com

"Placa de España" // weheartit.com

"Dying of cute" // weheartit.com

my first and last, my all and everything

You're the light at the end of the tunnel 

The beacon fire in the dark 

The glimmer of hope and truly the meaning of my life
I say this with all of my heart

You are the only one for me 

Year to year, in words and deed 

In all this chaos the trace of clarity 

You are the only one I see 

My first and last, my all and everything 

You are the one
 

When dusk falls and obscures the sky 

You're the shine of the Northern Star 

No dead of night can fade the brilliance of your light
I say this, holder of my heart

You are the only one for me 

Year to year, in words and deed 

In all this chaos the trace of clarity 

You are the only one I see 

My first and last, my all and everything 

You are the one
 

You are the only one 

In the heart of winter the comfort of the sun  

You are the one, my love

My love, you are the one

(Sentenced - You are the one) 

Happy Valentine's Day, J! You mean the world to me.

And also to all my friends - I love you, I miss you, I need you in my life. Without you all,  I wouldn't be the same.

something pointless, useless and unnecessary

...meaning facts about me! Haha interesting, right? I've been booored and I didn't have any other ideas to post about.

1. Your birthday: September 30th

2. Male/female: female

3. Your current school / institution: University of Valencia, Faculty of Economics

4. Place of residence: Valencia, Spain

5. Hair color: mainly blond, brown underneath

6. Eye color: blue

7. Height: about 164cm
8. The best thing in your appearance: umm i don't know. chin and arms :D and sometimes my hair (but it depends on the day..).

9. Visible scars: yes quite a many (little ones). Two from operations (neck: a mole/birthmark operation, stomach: a gall bladder (sappirakko) operation) and others from some random incidents.

10. Eyeglasses: yes but I don't use them. Contact lenses everyday.

11. Tattoos: No. I've always thought I could never take one but nowadays I think I could have a little tattoo if it really meant something to me.

12. Piercings: just the ones in my ears: one on the right side and two on the left side.

13. Your first best friend: my globetrotter Venla! we have known each other since kindergarten.

14. Your first hobby: ballet. and the only thing I can recall of that hobby is being a frog in the performance. great success!

15. Your first pet: well we had an aquarium when I was little.

16. Your first trip abroad: Lisbon, Portugal. I was about 3 years old? 4?

17. Your first love: well if some childhood/teenage crushes aren't counted, I have to say that the first one must be going on right now - I've never had as strong feelings towards anyone as I'm having now towards J.

18. Favorite movie: too hard to name just one! I really don't have one exact favorite movie.

19. Favorite TV -programme: Grey's Anatomy must be my all time favorite, but I also like Private Practice, Sex and the city, Friends, the Big Bang Theory, Californication and Gossip girl a lot.

20. Favorite color: red (different shades from pink to red wine), lime green, brown

21. Favorite artist(s)/band(s): There are plenty of them but just to mention a few: Apulanta (a Finnish rock band) and Adele.

22. Your best friend: can't name just one at the moment. I guess that persons that are important to me know it themselves :-)

23. Favorite candy/chocolate/delicacy: nowadays Halva's salt liquorice!! and I've run out of it.. feel free to send it to me from Finland :-)

24. Favorite sport: riding! I miss my Saturday riding lessons.

25. Favorite restaurant: I know many good restaurants but I don't know which one is the favorite.

26. Favorite subject at school: haha it was always maths. But nowadays we don't have as exact subjects as in high school etc, so I don't know. At least it's not French language...

27. Single / in a relationship: in a relationship :-) with a person who means the world to me.

28. Favorite drink: is there someone who can't guess? Pepsi Max!! (here it costs 1,11€ / bottle of 2 l - if my addiction wasn't serious before, it is now..)
29. Favorite food: I can't choose! tortellinis at least, and french fries! haha how gourmet is that. and rice cakes!!
30. Favorite month: maybe May or August. Okay August it is.

31. What are you listening to? some random playlist on Spotify.

32. What are you thinking about? tomorrow. i have nothing planned, how am i gonna spend the whole day? Sundays suck!!

33. What are you wearing today? Red pants, white t-shirt with some figures and big black college jacket. quite easy-going and casual clothing :-)
34. Would you like to have kids? I guess that someday, but it's not time for that yet.

35. Would you like to get married? Check the previous answer.
36. What kind of career would you like to have? international and various.
37. What is your dream job like? some administration / management job in the hotel/tourism field.
38. Do you think the field you're studying now is your future? it may be. at least I don't know any other fields that interest me at the moment as a same way.

39. Where would you like to live? I've always wanted to move away from Finland but nowadays also Finland sounds pretty good (??). But now I'm happy that I've got a chance to live abroad. I guess I have to travel more and see a lot of places and cities before I can say which would be my dream place to live. But I believe that I'm never moving away from Europe.

40. What are you hoping at he moment? that this spring is going to be good - that I'm gonna have various new experiences and that I'm gonna meet and get to know a lot of new people from different countries.

Have you ever...

41. kissed a random person? yes

42. passed out because of being drunk? at least I've always got to a place where i can stay for the night :-D

43. been smoking? yes, but nowadays I don't actually smoke at all.

44. run away from home? not necessarily, but I've run away from the kindergarten!

45. broken bones? maybe once, a rib, but it was never confirmed as broken, as our school's health nurse just said that there's nothing that could be done even if it was broken.

46. You have never.....: driven a car (no driving license), been in the USA, tried illegal drugs, failed a test (and not passed a course because of that), been in England/France, eaten oysters, been in a sushi restaurant, ummm...

Do you believe in...
47. God? I may believe in something bigger, some force, but I'm not sure if it's God.

48. miracles? not actually.

49. love at the first sight? maybe crush, not love.

50. heaven? I would like to, but after all I guess I don't.

no imagination - no heading

This week I've started to write a few posts but I've never published them. On Tuesday our French teacher never showed up so I went to school for no reason in the evening. Not that I would have been sad we didn't have the classes - actually I was quite happy... On Wednesday, meaning yesterday, I had a good day. No, I don't have any specific reason for that but at the end of the day I could just honestly say that the day was good and I was happy. I guess it was because of the good weather and because I met and got to know quite a many new persons :-) And of course because FC Barcelona won the match against Valencia!

 
And today, some common features: good weather and new persons to get to know + in addition: good shopping tour. But I still don't have the same feeling as yesterday. Well I'm sure it's partly because I didn't sleep well last night, but it's weird that sometimes you can just so honestly say and feel that you're happy and sometimes you are not even though there were good conditions for that. Human mind is so complex. blah.

Well, one thing I'm surely happy about, is meeting all those new persons. Everyone has been so nice.
And about the shopping tour today... I was so bored after the morning classes (there are 6 hours between those and the evening classes..) that I decided to go for shopping shopping shopping. Always cheers me up.

my good old leather jacket (from Bershka, Barcelona) got a competitor today...

..because I found a black blazer from Stradivarius, discount over 50% (last size) and perfect for me!
(okay I also bought one black (knitted?) shirt.. but hey, discount 70%! i have the same shirt also in red)

a dark brown bag, discount 50% from el Corte Inglés (local Stockmann) :-D but I defend myself:
I was in need of a medium-sized bag, I took only one big and a few mini-sized ones with me from Finland!

and a mini wallet as my current one is too big for my little bags. and more invisible, I won't get robbed so easily :D
(yuck my nails, have to do something to them tomorrow..)

I also made one important purchase one day! As some of you know I'm always using mugs at home in Finland so it has been weird not having my Moomin mugs and FC Barcelona mug here with me. Last weeks here I've been using some disposable cups and normal drinking glasses for drinking but NOT ANYMORE! I finally found a mug for meeee!

Universitat de València -mug!

with university logos :-)

Enough for today! I really need to go to bed now, I have to wake up at 7.30... NOOO!

Edit: I finished the book I told you about! After a long time I got a book finished, yay for me! I think the book was quite good and nice to read but the ending? what?! weird. I hate books that don't have a proper ending. >:(
AND! I managed to load more money to my mobile (prepaid) in Spanish. I asked the woman at PhoneHouse if she spoke English but the answer was "NO". But I made it, alive!

"Monday is a dreadful way to spend 1/7 of your life."

As you can see, I finally made it and changed the layout of the blog. I liked the old one but in my opinion it's was a bit too dark (even though there's nothing wrong with being dark and twisty sometimes - those who watch Grey's Anatomy may know ;-)). Well I'm not content with the header (I mean the heading picture - the banner?) so I think I'm still gonna edit it some day. But at least I think I achieved the main point - the blog doesn't seem so dark and twisty anymore. Opinions?

Today I had just less than two hours of school in the evening - the French classes that I've been afraid of. And well.. the teacher doesn't speak English at all, so during the classes, it's allowed to speak ONLY French (and Spanish). I'm in troubleeeeee... Well, IF I'm gonna keep on participating in those classes, at least I'm surely gonna learn to use and speak French as I have no other options! my nightmare :-D

After the classes I stopped by a few stores on my way home. The book store still hadn't got more of the English books that I need but the guy there said that tomorrow they are supposed to get more of them. The other store was a clothing store I've never noticed before and there was the last week of sales going on - I found a WESC college jacket with 50% discount so I just had to buy it!

39€, you never get those in Finland at that low price :-)

And now that I remember, and so that you know: I've been asked quite a many times (mainly by my relatives...) if I have woolen socks etc here with me as it's cold inside - well, I do have woolen socks (also a pair of wool knee socks) but I don't use or need them because ...

...I have my furry slippers with me!

Haha! Now you know :-)

Tomorrow I'm having classes of two different courses (Marketing and French ...) so I think I'm gonna go to bed quite early. ¡Buenas noches!

Materialism - happiness?

Sunday. All the places are closed in here. The sky is cloudy (at the exact moment I wrote that it started to rain..). It's not warm outside. Boring day. I've never been a fan of Sundays, but in Finland at least some places are open. And in Finland Sunday was a good day to go to work. But here.. nothing.

So, as I'm bored and there isn't even school work I could do, I'm entertaining myself with my camera. It has been a good friend of mine here in Spain and absolutely one of the best things I've purchased lately (okay not so lately, I bought it before Christmas but you know what I mean).

Sometimes it just feels that materialism means happiness, and that's how I've felt today. Now I'm gonna introduce some stuff that I like or that can be found on my table. I didn't take pictures of some self-evident things - like Pepsi Max (here: Pepsi Light), MacBook, or my mobile + Angry Birds - as they are too obvious. Here we go. (Btw, it's not raining anymore.)

*****

1. Nomination (a composable bracelet) - my precious

I feel weird without it. The only piece of jewelry that I wear everyday.

My special pieces: "Little My" from the Moomins -  Love - the row of figures with red "diamonds" and a four-leaf clover with clear "diamonds" (from J :-))

*****

2. Different nail polishes

Those of you who know me in real life and have visited my Finnish home, know that I'm a nail polish addict. I left the majority of my nail polishes (there are more than twenty different ones) at home but I also took a few with me. And I've already bought a few new ones..

Kiko - top coat, Lumene - silver, the Body Shop - sparkling pink, Lumene - matte pink, Kiko - sparkling red, Maybelline - matte red, OPI - sparkling dark blue, Mavala - black oyster

the ones I chose to use today :-)

*****

3. The Body Shop products

I had quite a many of these at home but I took just a few with me. Luckily I found the Body Shop store here too. My latest favorite scent is Coconut / Noix de Coco.

these two I bought just yesterday

*****

4. Make up products

I put on some make up every day. In my opinion I don't use that much make up, except for the special occasions when I use a little more (and maybe in a different way).

the products I normally use everyday

Eye make up products for special situations (the eye shadow palette I bought just yesterday so I haven't tried it yet)

Usually I use just lip balm but if  want something more, I use lip gloss. I never use lipstick.

 *****

5. Earrings (and some other pieces of jewelry)

love love love. I really don't need so many pairs of them but I just like buying them. Well at least there's a variety to choose from :-D

my favorites at the moment

and the box of other jewelry

inside the box

*****

6. Perfumes

These are the only ones that I took with me from Finland:

Carolina Herrera - 212 Sexy, and the little ones: Lancôme - Miracle, Lancôme - Hypnôse

 I left two absolute favorites at home: Calvin Klein - Euphoria for Women (I was afraid of breaking it during the flights as I didn't have any suitable box for it) and Diesel - Fuel for Life (it was almost empty). I would like to buy a new perfume from here but I haven't yet decided which one it's gonna be. Suggestions?

*****

7. Litterature

I suck at reading but  you can still find a few books on my table. It's been many years since I've finished one whole book but yesterday I began to read one and I think it's interesting enough for me to read it 'til the end!

Kira Poutanen - Rakkautta au lait (this is the one I began to read yesterday)

right.... looks interesting, don't you think?! that's the challenge I told you about. tough times ahead!

*****

After all, this post wasn't as quick to do as I first thought! Well, at least this boring day has gone a bit faster as I've had something to do. But there are still many boring hours left.. blah.

freezing-times are over!

...should have guessed that Spanish winter can't beat a Finnish girl!

Today, after a week of dealing with the coldness inside the house, I took a metro to Nou d'Octubre, almost other side of the city, and walked to Carrefour, a big hypermarket near to Bioparc. My intention was to find a heater (as we have only one in the apartment - and four persons needing it). Well I found some heaters (radiator in Spanish) that were quite big (how can you take one of those back home without a car?!), but then I found my love - el calefactor, a heater that keeps blowing warm air! it wasn't big, it is easy to carry and not too expensive. In addition, it is more efficient than the "radiators" comparing the watt amounts, so of course I took it with me <3

here it is!

bye bye coldness! but - as you can guess - my getting-rid-of-the-coldness -shopping wasn't just the "calefactor".. may I introduce ...

a proper, warm blanket!

So now I'm quite sure the freezing-times are over :-) Happy happy happy!

Yesterday was my first day of school here. In the morning we started Marketing -course and it sounded ok and quite interesting based on the introduction. At least I think that it's gonna be useful for me. The course consists of both theoretical lectures and practical classes and it includes also a team project - and of course written exams at the end of the spring.

today, on my way to Carrefour.

Yesterday evening I had a class of the course English for Business (that I skipped on Wednesday because of the match). Well... all the other students were Spanish (or at least I think so because of their pronunciation..) and the teacher too. A few times I just couldn't figure out what she said because she pronounced and spoke so incorrectly. In Finland, we have quite qualified English teachers that at least speak correctly and articulate well. Well, this teacher tried to articulate clearly and quite slowly (and she also repeated almost everything in Spanish?!) so that the students would understand, but her slow articulation just highlighted her incorrect speaking and mistakes.. Well, I guess this concludes the level of the course: as a homework, we are supposed to read and practice how to express opinions and how to agree or disagree with someone. hard, don't you think?! I'm studying the same things here in the university that were taught to me when I was about 12 years old.. well at least I'm gonna earn some easy credits from here :-D

Today I woke up really early as I had morning classes of Spanish economy. It was a bit boring, but today we just went through the introduction of the course so maybe it turns out to be more interesting when we go on. The only problem is that our book for the course is in Spanish. The lecturer's explanation for that was something like "Well, there are no good books in English about the subject so we are gonna use the Spanish one. Who's not a native Spanish speaker? Okay, less than 10. You just have to deal with it." So let's see about that... My biggest challenge for this spring: go through the book "Lecciones de economía española" and try to understand at least something. Right...

 

That's enough for now, bye!

Valencia CF - FC Barcelona!

So yesterday was the big day: Valencia vs. Barcelona at Mestalla. The feeling was great when walking into the stadium as the match was about to start! but after all, I must admit, the game was a disappointment. Barcelona should have won Valencia easily but... no. the result was 1 - 1. blaaaaaaah... Next Wednesday they are playing at Camp Nou -  Barcelona please go and play like we all know you can....!

I didn't took many pictures as I couldn't concentrate on that but here are a few:

Aaand a few videos..!