Location: Hostel, Imatra
Time: 2300 Finland
Weather: cold…I was shivering before I left school
Thinking: I need Singapore food, when is mid autumn festival?

This morning I woke up feeling very tired. I don’t know what’s wrong, it doesn’t usually happen. I slapped my phone and went back to sleep for another half an hour till 8. When we got to class, I remembered something. OH CRAP!!! All foreign students had to attend this briefing this morning at 8. I felt so bad after that.

Ate lunch with our foreign classmates today. Met a new friend from China. Her name is Zhang Ke but the westerners call her Echo…lol…funny name. Anyway, she is doing her degree in Finland so she has to stay here for 3 years.

I managed to log on to MSN through ebuddy!!!! WAH!!!! I was so happy, I haven’t gone into MSN for more than a week. Aiyah…forgot to send the pictures to the Nepal guys. We stayed in the computer lab until 8pm as we had to finish up our assignment which is due tomorrow. I’ll be uploading our pictures on flikr (darn, I don’t know how to spell it), so all you peeps can check it out soon. Met a China guy in the computer lab. Mental note to self: Do not say that you are Chinese when you introduce yourself. People immediately think that you are from China. Must say you are SINGAPOREAN. He was amazed by my MANDARIN. He said that it is accurate. I was totally shocked. If my mandarin is good that what is everyone else’s? He was also jealous they Singaporeans can speak mandarin and English so fluently. Hmm…what’s his name? I think I asked him to repeat his name at least 3 times.

After dinner (pizza bread and chicken (I don’t know what they put in the chicken but Finland’s chickens are superb)), the Russian boys came over to drink tea (I know, it’s funny). They told us their cook was frying pancakes so, we went over to eat. WOOT!!! Russian pancakes! They really made it from scratch. Eggs, milk, flour and sugar. When they were done, they looked like roti prata. We ate it with jam, honey and condensed milk. While we ate, we taught one another our language and they said I have very good pronunciation. Hehheh. We found their letters very funny as they were so not English and they have 33 alphabets. We learnt that today (1st September) is their first day of school in Russia so they will celebrate (like what? o.O) They also told us that they only started drinking so much when they came to Finland as there was nothing to do (hear, hear). One Russian guy wanted to buy paper for printing this morning but he complained it was too expensive. I think it costs around €5 and in Russia it costs about €0.20. He was ranting about how Finland being the number 2 paper producing country but still sell paper so expensively and Russia the number 20 something paper producing country producing paper so cheaply.

Some Russian words I learnt today (the Russian pronunciation is not the real word, it just sounds like it. / means how they spell it):

Hello-> Previat
Water ->Boda / Boga
I ->Ya
You ->Di
Thank you ->Spicybal
Honey ->Myot
People ->Lu-ji / ludi
Tea ->Chai
Pine tree ->Yoka
Pancakes ->Bleen (this is also a bad word)
Yes ->Da
No ->Nie

1st Sep 2008

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