Winter break haul 1

HI!

So I went shopping today with my friend Laura today. I saved up some money especially to buy new clothes from Helsinki since my style has changed a lot this year. I found some amazing things and I'm so happy. I think I'm going to go through my closet when I go back to Rovaniemi and sell all the clothes I haven't worn in a long time. Anyway, here's what I bought today:

 I'm kind of obsessed with making little animals and charms out of loom bands and they had way more colors in Sinelli here. I got sparkly pink, 2 bags of black, silver, 2 bags of gold, red, bronze/brown and light blue.

From Anttila I got a Nivea in-shower body milk. And from H&M couple of makeup brushes since I was really smart and left mine at home.

Shirt and skirt from H&M

Top and skirt from H&M 

Shirt and skirt from H&M 

Skirt and jacket from New Yorker  

See you soon!
~Susanna

Not just sign language

Hi!

I haven't really done a school related post in a while so here's one. When I was applying here, I went through every blog post I found about this education so maybe someday in the future someone will find this as helpful as I found those blog posts a year ago.

For someone like me, who learns by doing things and is a pretty visual person, this education is just perfect. First of all, I've always loved languages but I've never been really good at them so actually understanding sign language and thinking it's pretty easy is really awesome for me. It's definitely my favorite subject in school, unless it's the last class of the day in the classroom we spend most of our days that has some problems. But I don't ONLY study sign language, this school is so much more. We might have a whole day of boring-ish lectures once in a while but we also do A LOT of group projects and presentations (things that terrified me before), play different games and recently we've had classes on how to instruct music, art, craft, sport sessions where we actually got to do a lot of different things. We learn a lot about instructing, the deaf culture and services that might be useful in our future jobs.

Some famous deaf people

I got a 3- on our 2nd sign language exam. I was pretty proud of myself tbh :P

Something I drew on our recent group project :3

3 pictures above are from art/crafts instructing class

We learned about noise in music instructing class.

This blog post was supposed to be much longer but I've tried to write this all week and couldn't come up with more for some reason so I'm not going to force any more text out :D Maybe I'll write another one later. Now I'm off for my winter break that I'm spending in Helsinki :)

See you soon!

~Susanna

Valentine's Day

Hi!

One thing I love about Valentine's Day in Finland is that it's a day to celebrate your friendships. I haven't usually done anything special on the day but few of my friends didn't have other plans so we decided to spend it together. We played board games, ate a lot and just hang out. I had a really lovely day and I'm happy I had such lovely people to spend the day with :) 

I decided to cover a bunch of things in chocolate because why not.

My friend got me some flowers :3 that was so sweet.

We also took a bunch of selfies obviously:

"There are some people in life that make you laugh a little louder, smile a little bigger and live just a little bit better"

See you soon!
~Susanna

A photo an hour: 3rd February 2015

Hi!

So on Tuesday I thought I'd try the "a photo an hour" thing where you take a photo every hour of the day. I took the pics with my phone and this is how my day went basically.

7:15 

Good morning!

8:15

On my way to school.

9:15

We did origami in class.

10:15

First coffee break aka my breakfast.

11:15

Friendship bracelets in class.

12:15

Lunch break.

13:15

Class in the dark.

14:15

Sign language class after second coffee break

15:15

Still in sign language class.

16:15

Home! Changed my 1D concert countdown.

17:15

Friend drew me a few things :3

18:15

On my way to the post office to pick up some packages.

19:15

My last calendar finally arrived! About time :D

20:15

I've been addicted to How I Met Your Mother lately.

21:15

Shower time.

22:15

More himym (this time with some snacks). My life is just so exciting.

23:15

Turned my couch in to a bed for the night.

00:15

Reading a bit before sleep.

See you soon!

~Susanna

It's the little things

Hi!

As my last blog post was on the negative side, I thought I'd make a happier one this time. I like to believe the key to happiness is in finding it in the little things in life. Sure I've had bigger, happy things happen, like my friend came to visit me a week ago and also my mom is currently visiting me and the One Direction concert is in 146 days but what I want to focus on are those little things in life that have made me happy lately.

Tea. Do I even need to say more?

Postcards. My mom sends me a postcard every week and I can't help but smile whenever I come home after a long day at school and there's a postcard waiting for me.

A blanket I got from my mom. It's so soft and warm and I get cold really easily. It just makes me really happy to wrap myself in the blanket, get a cup of tea or hot chocolate and put on Netflix, read a book or browse tumblr for hours.

Oversized sweaters. It's been pretty cold here lately and as much as I like sweaters that fit me almost perfectly, I've lately liked oversized ones even more. They're like a warm and cuddly hug that you can wear all day.

A new board game that I found. I went shopping with my friend and I was in a mood to buy a new board game and found one called CV. It was so much fun we ended up playing it 4 times during that weekend. Now I just hope I'll find more people to play it with.

My new mouthwash. This sounds absolutely ridiculous but let me explain. I've never been able to use mouthwash because most of the ones that are out there are just way too strong and I can barely keep them in my mouth for 10 seconds. However I went to a pharmacy the other day and randomly ended up walking around after I had found what I went to actually buy and found a mouthwash that actually tastes good, isn't strong and you see the results right away as it dyes everything it got out of your mouth pink. It's pretty amazing.

Yoga. It's so hard sometimes but it's so much fun and relaxing. I've tried to start doing yoga more often lately and I've started enjoying it even more.

Finishing a beauty product. It's such an amazing feeling to squeeze out the last bit of product from it's container. I feel like I rarely get to do this because I try out new things all the time and the old ones get left somewhere still half full. Lately though, I've tried to finish old products before starting too many new ones and I think I might start doing some "products I've used up" posts when I've collected enough empty bottles and containers. We'll see :P

See you soon!
~Susanna

We all feel lost sometimes

Hi!

I mentioned in my post about my exchange year about how I never really hit the stage of feeling really lonely and homesick. Well, I don't feel really homesick since I just visited home but I've felt pretty alone lately. I usually never talk about these feelings but I thought maybe writing them down might help and this blog was made to go through the process of moving out after all.

I have never been a person who's actively going out and hanging out with friends but something changed when I moved over here. I started hanging out with friends a lot more and I feel like I had something to do almost every weekend. But it's starting to show that I don't have as many friends here as I did in Helsinki. People obviously have their own lives and as much as I enjoy spending time alone sometimes, weekends have started feeling like they last forever because I've just felt really alone.

I was watching a movie on Friday that was pretty upsetting and I ended up feeling like I would do just anything to get a hug from someone. Obviously there was no one to hug so I ended up making a caramel hot chocolate and had to convince myself that it was almost as good as a hug. I haven't really had those "I wish I hadn't moved over here" moments a lot but that was a huge one.

The worst thing about this probably is that I've let it affect my life so much. I keep telling myself that my friends don't care about me which I know isn't true. Yet somehow I feel like I've been a bit more quiet in school and don't really talk in our friend group chats, afraid that I'll annoy my friends and push them away from my life which I don't want to do. Sometimes it feels like absolutely no one cares and I know that isn't true either. Writing this blog post made me realize how ridiculous this sounds and that I really need to work on this because I'm not alone and I know it.

I'm so happy I have people and things in life that make me really happy and feel less alone in these situations. I started writing this blog post last night but somehow I started talking with a friend that is always there for me to lift me up when I'm feeling down and I got so happy I didn't feel like writing this anymore. I decided to continue this today anyway as I felt like it might be the best to go through these feelings by writing them down. There are so many more things that keep me going than what make me feel alone so I should focus on those instead and realize it's okay to feel completely lost sometimes.

See you soon!
~Susanna

January 2015 Livbox

Hi!

This year's first Livbox came in the mail couple days ago. It wasn't one of my favorite ones but I'm pretty excited to try everything. Here's what was inside:

Philosophy - The Microdelivery Peel Kit If you only knew how excited I got when I heard Livbox were working with Philosophy and we would get their products in the boxes. This one is a two-step in-home peel and the results are supposed to be immediate and remarkable. In the box we had foil packets of what is included in this peel and it will probably last for one use so I'm interested to see how immediate the results are. (76€ / 60 + 60 ml)
Rimmel - BB Cream 9 in 1 I'm kind of not a fan of getting bb creams in Livbox. I mean I would love it if I wasn't as pale as Voldemort. Even though this bb cream is in shade light, it will probably be a bit too dark for me and I will definitely still try it because it sounds pretty interesting. This 9 in 1 bb cream promises to prime, moisturize, minimize pores, conceal, cover, smooth, mattify, brighten and help protect. It also has spf 25. (11,90€ / 30 ml)
La Roche-Posay - Lipikar Baume AP+ balm A balm you use daily. Mostly suitable for very dry or sensitive skin. My face does get really dry especially during winter (it's been even worse in Lapland) and not a lot of things have worked so I'm excited to see how this one works for me. (9€ / 200 ml)
Lumene - Ultra sensitive moisturizing and calming mask I'm always up for trying new face masks so this was nice to get. It's supposed to help to minimize skin irritation, redness and tightness and provide optimal moisture. (17,90€ / 75ml)
Cutrin - Chooz Multivolumizer This product promises volume, body and texture for all hair lengths. It contains UV-, anti-humidity and heat protection. It's also apparently developed especially for Nordic hair and for Nordic conditions. My only problem with this is that you're supposed to blow dry your hair after using this but I let my hair air dry. I might still try out how it works without blow drying. (15,90 / 150ml)

See you soon!
~Susanna