So Iowa has been on CNN and stuff pretty much constantly for a while as far as I know, and it was all leading up to this caucus deal that just went on. So, yeah, I went to the first caucus that I was allowed to actually vote in, and it was an absolute circus. I went as an observer to the last one in 2004, and there were maybe 150 people there at ( Read more... )

After seventeen months gone, I'm back in Iowa. I feel like I'm floating. Everything has changed so much, and yet it's all the same. My brother has become a giant with long hair and a beard. He wears a bandana and shouldn't smoke so much pot because it interferes with his medicines. Actually, everyone smokes pot now. I didn't even see grass the ( Read more... )

ich hab es festgestellt, dass ich einiges vorher nicht verstanden habe. über frauen, über das leben, über liebe, ja, über alles. besoffenes livejournal-schreiben ist so gut, haha... kurva. wer bin ich denn? aber die libby und die megan und ich reden jetzt, und est ist so gut. wir reden über sex, über beziehungen, über das leben. und wir verstehen ( Read more... )

It's very strange sometimes living here in Finland. On Tuesday I saw the sun for the first time in about two weeks. When you can even see the sun at all, it's always really low in the southern sky. It gets dark before 4:00 PM these days, too, which means that by midnight it's already been dark for eight hours and everybody is exhausted just because ( Read more... )

So, one time there was this dude from California who was planning a year abroad in Finland and was reading blogs of people who are currently studying in Finland to get an idea of what it's like. He was reading mine as well as those of some friends of mine here. Then he saw me write about how I didn't want to have sex with Libby one night because it ( Read more... )

Also, my computer's battery is behaving really weirdly lately. Like, starting the day before yesterday it will charge forever and ever and still say it's at only 60%, but then you would disconnect the charging cable and it would stay at 60% for like two and a half hours before it started going below that. And today it only goes to 28%... but I've ( Read more... )

Minulla on huomena testi. Mutta en puhu hyvin suomea... se on huono. Minä pidä tampereen yliopistosta, ja minä pidän Tamperesta, ja minä pidän ihmisestä tässä Lapinkaarissa. Minä opiskelen tässä venäjää, tšekkia, ja suomea, ja opitelen vielä italiaa italialaistasta. En tiedä jos puhun suomea... perkkele ( Read more... )

Reading Wikipedia stuff about the Space Shuttle, I found this picture of one of the mounting points on the 747 used to transport the shuttle:


( Read more... )

Yesterday I sent an e-mail to the Czech teacher at the University of Iowa asking if I could join the First Year Czech II class in the spring semester. She e-mailed me back, and said of course, we could just have a small conversation to make sure the class was a good fit for me and it would be great. Then she had a P.S. telling me that the book was ( Read more... )

It's finally happened. From learning so many different languages, finally I'm in some weird way seeing deep into the depths of things. Yesterday and today in Finnish lesson we learned about the different inflection types, like how different words that look different change in certain predictable ways in certain contexts. There are four types for ( Read more... )