I'm so gonna be a stripper

Here's what I look like under my dress:

My legs are a mile long, baby.

-Kels

It's Not a Fashion Statement, It's a Fucking Eagle.

My Chemical Romance got butchered this time. I'm so, so sorry.

At the Moment, I Have Nothing Against Eagles, But Wait Till I Finish My Cross-Stitching Project..

When my parents had also made it to Finland (with their botanical garden in the car boot), we got to play real tourists.
Our first trip was to Kotka, more specifically to the Meretaarium, which sort of displayed all the fishies that swim around the local waters.

Those things were sort of just... standing there Not moving. At all. My mom thought that they weren't real but unfortunately they were. Creepy as fuck, too...

Also, if you ever go there yourself, use the lift while switching between floors. Otherwise you are going to meet this guy in the staircase. And if he isn't just the most horrific thing you have seen.

Now... Let's play a little game I like to call "Find the fishy"

Also repeat after me: "Fish are friends, not food. Even if they look like this:"

Anyhow. When it comes to puistod (Or "parks" in the language of you, mere mortals), Kotka gets the award for "Most awesome and most mostest." Seriously. There were like 9 of them all sprinkled over the tiny island. The first one we happened onto, was right next to the meretaarium and it contained in it a waterfall.

Well... I never said it was a big one... No actually, I'm just screwing with you, it looked like this:

Man, there are about a million pictures I'd like to show you of those parks because they truly were absolutely gorgeous. But in the interest of sparing your computers (and fingers from having to scroll down all the time) I will try to pace myself and just remind you that you know where to find the rest of the pictures yourself.

Of course, I can't go without the mandatory Weird Picture of Kels aaaand here it is

I'm fucking awesome, petting iron seals and shit...

After that puisto, I managed to yell a city-map machine into submission and in doing that I acquired a map (Actually I didn't yell, the whole process was entirely civil.) We then proceeded to the Maritime Center or whatever the fuck it was. Basically it was a GINORMOUS (And I don't use that word lightly) museum about Everything Even Remotely To Do With The Sea.
It took as a long time and a lot of skimming but we managed to see it all... (I now have major knowledge about the ship St. Michael that sunk near Finnish coast.)

I'll refrain from commenting the next pictures, I'll let that be YOUR job...

I drew the line at trying on corsets. Which is exactly what my dad is about to suggest on the background.
(Yes, I was allowed to try those on, we didn't just bust an exhibit and go crazy all over it...)

By the way, guess who I found?

Our very own Jäälõhkuja Tarmo!!

Unfortunately we couldn't see it from the inside, it was closed for some reason. But no big deal! Have a sculpture of eagles instead (We were, after all, in Kotka)

Also as a quick funsection at the end of this post, these were the sleeping arrangements back in my sisters house:

The blanket is obviously the dog's and the crumpled sheet is where I was oh-so-graciously allowed to sleep. Fun times, kind of miss it.

-Kels

Porvoo by Toto.

Lol. This is getting ridiculous.

I Finally Meet My Idol (Or So I Thought Until I Learned That My Sister is a Shoop)

So Porvoo is this adorable little city that is apparently celebrating it's 666th birthday... I swear though, that's not the reason for our visit, just an awesome coincidence.

While walking around there, I decided to go mainstream and take one of those "oh god, look at me, I'm holding two boulders apart!" pictures. I did not, however, take into account that my sister would be the one taking the picture and the zoom on the new camera isn't exactly awesome. This is the result.

You have my permission to choke laughing.

You done now? Yeah, have this picture of me being all hipster to counter the terribleness of the last picture.

See, my sister is an idiot. She saw one sculpture of a man and started babbling about how it's the guy who created those awesome candies formerly called "Black man's kisses" (Now I think they're just Suukkoja).

That's me, unknowingly having myself photographed in front of a great Swedofinnish national poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg. As opposed to Lennart Brunberg who bought a bakery from A. W. Lindfors in 1928 and made it even more popular by introducing chocolate to its products.
But no harm done, Runeberg was, after all, the most famous and important person in Porvoo (Or so I gathered from the way absolutely EVERYTHING was named after him..)

The city itself was absolutely gorgeous, peppered with small green areas (or *parks*, but I find that classification to be too mainstream..)

In need on sustenance and not finding any fast food "restaurants", we stumbled upon a mexican sort of place (more like walked past the place 5 times and finally deciding to eat there.)

Spicy EVERYTHING. Too bad neither or us had instagram.... Anyhow, the food was awesomedeliciousohgodmoreplease and I got all the spicy stuff because my sister doesn't like it. Nom!!!

-Sassy and well-fed Kels over and out.

Rolling in the Potholes.

I'll let you figure out what song I'm thinking of now for yourselves...

And You Thought The Potholes on Your Homestreet Were Bad... 

Hiidekirnut. These great, big, masssive "potholes" (I'm not making this up, the infosigns there said that the things were potholes in english) in an awesome-looking forest thing. You get to see them at your own risk. If you fall in... Sucks to be you.

The skirt is adorable, the shoes are weird and the top is too long. I know. Loving the hair tho.
Also, I'm going to be a lazy ass and write about the pictures in the order fotoalbum is giving them to me. I don't know how I managed to get them fucked up but nuffing I can do about it now.

Forget what I said about the hair. Anyway this is a map of the hole thingies that you get to see after you've hiked through a trail of treachery that is just trying to slip you up at any second... (Yeah, I went there in a skirt. I could've done it in heels too, if I wanted. I'm awesome, brah.)

You can't really tell from this angle, but it's a giant rock with a giant awesome face. You can see the mouth and teeth but the eyes are sort of lost to overexposure.

I also hate stairs. Just my luck I guess..

What's with the overabundance of my fab face you ask? What ISN'T I counter.

And this is what we hiked all that way for:

Lol, just kidding, if that was all there was, the next picture would be of me trying to drown my sister in it for making me climb all those steps in the terrible horrible wet heat.

Now THAT'S a pothole. About a meter in diameter and 4 meters deep. Imagine finding this in front of your driveway.

Or in fact this:

Jättiläisen Kuhnepytty. 4,3 meters in diameter and a whopping 10 meters deep. I'm not bluffing!
I find it a very nice touch that they have propped a ladder into it. I wonder how many people "accidentally" fall in every year?

-Kels.

Through the Water and Grass

I'm trying to set up this elaborate thing where my last posts title was an adaption of "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin and this time I was inspired by "Through the Fire and Flames"  by DragonForce. Also, Kairi, I just realised where I got that idea from. Whoops.

Möllav Kosk, Ainus Mis Puudub on Sähvivad Tuled ja Muusika

I have a feeling that these are just going to get worse from now on but nevermind that. Myllykoski. 

You might notice an improvement in picture quality. That would be because my sister finally got herself a new camera (I sort of managed to break that pink potato. THROUGH NO FAULT OF MY OWN!!)

"Tall and tan and young and lovely, the girl from Impanema goes walking..."

All height-related comments will be frowned upon until they spontaneously combust.

Since our wanderlust for that day hadn't yet been satisfied by that short waterfall-ogling (Fine, my wanderlust) we also took a quick trip to Tuusula. At that point I had already pretty much gotten used to the Mac-Subway-Hes diet thing we had got going on.

I'm not sure if it was later that evening or whatever, but we rescued a toad from a water pipe thing place. I'd love to show you the whole story in amusing pictures but I have a feeling my sister would pee on all the things I love so here's just a picture of the toad.

You gotta agree, for a leaf-frog or whatever, that's one hell of a toad. 

Also! Daschund-butts!

-Kels 

Bikeride in heaven.

So I was lazy some weeks ago and stopped posting about my Awesome Finnish Adventures. Now I'm going to try and make up for that grave mistake by making a bunch of posts all at once. In order of how the events went down.

HEUREKA! The Theory of Gravitation is Just a Theory, After All!

Can you tell that I'm trying to make witty headings for my posts? Yeah, sorry about that.

Anyway, my sister took me to the Awesomest Coolest Most Heavenly Place Of All, Heureka. I'm not even exaggerating, it was absolutely awesometastic.

Of course perhaps we shouldn't have been allowed inside, seeing as we got lost trying to find the GINORMOUS BUILDING RIGHT BEHIND US that we couldn't see. I mean the arrows showing the way were far too inocent-looking, there's no way we could have taken their advice. No we had to run around like headless chicken. Khm.

Thankfully, after scratching our heads and circling around some big factory a couple of times, we managed to find the GINORMOUS BUILDING RIGHT BEHIND US.

Practically invisible, innit?

Standing in line for 20 minutes just to get tickets was already worth it when we entered the first exhibition about global warming.

Why yes, your eyes are not deceiving you, I'm in wellies because the entire exhibition was in water. And there was a giant melting ice cube there, too. (I'm linking some pictures as to not make my blog unbearably slow)

Having seen that awesome awesomeness (and already heard the first family speaking in Estonian) we barreled on to the world 20X0 (Awesome typo on the home page of heureka: "20X0 - reis tulevikku  8.10.2011-27.1.12012" An exhibition that lasts for 10,000 years? Fancy...)

Basically, there we found out how eco-friendly we were and how we would fare in the elusive futureee. I did pretty well, my sister would totally be kicked out, though.

Then I met some friendly(ish) dinosaurs.

Some of which were cleverly hidden from mere mortal's eyesight.

But all was well in the end, seeing as I got to try my hand out at paleontology (I'm following an archaeologist on my tumblr and GEESH, do they make a big deal out of the difference between archaeology and paleontology. I totally see where they're coming from but still...)

By the way, how awesome is the planetarium from outside? Sorry that I'm forcing you to do lots of clicking and opening links, but otherwise your computer wouldn't load my blog so I'm thinking I've got my priorities straight. 

I'm going to spare you the details of the main exhibition, because if you've ever been to either Heureka itself, Ahhaa or some similar exhibition place then you know exactly what the main part of it is about. However I'm just going to boast a bit:

That's how high the bikeride thing is. I'll let you judge the height of the thing for yourself, I'm really shit at this.

Oh yeah, that's me. And just to prove that I didn't chicken out at the last second:

Although that thing was built so that kids much tinyer than me could ride it too, so riding it was awkward as fuck. But what an adrenaline rush!

We also watched a 25-minute movie about the stars and planets around us. Basically laying down in the planetarium and having the screen be almost 360 degrees above and around you is an absolutely amazing (if a bit nauseating) experience. And hearing the audio double (the original in finnish and a special translation in the earbuds in english) wasn't even as annoying as I thought it would be. 

Also! I'm a midget:

And that thing in my hand is my souvenir from the gift shop. The awesome mug with dissappearing dinos.

That should happily conclude the Heureka tour, I hope. 

-Kels

Hallowed are my awesome boobs!

So my dear delusional Kairi and I were watching stargate and she tried to make me think that I look like Morena Baccarin. In the process of proving her wrong I got a little carried away and might have proven her right. Whoops. At least I have incentive to post to my blog now.

I found three pictures of Morena as Adria and tried to recreate them. The second one is ever-so-fancy. And by the way, even after putting lots of effort into it (I fucking curled my hair for the first picture !!) I DO NOT look like her. Point proven? No? Take a closer look at the pictures then.
Kelly Does Not In Any Way Resemble Adria From Stargate.

'Dis issue settled now?
Goooooood.

I will not waste any more of this night by using my motivation to make lots of new blog posts and schedule them to publish every 24 hours or so. Should keep the blog alive for a little while, I hope.
Doodles!

-Morena
-Adria
-Kels

Adria: Would you care for a demonstration?

~Random Quote from Stargate SG1 "The Quest, Part 1"

SAD

This is going to be one of those not-really-happy posts but I think it's going to shed some light on that post from couple of months ago (the one that did not exist) and is also sort of a lesson on mental health problems.

I'm finally "coming out" with this because I think I sort of need to write it out to make sense of some stuff and I know that in a couple of months I will be too far gone again to be willing to actually discuss it. This is of course putting it on a much larger bell than strictly necessary but screw that, I can cover it up with lighthearted travel posts later. God knows there are so many that I've neglected to write.

Anyway. Have you guys heard of SAD? It is quite a stupid acronym for Seasonal Affective Disorder and in a nutshell what it means is that a person with (in my case relatively) normal mental health will experience the symptoms of depression in the winter months. It has something to do with how much light one gets during the winter vs how much light in the summer. Skimming over the wikipedia article there are some mentions of theories about it but really, nothing conclusive.

However I am really not that interested in the actual scientific side of it. The reality is that the shorter the days get, the moodier and eventually depressed I get. No, I haven't been to a psychologist. Frankly even if I could find one in this godforsaken town, I doubt I could ever open myself up enough for it to be useful. Perhaps I'm just unwilling to get better but I hate to dwell on that. Pessimism makes me self destructive.

It is too easy for someone who hasn't experienced this feeling to say that instead of being depressed I should "cheer up instead" or "when you feel sad, do something you like". But that's the entire point. If it were that easy, I wouldn't be trying to arrange these words on paper at the moment.
Because it is easy to say those things when you don't know the helpless feeling you get when you come home from school, feeling entirely spent. And maybe something bad happened that day. Because no matter how insignificant in the long run, at that moment you feel like the house of cards you have built to make yourself reach the light, just crumbles away from under your feet.
Sorry for being badly poetical but I'm trying to explain the feeling. You come home and that insignificant bad thing just feels like the end of the world and no amount of reasoning could possibly make you see it for what it really is. You just curl up somewhere and wonder to yourself: how can the world still be turning when I'm feeling so alone, so helpless? Why can't it just stop, I can't do this anymore, I want to get off this ride!
But the world doesn't stop. It keeps on going, whirring on around you so fast that everything is a blur. You feel your breathing getting faster and you can't even control that. Everything is just slipping away and crushing you under its weight. But the world doesn't stop and instead I have to go to bed in the evening where I get to be alone with my thoughts, trapped in my own self-hatred until sleep claims me.

And you see next day I have to go to school. I can't just explain to my teachers that my homework is undone because "I didn't feel like it". People often mistake depression for laziness and that just makes me sad. I want to take those people by the shoulders and shake them hard yelling "You don't know what it's like!" You don't know how it feels to be unable to do anything because what's the fucking point? I'm already a failure, how much worse can it get?
It is not a voluntary thought and a part of my mind knows that if I don't do stuff I need to do, it can and it will get much worse but when you're so far gone, you can't make yourself care anymore. You just want to make all the pain stop.

I'd hate to be a whiny teenager who keeps making up shit that maybe wrong with her to get attention. I'm sorry if that is how I come across. And maybe I am just making this up but then again, what kind of attention I'm really hoping to get from a blog that has all of two readers. I do apologise to Kairi and Bambs for I'm sure it's easier to think everything is alright. Specially when I've gone to such lengths just to make you guys think it's all nice and dandy but I can't anymore.

Perhaps for clarity's sake I should point out that this, for me, is nothing new. I've been having trouble with how winters treat me, since perhaps 6th or 7th grade. 8th grade was when shit hit the fan and I couldn't deal with it normally anymore. That's when the self-destructive part of me came out to play. I wish I could say that I'm learning to deal with it, but in reality I think I'm not learning at all. Winter 2012 was, in a way, harder on me than the previous ones. I don't really know why but it was anyway. Irrational, considering I'm finally sort of happy with where I am. Then again, nothing about depression is rational.

I know that seeing a friend in trouble is hard, specially if you know that there's nothing you can do. I do apologise for putting you in this position now but I can't help it. I need to put it out there even if it doesn't make anything better. At least I can come back to this post at some point and see if anything has changed. Maybe I get to be more open on my blog now although some things I can't talk about still. Some things are better kept for yourself because making them someone else's problem just isn't fair.