All Saint's Day, a "devout and quiet celebration"

Yesterday, Tomas and I decided to spend a few hours studying at the university library. There's this "reading room" open 24/7, and on All Saints Day, it was basically the only thing open.

Along the way, we stopped at Passion Bar for some coffee. What a gorgeous place: clean, fresh, lots of space, a few posters on the wall, dark reds and dim lights. A guy, probably in his mid-30s, went up to Tomas and asked where he was from. "I'm from Spain," Tomas said, in his close to perfect English accent. Tomas studies philology, so he has a good handle on languages. After a bit of chit chat, the guy asked me, "Please can I sit with you both? I'm just really lonely and my husband's coming in a few minutes, but until then I would really like to talk to people." I gave him a half friendly smile, half empathetic smile, and said sure.

Jussi, as we learned, is from a town outside of Tampere. He has been to every state in the US except for Hawaii. He started traveling with his family when he was nine, and has since traveled to many countries in Asia and Europe. He would like to visit Cambodia next. He got married on 6/7/2011, and described his husband and him as "short, skinny, malnourished, blonde haired dudes." At some point, I was compelled to say "Helsinki," and he said, "No, please. It's not "HelSInki;" it's "HELsinki. Finnish words have the stress on the first syllable." Finally, Tomas and I had to leave. Jussi asked us to stay longer, but Tomas said that we really have to go.

And we went.

After a few hours, I remembered that Shizuka told me about a movie playing at the theater at 8. I couldn't remember which one, but I was so bummed out by the artificially quiet, hard surfaced "reading room," that I would do just about anything to cheer myself up. Little did I know that it would be "The Adventures of Tintin," my favorite graphic novel as a kid. I was so excited that I spent 10.50 euros (still makes me cringe) for a ticket.

The movie was average. There was a lot of action and predictable dialogue. There were totally awesome scenes though, and the graphics were cute. I loved experiencing Tintin and Captain Haddok talk and move! The movie ended slowly, and I grew restless. I was with maybe 50 people in the theater, and I felt alone. So I went home, hung out with my neighbors until 2:30 a.m. and then went to sleep.













(Anton spreads nutella on some bread, using Federiko's body as a table.)