I , me & myself

1. I, me & myself My Autobiography • My name is .. • I’m 15 years old and I was born on March the 27th (1992) • I live in Finland and my hometown is Turku Find out more about me at the following pages!  Me at the tivoli on 22th of April 2007 Me at the age of four.

2. The way I am The way I look It's pretty hard to describe yourself, but I’ll do my best.I am quite normal girl of my age. I think that I’m pretty nice person. I’m not aggressive or anything like that. (:D) My fundamental character isn’t very outgoing. I may seem even a bit quiet and shy. I am a little bit shy with people that I don’t know so well. But with friends I’m laughing, laughable and loud. I look quite ordinary. My hair color is reddish brown (I’m going to dye my hair to pretty dark brown) and I also have a long hair. My eyes are green and they also have brown and even yellow. I have weird eyes, but I like the colour. I’m not skinny but not fat either, or that’s what I think.  I am pretty short, too short maybe. :c Only 158cm (about 5’’2), but it’s OK. My shoe size is 37. I wear normal clothes. The color of my clothes is often black, but I don’t know why. Maybe I should try to buy more colorful clothes.. Especially now, when the summer is coming and you just can’t wear black at summer! My favourite color is green and it also shows at my clothes. I think that I have like fifty-fifty black and green clothes. :D Of course I have also something else than black and green but you know what I mean.

3. My pets I have always loved animals, but I have never had many pets. I love dogs the most, but unfortunately I don’t have one. (Read more about this dog-thing from “My hobbies”.) I have one fancy rat named Åke. She’s a girl, even though she has a boy’s name. Åke’s color is English Lilac agouti. I think that Åke is quite typical rat. She’s pretty old already in the rat’s age (~2-y), but she still keeps going. Her favourite food is water melon. ;) My previous rats were Siru and Oona (in the picture) and they were absolutely wonderful pets.  And they were my first ones. Siru and Oona were sisters, they were from the same litter. I guess that their favourite food was roasted rice. Siru’s kennel name was Zaya’s Silver Cholite Ursa and Oona’s was Zaya’s Chocolic Ulothricious. Siru and Oona were very intelligent like fancy rats usually are. Fancy rats are great pets and I’ll have more rats someday (that’s for sure)! Siru & Oona, my first pets ♥

4. My friends I have only a few friends, but I’m totally OK with that ‘cause those friends that I have, are the best. ;) I’m not very good at making friends.My friends are quite similar comparing to me. I guess that’s why we are friends. We have many things in common, but also just enough differences, so we don’t get along too well. :DMy best friends are at the same class with me, so I see them almost every day. Of course we see each other at our spare time also. I have one more friend. I have known her about 11 years, so I know her pretty well. :D I have had many friends in my life, but unfortunately our paths has gone to different directions. My friends in Helsinki

5. My hobbies I don’t have many/any “real” hobbies, but who defines what’s a real hobby and what’s not? I think that a real hobby is something that you have to pay for. I mean the membership fee etc. My hobbies are reading, postcrossing, music, cycling and I’m also a 4H-dogsitter.I used to do scouting and I played piano, but got fed up with those so I quit.My latest hobby is dogsitting. It’s really fun, rewarding and that’s my biggest dream; to take care of dogs and I just love being with dogs and go for a walk and so on..!I also enjoy reading. I read all kinds of books. I’m reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince right now. I started to read the Harry Potter -series at the beginning of this year (2007).One of my favourite books is called “Sannan jenkkivuosi”. Music has a huge place in my heart, even though I don’t go to any instrument lessons anymore. I just love singing and listening to music. I still play piano at home, but not so much.I really like cycling and I often cycle to school even though I have about 7 kilometres to school. Postcrossing is pretty fun too. The thing is that first you got to register to http://postcrossing.com/ and then you’ll get an address and then you have to send a postcard to that person who’s address you’ll get. Find out more about postcrossing from that same internet address.  Me and a dog named Vicky. I took care of Vicky when her family was gone for a day. Me as a little scout- girl (year 1999)

6. My interests I’m into couple of things and I'll list those here.. - languages - travelling - dogs - music - decoration - reading - friends - photographing - surfing at the internet and chatting via messenger with friends

7. My home I live in Turku. My home is a rowhouse/ terraced house. It has about 100m2 .We have two floors. We have four rooms and a big kitchen. We have two toilets and the shower is in the upstairs’ toilet. We have small yards in the back and the front of our apartment. We have also a big balcony and patio in the backyard. This picture has been taken from our front yard last summer.

8. My room My room is quite small and it’s always messy. I’m not very good at keeping my room tidy. And as a matter of fact I find my things better when everything lies on the floor. I have two windows, wardrobe, desk and a bookcase. I have a “parvisänky” (I didn’t find that word anywhere), it’s like a bunk bed, but without the bottom bed.I don’t have a computer or TV in my room, but I have a radio/CD-player and that’s just fine to me. I don’t have any picture of my room, so this must be ok. :D I have collected cow stuff and these fellows are definitely a part of my room

9. My school My school is old and it has had many names before this one. First, back to 1928, when my school was founded, it was called Turun II Suomalainen Lyseo. Nowadays my school’s name is Puolala school, but before the primary school and the secondary school was united, my school was called the Puolalanmäki school. So now when the whole comprehensive school is together, our school has a lot of pupils! Maybe about 900? My school has many buildings, but we have lessons only in the main building, S-building and home economics in Eskeli.My favouritesubjects are English, Swedish and home economics. An old picture of our even older main building 

10. My future I don’t really have any idea what I’m going to do on the future. I think that most teenagers of my age do know at least what they are interested of. Well I know it too, but not so clearly, I guess. :D First of all, I do know that I’m going to the gymnasium, but I’m not even sure which. Maybe I stay in Puolalanmäki, but I wont go to the music class. I have also thought about going to IB-school, but I’m not sure if I’m good enough. (Particularly with maths, ‘cause if you go there you have to be pretty good with it..) My future occupation is not clear at all, but I’m interested in something where I could speak English (and/or some other language) and interior decorator would also be amazing. My future. Me and my friends with student caps

11. English chapters from my view Key English 8 (9A) My Finland (10A) Travelling (11A) Vehicles (12A) Comparing two cities (13A) Shopping (14A) Four Seasons (17A) Bullying (18A) Heroes

12. My Finland (9A) Finland is a quite small country situated in the Northern Europe. Finland is often called “the country of lakes and forests” ‘cause about 250 000km2 of Finland’s area is covered with forests. Finland has about 187 888 lakes. Finland is quite flat. Finland’s population is about 5,3 milj. That’s not much, but just perfect for me. The weather is very different in a different season. In the summer it may be +30 and in the winter it can be even -30, but that happens very rarely. But Finland isn’t just all about forests and lakes. It produces stufflike Nokia mobilephones, Iittala-glasses and Marimekko is also Finnish invention. I love Finland and (almost) everything about it. (Turku is the best town ;)) The midnight sun is amazing, even though its sometimes hard to sleep. Typical Finland-view Everything that Finland is famous of(:DD) Nokia-smartphone, Lordi and Iittala (Aalto) Vase

13. Travelling (10A) I love travelling abroad.I have been in (Finland,) Sweden, Estonia, Denmark, Germany, France and Switzerland. That’s not very much and I’d like to go anywhere. I have flown with an airplane only once, to Paris. First I was even a bit scared, but soon it turned out to be very nice and not scary at all. Turku Airport was really small, but I knew that Charles de Gaulle (International Airport) is going to be so much bigger. Going through the customs was a new experience to me. The custom inspectors emptied my cousins backpack, even though she was carrying only some stuffed animals. :D When we went to the baggage reclaim, we heard that all the baggage of some flight has gone to a wrong place. We were lucky that that wasn’t our flight and soon we got our baggage. Me and my cousin at the airport, trying to get to our gate. View from the window of the aeroplane

14. Vehicles (11A) Vehicles are very important factor in our everyday life. Long journeys are easy to drive with a car, it’s fast and like I said, easy. Car is a really good invention. Anyway, nowadays I prefer a bicycle or a public transport. Bike is also a good invention, ‘cause you can go with pretty high speed, it’s a good exercise and it doesn’t pollute the environment. Public transport is also good (mostly buses to me) because they carry a lot of people at the same time, so it doesn’t pollute as much as if everybody in that bus would go with their own car. And a bus ticket is really much cheaper than gas. Our car, Fiat Punto

15. Comparing two cities the breakwater of Pärnu (12A) My first impression of both of the cities was that they are amazing and very good tourist locations.Pärnu is Estonia's “summer capital” and everybody can see it. It is very good summer location because it has a huge beach and very good sea that you can swim in. I didn’t get to know a Pärnu’s public transport, ‘cause we spent most of our time in the beach and if we went somewhere, we took a taxi. Taxis were OK. The drivers were nice and they understood Finnish. Food was good and of course very similar to the Finnish one.Stockholm is not at all like Pärnu. It is a capital of Sweden and there are lots of historical buildings and the changing of the guard is nice and very official. It was easy to communicate with Swedish people in English (I couldn’t speak any Swedish by then). Food was good. We ate smörrebröd even though it’s a Danish invention. The taxi drivers in Stockholm were very quiet and they didn’t speak much. Stockholm's changing of the guard

16. Shopping (13A) Normally I don't like shopping, but sometimes it’s OK. I like to shop alone and without a rush.I buy my clothes from a normal stores like H&M and Seppälä, I guess. I like big shopping centres, but we don’t have many of those in Finland. But Mylly is a big one to me. :D You can get everything there, so it’s a good place.

17. Four Seasons (14A) I love that fact that we have four seasons in Finland. You don’t get so bored with the weather. There is something good with every season.Sometimes the winter may seem a little bit too long, but it’s OK, when you see the first birds of the spring. I like the snow, but sometimes it’s too cold. It is very dark, that’s not good. Spring is the shortest season in Finland. It’s when the snow melts away and everything starts to grow.Summer is my favourite season (in addition to spring). It’s very warm and it’s about 18-28’C all the time. You can do everything at summer and you don’t have school! That’s definitely the best thing. The autumn is never nice, because then you have to go to school and everything starts to wither. There is one good thing with autumn; there is amazing colour in the nature so you’ll get good pictures of it! SPRING WINTER SUMMER AUTUMN

18. Bullying 17A 18A Heroes Bullying can be either physical or mental and both are very bad. I think that maybe mental is even worse. I don’t know why someone likes to bully, but it’s really stupid. Maybe the bullies have a low self-confident and they have to bully someone to get more self-confident. Some people get bullied because of their looks, skin colour, but I don’t understand why. Different people make this world complete. Bullying isn’t fair and if someone is bullied and you know it, you should tell to a grown up who can help! I don’t really know how to define ”a hero”. Everyone is a hero in a way.I don’t have any special hero. I think that doctors (nurses.. etc..) and firemen are a huge heroes, because their job is to help people and save lives.Everyone who helps someone who is close to them is a hero.

19. My Sunday Portti- Projects Usually at Sundays I sleep as long as I want. So I get up about eleven o'clock. :'D I dress up, eat breakfast and watch TV, I think. Sometimes I go somewhere with my friends, but last Sunday, which was yesterday, I didn't do anything 'cause weather was bad and I read to the exam of English. Usually I don't do anything special... I listen to music and read. Maybe I check if I haven't done some of my homework yet.. Most of my time I sit in front of my computer. n_n; I chat at MSN Messenger with my friends. It's fun and time flies. ;D Eh. ^____^; I’ve collected my comments from every single project to here so you can read what I think for example about James Bond! :DD I’m starting from the old ones..

20. Yep, that was it. ”My Sunday” and those other old projects are really SO old that I don’t even recognize that I’ve written those ‘cause I don’t write that way anymore. My Sunday. :D Well that’s not me, as you can see, but you know what I mean.

21. Globe- trotters I haven't been abroad so many times, that I could tell you something interesting.. I've only been in some Nordic countries and Middle Europe, and their culture doesn't have very many differences comparing to us. One thing, that I do now know, is that for example French people are much more polite that we are. That doesn't mean that Finnish people are impolite, but being polite just isn't natural to must of us and for example cheek kisses are not a part of our culture.I just love travelling and I hope that some day I have enough money to travel where ever I want. :DFirst locations that I want to go to are (among others) Thailand, England, USA etc. Switzerland, Kanderstegsummer -05 Me trotting the globe!  Paris summer-06

22. Keeping Up Appearances I haven’t done this project (I suppose because I didn’t know what to write), but I’ll try to write something..I liked watching Keeping up appearances at our lessons. It has weird British humour and it was fun to watch a British sitcom series and learn at the same time. Some of the characters are very funny, especially Hyacinth, because she’s the main character. Hyacinth is very bossy women who desperately tries to be a part of the upper-class (even though she is very middle-class), so she answers the phone "The Bouquet residence, the lady of the house speaking“. I can’t really name my favourite character, ‘cause they are all so funny/good actors, but still, Elizabeth is one of my favourites. She is afraid of Hyacinth and she always spills her coffee/tee to Hyacinth’s precious carpets. The best thing in this show is just everything. The situation comedy is so amazing.  Part of the Keeping Up Appearances –gang.(Onslow, Daisy, Richard, Hyacinth, Rose.

23. My letter to Santa Claus Dear Santa, First, I hope that you have time to read my letter. I think I've been kind enough this year. I have been working hard in school this autumn. I think that you should bring lots of presents. Even thought I admit, my room is a real mess and I haven't cleaned up in a while. I should do that, I know. I hope that there would be a lot of snow this Christmas, but I think that that is too much to ask, 'cause there is about 7 degrees and only about two weeks to Christmas. There must be snowing, huh? I'm going to spend my holiday just relaxing and in the Christmas eve I'm probably with my family and/or friends. I don't like the most of Finnish Christmas foods. For example the food called 'rosolli' is disgusting. What foods do you like? Sooo, as I said, I wish for white Christmas, but something else also. iPod would be nice. I don't know what else to ask, but I count on you! Have a great Christmas and don't get too tired going around the world in only one night! :) With love, Little-Em. Me and Santa. Christmas 1996

24. Britney and Kevin On the other hand I agree with Julle. I mean if Britney really has a depression (+ the alcohol problem), they should leave her alone and let her recover. I'm not so interested what Britney does 'cause she isn't really my closest friend, you know. ;) -------------------------------------------------- Yep, I agree with you all (/two :D) ! When I said that I'm not so interested what Britney does, I really didn't mean that it would be the same to me if she died or something. Of course she should have a happy life like everybody else. And like Klaara said, she must be REALLY tired! She has had a huge career already and she is still pretty young. I don't really have any opinion of Britney or/and Kevin's marriage/divorce, because I don't understand why it is anyone else's business than Britney and Kevin's and their families. But still I can tell my opinion of Britney. I think that she is a good singer and talented, 'cause she has started so early. Her music isn't even near of my taste. I don't like her image. I don't know anything about Kevin Federline, but I don't like him either. I don't like rap and I don't know him, so I can't tell anything good about him! :D Britney's New Look Is Bald! Haha. I think that Britney has really lost her mind this time. But I don't know. Maybe media is just making it look that way.

25. Beauty behind the make-up? Dove has made really good job with doing those videos, 'cause hopefully it makes people to think. (Klaara, I want to ask you something; how do you define "normal"?) -------------------------------------------------- AND I want to add one more thing to this.. I really think that that girl/women was pretty before she got all that make-up on her. She was looking normal! Afterwards she was looking veryunnatural and not very beautiful. In this project we were supposed to make a conversation about two videos made by Dove. (You can watch the videos in “Portti”.) Here’s what I thought: Uhh, I found the first video even a bit scary. She was changing so fast and the photoshopping-part was so weird. Media is photoshopping commercials and other things all the time! I think that's sad, 'cause natural people are usually the most beautiful. That's what I think. The other video is really sweet. I've seen it couple of times before so it was familiar to me. I think that people (mostly girls/women) shouldn't worry so much about their looks. " No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted."

26. IKEA My opinion about that ”Find your style”-video has changed from that and now a think that it’s pretty good. And it sells, I think. It is a good commercial. Still I haven’t visited IKEA, but I do have one thing from there! :D My sister brought me a soft animal which is called Minnen råtta. In this project we were supposed to tell our opinion of two IKEA-commercials (and also about IKEA).Here is what I wrote:Both commercials were good in some way. :D First commercial (“Find your style”, woman changing heads) wasn't really my style. I mean that didn't like it so much. It was even a bit weird. The idea was good, but I didn't like the result. I had to watch that video a couple of times 'till I really understood it and had something to say. I loved the second video! That dog is so cute. Quality of that video is also better so it was nice to watch. The dog seems to be so smart and humanitarian. ´ I have never been to Ikea, but I would want to go. :c

27. Idol-competitions I agree with Siiri. But I would say that some people go there, 'cause they want their "five minutes in the spot light". I mean that even if they know that they can't sing, they just go there for fame. I don't like Anna Abreu. I don't really know why. She's just too young. Her voice is ok, but I still don't like her. My favourite is Mia Permanto. I don't know why either.. She just has great personality and she has an amazing voice! -------------------------------------------------- Yep, my favourite idol 2007 is still Mia and I hope that she will get a recording contract soon!  This project’s idea was that we make a conversation about Finnish Idols and The American Idol-competition. You can see my comments here. Finnish Idols I like to watch Idols, but I would never go there. :DD I don't like the judges 'cause I think that they don't know much about music business. Well of course they know, but I just don't like them.. Nina Tapio is stupid. I think that in the finals judges shouldn't say their opinion, 'cause it effects a lot for the watchers. I mean it's almost the same that judges would decide the winner.

28. American IdolI like to watch American Idol, 'cause they have so many talented singers. But still, I wouldn't say that American Idol is much better than the Finnish one. USA's population is about 57(?) times bigger than Finland's, so of course they have also more talented singers. I agree that American Idol is very different to the Finnish one. Judges are better and usually they make the right decision. Ryan Seacrest (the host) is a good host and also quite cute. ;)) Kelly Clarkson first, and the best American Idol

29. James Bond I haven't seen any Bond-movies, so I can't really tell you who is the 'real Bond'. But still, I have seen many pictures of Bond and I think that Pierce Brosnan is the real-one, 'cause he just looks so 'bondish'. If you understand what I mean. :D If someone says "James Bond", his face just comes up to my mind. I don’t think that James Bond is a big hero. :D Because he is so unreal. He always solves all the problems and survives every time (except this Daniel Graig, or that’s what I have heard). He is more like women’s hero. Pierce Brosnan James Bond 1995–2002 Daniel Graig James Bond 2006-?

30. Stereotypes American people My stereotype of Americans is something like this; if someone says "Americans" it conjures up images of (like someone has already said) fat and lazy people. On the other hand, the US is so big that there are many stereotypes. Hollywood is full of famous and rich people who's life is wonderful and perfect. There the most of girl-students are beautiful cheerleaders and the boys are athletes. But then they have also a few nerds who always get bullied. Then some place else I see a lot of poor people and slums. In these areas the kids are very rebel and so on. And.. USA makes a lot of reality-shows so it makes us think that Americans are crazy when they are willing to go to that kind of shows and humiliate themselves. But maybe they are crazy, a little bit.. :D Uncle Sam. He is a national personification of the USA.

31. Finnish people Stereotype of Finnish people is that they are quiet, timid and even little bit morose. They don’t usually smile and they are not good with social contacts. Finns love the nature and they often have a summer cottage middle of nowhere. And when they are in sauna they just slap themselves and other people with a bunch of birch branch (it is called “vasta” or “vihta”). Maybe some people think that Finns are Eskimos and they live in igloos. Finnish Maiden, the national personification of Finland.

32. THEEND