After finishing last period with average grades and starting this one with good grades, meaning that I'm finally back on track, I can finally look more into other things. I had to put preparing the exchange on hold for a while to fix my results, and now I feel I'm ready to start working on it again, but I haven't yet. Either way, many things have happened and now I finally found the time and will to write about it. I realized it has now been more than a year since my sweet trip to Helsinki with the Nightwish concert. It was a great weekend, the weather was much, much warmer than it is now and the concert was really good.
Should I mention that I really miss Anette in front of Nightwish? .. I guess not any more than I just did.
Last sunday I went ice skating with my mum. Since I've always liked ice skating and renting a pair each time is expensive, a pair of my own seemed like a good investment - and that day I finally bought black, not very standard looking figure skates. After that, we went straight to the ice arena. I'm lucky my skates came well sharpened, because I didn't have a single problem with them. In fact, I felt very confident and daring. I kept trying to do some basic jumps, turns and spins. I can't lie, I failed several times, resulting in some nice tripping and a few belly slaps into the ice, for the laughter of everyone else who was there. I'm also richer by several bruises now, but I'm wearing them with pride. It was totally worth it. As I got more used to the ice, and since the ice arena was closed for the public soon, it got emptier so there was more space and the power was slowly getting to me, so I found it very hard to leave, and now I'm having withdrawal symptoms. But I'll have to heal my bruises before I get too active again. ☺
But now to the sweetest part. Yesterday I went to the Estonian Maritime Academy for open doors day. The first thing that I noticed was lots of male students and a couple of "lost" women among them, and several stereotypical old captains. I wrote down my name at the reception and noticed that I wasn't the only girl on the list afterall. Soon we were taken to a hall where we listened to the introductions of faculties and branches for more than two hours. Then they showed us the facilities, along with a library full of books about ships and seas and several machine room and bridge simulators. I could hardly contain my excitement when I walked into the first simulator as it felt very realistic. When we entered it, the sea was calm, but the crowd demanded storm, so soon it was switched to big waves and thunder. For a while I thought that the room was actually rocking, but then I realized that it was just me and some others swaying along with the waves like high towers in the wind. During the process we also met several interesting people. I was most impressed by the nice woman looking in her thirties, who had become a captain at the age of 28 (!!!!!). She said that working on a passenger ship was too routine for her, so she preferred cargo ships. Most of the people there said that it's not easy to be a sailor, but you have to do it with your heart.
The "Ship" we were driving in the first simulator
The calm seas
The old sailor in his element
Exactly where are we?
The whole system
Virtual Poseidon's rage
"Driving" a small fast ferry
Rogue waves
And while I'm at it, here's a picture of Linda Line's HSC Merilin dry docked for the winter.
I spotted her while doing just another usual "beauty walk".
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