Back from Helsinki

Believe it or not, but I've never been to Finland before. So spending a whole day just walking around Helsinki and seeing what it's like was quite an experience. Although in the end we spent about half the time in this bookstore where I realised that the selection of psychology books in our local stores is... pathetic? non-existent? Although with the average price being around 1000 kroons a book, I'm not sure if having the same selection with the same price here would make any difference. I did end up buying one book, though, "The Gift Of Therapy" by Irvin D. Yalom... and I'm already craving to get my hands on his other books, not to mention overwhelmed in a positive way by the personality of the author. Which, I suppose, makes sense if he's a great well-known therapist... somewhat inspiring and somewhat daunting when I think about how I want to be like that in the future, too.

Oh yes, and now I once again feel like I can't wait to get to learning about this sort of things for real. Although I'm getting this suspicious feeling that wherever I'd want to be doing that, it's not going to be the university... seeing how "psychology major" currently means "economy, law, sociology and just a little bit of psychology introductory stuff for the taste". Yeah, I know, it's like the first semester only, and if I've wanted to study psychology since like 7th or 8th grade, I'll survive yet another year or half a year. Although there are no guarantees it's going to get better after that! I guess I'll just try to do some active searching for opportunities of learning etc.

Coming back to Helsinki, I must say I was stunned by how it was like there were more Asians than Europeans on the streets at times. Probably because it's the tourist season there, too, and it's a big city and all. Still kind of interesting, though. Around here, I'm already different enough to stand out from the crowd with my naturally slightly darker skin and dark brown hair. There, there were people of all shapes and colours, and all that diversity was so fascinating. Also the houses and the streets and how everything was so much bigger than around here in Pärnu. I'd like to go there again some day. Big cities are exciting. I'm not sure how I'd feel about actually living in one, but just going there and feeling all that energy, hordes of people moving around everywhere, things happening, life happening around you... it's quite something.

But being back isn't so bad, either. Hopefully yesterday's trip was enough of a change of atmosphere for my life here to feel more interesting again. At least right now I feel like being at my computer and reading psychology stuff is the most exciting activity ever. Not that psychology wouldn't feel like that in general, but right now it's just especially so again. So... yeah... I think I'll go do that now.