I’ll Give You the Sun: A book that everyone should read

“The sun, stars, ocean, trees, everything. I gave it all up for you.”

I never read books. Not that I don’t like reading, because I absolutely love when a book consumes me. I am just very hard to please. I easily quit reading if I don’t like the story or if I get bored with it. It’s been ages since I have loved a book so much that I couldn’t put  it down. And to be honest I was little skeptical when I bought I’ll give you the sun. But before even noticing I was deep in the story, eating the text with my eyes. And that’s how it should always be. So ladies and gents here is review of a book that I got sucked into.

The story follows twin siblings, Noah and Jude in a different points in their lives. Noah tells the story when he and his sister are close, in a way that only twins can be. And Jude tells the story few years later when both of the twins are broken by horrible tragedy that drove them apart.

When I started the book I immediately fell in love with Noah. His character is really sweet, lovable and lonely. He dedicates his life for arts, and draws everything he sees and feels. He doesn’t have friends until the new boy next door who changes everything.

Jude I truly hated at first. In Noah’s story she is full of life and doing all the crazy things such as cliff diving. She is growing up and leaving Noah behind as she goes. Eventually I understood Jude and her actions and learned to absolutely love her too. In her story she is broken and full of guilt. The book pages are filled with quotes from a bible that she keeps with her. They descrabe her feelings and fit into the story perfectly, for example:

“If bad luck knows who you are become someone else”.

Without releasing themselves both of them only know half the story, which you learn to put together while reading. The story is full of blog twists, big and small. Some you see coming and some will absolutely shock you. Slowly everything falls into a place.

The story is absolutely heartbreaking but yet full of hope and all kinds of love. You will be filled with emotions which is why I don’t recommend reading this in public. The book will break you over and over again. Jandy Nelson knew exactly how to get to the reader. I have never cried as much as I cried while reading this book. And once I finished it (with way too much tears) I knew I had to read it again, I just needed to get back into the stories again, back into their world for little longer.

If you like John Green’s and Rainbow Rowell’s books, this is a must read for you (and for everyone in general), I know you will absolutely love it. Now enough for today. Thank you if you made it to the end of this blog post!

Have you Read I’ll give you the sun? Did you like it, please share your thoughts because as you can see I am dying to talk about it. 

xoxo

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Life in Helsinki

I have come to an point in my life where I don’t know what I want to do next. I have nice job and an education but that’s not something that I am tempted to do rest of my life. There is so much that this world could offer to me and I feel like it’s time to change the scenery. At the same time I love my country and I love living in Helsinki.

I just read a blog post from Jenny where she listed pros and cons about life in Boston. As a nosy person, I loved reading it. So why not steal the idea heheh? Now or never would be the best time to do a similar post. For myself but also for you who wonder what it’s like to live in Helsinki.

Quick run down of Helsinki

Helsinki is the capital and largest city of Finland but compared to the other world we are teeny tiny. Here you get to discover all seasons, spring and autumn are really beautiful, breezy and colorful here. In winter we’ve got way too much snow and when summer comes everyone basically lives on outdoors because the warmth lasts only few weeks. Also something that’s worth mentioning is that we are the homeland of santa claus. He doesn’t live in Helsinki but I just wanted to put that out there okay..

Cons of Helsinki

People

Finns in certain are not big small talkers, we like to just mind our own business. We avoid eye contact with everyone as much as we can and in public transports we prefer standing than sitting down next to someone we don’t know. People in Helsinki aren’t always the nicest, we just really like to keep our distance. But if you travel to the northern Finland you will find more hospitable people.

Living here is expensive

The apartments are really expensive here. You need to work your butt off to find  an proper apartment, and even more difficult is to find an apartment that actually matches it’s price.

 Food culture is kind of stuck

Some people really enjoy eating in restaurants but I prefer taking the food with me as I go. In Helsinki you really need to dig deep to find proper take away places. We don’t have stalls and small food places around the city where you can just grab some lunch with you and keep going.

It takes ages for bands and artists to come here

As a music lover, this really bothers me. Even though we are the capital of Finland, really small amount of well known bands and artists tour here. If we want to go and see some big names around the world we need to travel abroad, most likely to Sweden.

Pros of Helsinki

Nature and the sea

We got lots and lots of nature here. No matter where you go, you will always find a forest where to run away if everything gets too much (wink wink). Also half of the Helsinki is kind of surrounded by the sea, which is nice variation from forests.

The size 

I love that Helsinki is not too big or too small. The distances between places aren’t too long so it doesn’t take forever to get from one place to another. Also Helsinki isn’t too crowded. There are still lot of people here so it feels lively but you don’t get lost in a huge crowd of busy people.

It’s really easy to move around Helsinki

We’ve really good public transports here, they will get you wherever you want whenever you want. Also because the average Finns use public transports we don’t need to worry about the traffic here. Of course there is traffic but not anything huge where you need to stand still with your car for ages.

Endless amount of cute coffee/brunch places

When you first come to Helsinki you will just see these huge brands that everyone has around the world like Starbucks, Subway and Vapiano. But if you know where to look you will discover cosy and aesthetically pleasing coffee places with delicious menus.

High level education

Helsinki affords you really good opportunities to study on different levels (university, university of applied sciences, vocational school). Also everything is tuition free here for everyone.

After all Helsinki is a really good place to be but I really crave a life in big city with busy people. Please share your thoughts about the place where you live, I would love to hear what it’s like in other countries and cities!!

xoxo

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My 2016 in squares

The year has changed. Do you feel different now? New year new me right? Everyone says now it’s time to leave 2016 behind and I thought I would do exactly that. For me 2016 wasn’t the greatest, which is why I thought I wouldn’t do a blog post about it. This morning when I went for a run I ended up thinking about last year and I realized that it wasn’t that bad after all. It came with it’s downs, disappointments, mistakes, and people who let me down, some things I had to learn the hard way. But also I made beautiful memories with my friends and experienced things that I will never forget.

So after all this thinking I decided to do little recap of my year anyway, hope it’s not too late for that.

January 

I started the year off by traveling to Germany with my family and also kicked off my last months of school before graduating. Yay. And yes we took care of baby dolls at school.

February 

I went to Sweden to spend the last money I had after Germany. After that all I did was basically snowboard and enjoy the snow. Gotta take it all in before it melts away right?

March

I was sick half of this month (gladly I had these cute doggies comforting me) and other half I used to take pictures for my instagram.. feed is everything to me, you may have realized that if you follow me there, heh.

April

School coma and naps that saved me. Late night drives with friends while chasing the sunset (we did it way too much believe me, my camera roll is full of pictures of sunsets).

May

This month I started off by celebrating my friend’s birthday with good food and great company. I also travelled to Sweden again, maybe did little shopping there maybe not. I discovered beautiful Finnish nature and went to a concert that will stay in my heart forever. Thank you JVG.

June 

I loved every part of this month. June was so good to me. First I saw 5 Seconds Of Summer live (which was definitely one of the highlights of this whole year). I finally graduated as practical nurse yay go me! Then I found myself from Sweden again, seeing Little Mix live. And at the end of the month I had chance to celebrate midsummer at Finnish festival called Tahkon Juhannus.

July

More festivals and little trip to Estonia with great company. I had my friend coming over from Holland which was perfect end for the summer.

August 

I finally had the guts to start writing my blog properly so this month was filled with photo shoots. Some with friends, some with all by myself taking pictures of food haha. I also did little pokémon haunting, just like everyone back then probably.

September 

Walks with doggies while enjoying the autumn weather, hockey and Justin Bieber. So blessed.

October 

London is the place to be. I loved every part of our trip there even though my feet is still hurting from all the walking. I hope I have the chance to go there soon again. I also celebrated my 20th birthday on october, I’m so old I know.

November 

Basically all I did this month was got ready for christmas. I did christmas shopping very early this year and I am really proud of myself for that, left nothing for last minute. Also I drank way too much tea in these last two months, it’s coming out of my ears now.

December 

Oh December, the last 31 days of the year. I for sure enjoyed every part of this month. We went to a christmas market, baked gingerbreads and listened to christmas songs way too much. I got to end the year at a concert that was filled with amazing Finnish artists, I could not feel more grateful.

Now it’s the new year, new chances, same dreams but a fresh start.

xoxo

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London baby!

If you have watched F.R.I.E.N.D.S. “London baby!” may ring some bells for you. I am not ashamed to admit that I love London just as much as Joey Tribbiani does. I have been there four times now, and I will never get tired of that lovely city. It’s always a good idea to go there, you know. It will never let you down.

I love the busy streets, you are never alone there no matter what time it is. I also love the architecture, most of the apartments and buildings are very aesthetic and beautiful at least for my taste. I adore their food culture, you can sit down for a lunch or get delicious take away from every corner. They also have a lot of coffee places where you can have proper breakfast and lunch (we don’t have much those places in Finland so that’s why I find it nice).

But most of all I love british people. I can’t get over how kind and polite they are. It was easy to do little small talk with them and it didn’t feel awkward at all. In Finland no one pays attention to you if it’s not necessary. We even prefer standing in public transports  more than sitting down next to someone we don’t know. In general Finnish people are just so grumpy. I guess that’s the reason why I really appreciate brits and their politeness.

We stayed in England for three days and that just wasn’t enough. We didn’t have time to visit half of the places we wanted to because the city is just so big and there is so much to see. Also we spent almost two whole days for shopping, but how couldn’t we when there  is million different stores to discover.

Even though I could go on and on about how much I love London, there is no better place like home. I sometimes tend to forget how lucky I am to live here in Finland (even though we are grumpy hah). So even if I had chance to move away, I don’t know if I had guts to do it. But you never know where life takes you right? Maybe I will be writing this blog from England one day…

xoxo