Greetings from April 2006!

Dear friends,

I hope this letter finds you in good health&Spirit! Again, almost one and half months have gone since my last update. Time flies.

Many things happened last month for me. I finished my work to Muotoiluinstituutti- that movie-school. And I also got to know later that I was accepted to the second stage of the exam! Good news! But there is still one-week exam that would need to pass if I'd like to study there. I am going to do my best! It is nice to go there and do some creative work!

I am still working as a teacher. Still one week to go. It has been a good experience so far. I finished the history-classes. Now we are doing a finnish-course with the class six. It is interesting to see how you become more consciouse of your own personality-traits when you are being put in the spotlight so to speak. Little habits, behavioral patterns that I have within myself become kinf of magnified when I am in front of a class. This is very interesting. It is also challenging because sometimes I notice some not so good habit that I got, and that habit or trait has certain effect to the class. Of course I also have many positive traits. I hope that if one would count them there would be more positive traits than negative ones! :-)

I find working with younger children still more challenging than the work with older ones. I've made some progress along the way with the young ones, but there is still lots to learn for me.

I am still working on the drawings for the english department at our university. I am trying to finish them soon now. They will be in the web in June if everything goes as it is planned. I will give you the link then, so you can take a look.

I haven't had much time to look for summer-work as my hands have been full with the projects that I've got. But I think I am going to find something. Maybe I will be a concert roadie again.

I also did couple of courses in University in April. One was ' Yhteiskuntafilosofia' , which was mostly political philosophy or philosophy about the society. Other was 'Politiikan perusteet- kirjaosa' - The basics of Politics. I did not go to lectures, just read the books. I liked both of the courses. The books were mostly quite interesting. In the Politics-course I studied thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Kant, Bakunin etc. Their thoughts about the state and structure of society.

I haven't had time to read much books this month, so I don't have recommendations either. I did take time to watch some good movies.
I went to see movie called 'V is for Vendetta'. The script was made by the same guys who directed The Matrix.
When I first read about the movie I thought that I would not like it. But when my friend said that it is good one, I gave it a try.
The movie is a vision of UK in near-future. It is an Orwellian vision, a dystopia, not a pleasant place. One big theme in the movie is terrorism. Who is a terrorist, how do we define terrorism? Is terrorism ever justified? When does the government become terrorist itself if it suppresses it's people and rules them by fear and illusions? Thesekind of themes are being brought up. It is clearly a kind of fantasy-movie, but still there are many connections to our present reality and our collective history. I am glad I saw the movie. It made me think, but it was also entertaining and had emotional impact for me.

I also wen to an EU-school in Helsinki. There were many speakers who dealt different relevant topics related to EU. I enjoyed the conference. One speaker spoke about EU's relationship to Turkey. One spoke about the history and values of EU and the integration-process within EU. One speaker spoke about the EU-budget, what it consists of at the moment and how will it might look like in the near-future. Those kind of themes. All the speakers were well-informed about their topic I thought.

We have had some very warm days here in mid-Finland. Now it had cooled down a bit, but the trees are green and it is hard to find any snow-patches. I have been eating plenty of ice-cream and enjoying the sun.

I wish you all good month! Let's keep in touch!
Much love to you,
Anssi