I started yoga

Hey, guess what?!

I did what I promised in the last blog post and I have started yoga!

Before my first class last Tuesday, I had literally no idea what to expect. 

I bought an exercise mat just 15 minutes before the class. I thought it might help. Apart from that I was wearing my regular clothes: a tiny dress with some coloured tights.

The first class which was titled hatha vinyasa. It was led my a nice Norwegian(?) girl. There were lots of people in the class, and I tried to speak to a few people, but everyone else already seemed to have a friend group. It was okay, I didn't go there to look for friends. So I lay my mat next to some guys mat. I didn't even know which way was the right way up or if it mattered. I asked the guy and he said that he had no idea, because it was his first time too. 

Then the class started. I was very happy that the guy next to me was a newbie too, because the girl next to me seemed to be a pro. She did all sorts of difficult looking things while I kept falling over on my mat and lying on my face.

I somehow had had an idea that yoga would be calming, which misled me to thinking that it isn't really a sport. But oh man, it was hard work! I discovered that I don't have any muscle strength, flexibility or balance skills. I can barely breath.

And today I went to my second yoga class. I was more prepared and was actually wearing gym clothes this time. Today's class was titled ashtanga yoga. This time the teacher was an Indian(?) guy. I looked forward to seeing what this class had to offer since it was supposed to be something different. I had come in a bit late thanks to the local bus service, and the front row was already full. But it was okay, there was still space in the backrow and the class hadn't started yet. Soon I was very glad that I was in the back corner. This yoga type wasn't to my taste. It was a lot faster than hatha vinyasa yoga had been. I still didn't have a clue how to do those positions and trying to copy others didn't really work, because they kept jumping to the next one when I was still trying to figure out how to do the previous one.

The worst thing, however, was that the teacher was super-scary. Although it was a beginners class and some people (including me) were there for the first time, he put out really strict on rules how well the positions need to be done. And then he walked around touching people who he thought could do them "better". For some reason though all these people were pretty girls. Almost 50% of the people there were guys but for some reason he didn't touch them. But every time he picked a girl and folded or pushed them deeper into the position. Even if the girls said they were fine or that they didn't want to. "Oh, yes you can do it", he said and pushed them while the girls screamed and said that it hurts. "I will help you face your fear", he said. And afterwards if a girl glared at him he said: "Don't worry, nothing got dislocated."

This really made it impossible for me to try and concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing. The guy next to me looked really concerned too. I think it was his first time as well. I was really glad that I wasn't wearing any make-up and that I was wearing an old t-shirt and baggy trousers like all the guys instead of tight leggings like all the other girls were wearing.

All the screaming, the fast tempo and really stressful times make me wish I hadn't gone to that class in the first place. Is ashthanga always that awful?

At least I don't have to think twice to which class I want to carry on going to. I guess I'll just stick with the class the nice Norwegian girl was teaching.

Because yoga makes me think of tropical beaches.

I, however, feel that learning how to do yoga will be really good for me. And my back. And it will help be develop the skills mentioned earlier.

Have you ever tried yoga?

Terrible Valentine's Day cards

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! ♥

I had a great plan to write a post about my frustration with Valentine's Day cards and also to provide you with some advice on how to by a reasonable card. Unfortunately I'm a bit late for that. In case you failed at it though, I hope this post will help you understand why you got dumped.

As you know, today is Valentine's Day. In Finland we call it "Friend's Day" which is really a day UK should have too. But as awful as Valentine's Day is with it's cheesiness, it's a good excuse for people to let the person in their day dreams know that there are some pheromones flying around. And for those who already have caught that lovely person, it's a good day to remind them that they are still appreciated.

In order to prepare for this pink and fluffy day, I decided to buy a Valentine's Day card.

If you have any arts and crafts skills, I recommend you just make one yourself. But because I'm not very artsy-crafty, I had to go with what they sell in the shops.

It was kind of easy because all the other girls were buzzing around the "boyfriend"-shelf, and I got the whole "girlfriend"-shelf for myself. There were no men in any of the card shops I visited. Maybe they all buy Asda smart price cards?

It's not that bad a choice really. Compared to what these shops had to offer.

You felt forced to buy a card? Then this one is a great buy to ensure that you'll no longer have a girlfriend to buy cards for.

The need to feel alive

Hello.

I just read the most influential blog post, I've probably ever read. It was written by a 24-year old Finnish student called Heidi, who writes Converting Vegetarians blog. The blog post was a recap of her year 2013. It was very summarised, but I feel like it was more eventful than any of the fantasy books I've ever read. And she probably had managed to do more in one month than I have in my whole life.

© Heidi.

Last year she was living in China, where she was learning Chinese, exploring her faith and worldview and growing as a spiritual person. She hiked a lot and explored forgotten and beautiful places. She travelled to Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, North Korea, Xinjiang, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. She explored temples, tiny North Chinese villages, forests and slums. She slept in yurts, shelters she built herself, underneath holy trees and at the top of a Chinese holy mountain. and She questioned everything. She learnt a lot. She was homeless in Peking and nearly ended up in a Kazakhstanian prison.

© Heidi.

In autumn she returned to Finland, where she had to learn to live a completely different lifestyle. During her year in China she had changed a lot, and Finland was very different compared to all those exotic places she's been to.

Her blog is the most inspiring thing I've discovered this year. She's a proper adventurer and she's really going out of her way to find out what life is really about.

She's writing a book and I'm very keen on reading it when it gets published.

© Heidi.

My year 2013 feels very pathetic now. No, actually, my life feels fairly pathetic now.

I know, I've been ill, but maybe I should try a little bit harder? Maybe I should go for more walks in the middle of the night and smell the fresh air? Maybe I should use computer less and do exercises instead. Maybe I should start yoga and learn to meditate.

I want to go travelling again. I had no idea some of the places she went to even existed. And now I'm really scared that I might never get to see them. What if my life just passes by and I never manage to learn what life is really about?

I've never been on a proper hiking and camping trip. I've never walked somewhere you wouldn't get in one day. I'm a scared little city kid who doesn't even know how to do that. Would someone brave like to come with me?

I know, I've already been to a lot of places most people will never go to and lived occasionally in places with no mobile signal or internet. But maybe I should try and do things like that more often?

Maybe I should really put some effort into learning languages and really try and get somewhere with all of my plans. Maybe I should try and speak Japanese person staying with us.

I can't just stop now.

I love adventures. But at the same time I'm really worried that I will soon be too old to go on adventures. Not that you can be too old, but you can think that you're too old. Heidi is my age, which means that I could have done all that, but instead I've enjoyed sitting at my sofa watching travel documentaries. I don't want get too used to this. I could be out there making hose documentaries.

Do you know what it feels like to be alive?

Contact Lenses

Hello you!

I've had pretty awful time poking my eye over the past week, so I thought I'd come here and tell you about it.

As I told you in November, I've had glasses since I was 2, but only recently started wearing them more often. I had an enjoyable glass-free decade, but it's gone now. 

To be honest, I find glasses fairly annoying now. They slide down my nose when I read, and they get dirty all the time, and it makes me feel like the world looks blurrier than it does without my glasses. If I was rich, I would buy those amazing disposable glass-cleaning wipes, but they are really expensive and I also hate cumulating rubbish. One day soon, when I'm less annoyed with my eyes and more annoyed with rubbish, I will tell you ways how you could cumulate less rubbish too.

Occasionally I leave the house looking like this.

But anyway, the time for me to try out contact lenses is here.

Emphasis on the word try.

It hasn't been easy.

Confusing labels cause fights!

Hello!

Did you hear that Scotland passed the Equal Marriage law yesterday?! 

Yay, now I can get married! 

Well, almost. Now I would just like Finland to follow this example.

Rainbow flag at our university's societies' building!

Okay, because I wasn't going to go wedding dress shopping right now, I thought I'd write a little rant about a completely different topic. Is this even going to be a rant? Aren't you supposed to be angry at someone when you have a rant? I don't feel angry. And I actually really hope I won't offend anyone. I just want to bring these things up, so that they could be discussed. But this is partly about how people seem to get very offended by everything these days. 

People find it natural to label everything. So I just wanted to share some of my thoughts about labels we have for different genders and sexual orientations.

I got inspired to write this post after I read tau's blog post (in Finnish). She wrote about how very few people know about her pansexuality, because she's in a relationship with a boy, and doesn't really see why she should come out to everyone she meets. She also points out that in order to even talk about her feelings or orientation, she needs to pick a box and stand in it.

And she chose pansexuality. This made me want to write about pansexuality.

Picture from knowhomo.tumblr.com.

Do you know what "pansexual" means?

Does anyone know?

Is pansexuality just the ultimate category for those who got tired of questioning and finally felt that they don't really mind what gender their partners represent? Or is it just a fancy word for bisexuality that some people use to confuse people? Is it a fashion trend?

It could be any of those things, but probably for most pansexuals it's not. It could be a conversation starter. If you ask about their sexual orientation, and they reply pansexual, then they've only told you that gender is not important to them when they are looking for a partner. But you still haven't got an answer to what kind of people they're interested in.

But why do you need to have a label? Why can't people just be people?

I used to label myself pansexual when it was less acceptable for me to just be gay. It was important to have a label, because people would keep asking questions. I'm still bitter that I had to fill a form to university where the options were:

Heterosexual

Bisexual

Lesbian

Gay man

Prefer not to say 

Because back then I had a boyfriend, I felt that I couldn't really tick the lesbian box. I was kind of tempted to claim that I was a gay man just because I didn't see the point for separating "gay men" and "lesbians" when the other groups were grouped together and when there was a separate question for my gender next to it. And I didn't want to choose the last option, because I really preferred to tell them that I was LGBT since they were asking. In the end I answered "bisexual" although I felt that that label didn't really describe me. And later I realised how unfair it was for all the bisexuals that I would even call myself bisexual. 

There's enough biphobia without me jumping around as a bad example. 

"You can't like both genders, they'll all eventually just go back to men/women."

"Bisexuality is just a phase before they come out as gay." 

I don't want to make it worse and just ticked the lesbian box the next time I had to fill the same form. It felt a lot better.

Maybe everyone who identifies as a pansexual has their own definition for the term?

Oh, there are so many different kinds of pans.