Wonderful memories that I wish to share with you :)

[Tuomas]

As some of you know, through the terrorist thread or via IRC, I'm a 3rd year student at my high school, Tampere klassillinen lukio... with LAtin origins and high quality in teaching, but not so much about that. Doing 3rd year means of course, that it is the last year of schooling and the time of the final BIG marticulation examinations. But there is a tradition that Petteri and Ildu and Visy too (to mention a few) have gone through.
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Basically before we start the period of studying home for the test, there is this thing call potkiaiset, and after that penkkarit, aka pnkinpainajaiset which are followed by a cruise. So I reckoned, as I had such a great time, I'd like to share it with as much people as possible So I'll start with a whole diary of what I've been through the last 4-6 days, aight?

It was monday 13th when was our first day free from schooling. Nevertheless we spent it at school doing posters to be attached to some trucks later on, I'll tell about it then. WeÃ,  have this tradition, that on the penkkeri-day, all the last year students in the school go round the centre of the city in trucks throwing candy at people and celebrating their "freedom". The posters are for a competition that is set up every year. This year it was my chance. So we started making this poster with a slightly modified quote from a tv commercial. It was rather funny at least imo. Though we knew we'd be a little busy with it since it had to done by wednesday.

By tuesday we had it all covered, apart from the big, competitive poster, so we left early to start practicing songs for our teachers. This is also a tradition that I will tell you about later. At this point we were all so tired and a bit abgry too, mostly from tireness and hunger. We got most of the songs going, and 2/3 of the posters were drying, while others were ready by that time.

On wednesday we finally got the last one ready. I woke up at 7:30 am. to go about carrying our instruments to school. This took us two hours, and by 10 we were ready to start doing the lyrics for the songs. All this was only for the ABI-show on thursday, which I shall tell about soon. So we did the lyrics, and went down to the gymnastics class or what is it, and started hanging up the posters on the wooden frames. There was a couple of problems though. First of all, the girl who was supposed to bring all the duct tape and such wasn't there, and secondly, I was the only one there at all, so finally when she came, I was the one who had to build up the posters while my friends were setting up our instruments.
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Somehow I managed to complete first fixing the frames and the attaching the posters in 2 hour, after which we had to leave, because some people had listening test. After we came back, the day in all didn't end until 17:00, after which our first tradition was due.
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  At 19:00 after I had had a busy shower and some food we left for Potkiaiset, which comes from potkia = to kick. As in, the 2nd graders held us a party for kicking us out and then becoming the oldest in the school.
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  It was at a night club downtown, and we had a great time. Never have I seen my friends so drunk, and probably been so drunk myself. We were given 2 drinks free, and happy hour was till 23:00. ACtually we started with the joke, that when drunk, it's easier to speak german. So we asked everyone wei viele Bier hast du getrinken, or Bist du ein richtiger Deutschermann, and we spoke german the whole night, with none of us knowing how many we had drunk.
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  There were competitions held for people to form pairs, and make as long ropes of their clothes as possible. Then who could undress fastest... shame we didn't see any girls entering that one Then a dancing comp. I didn't win any. And as we left, we still kept talking german, (greetings to Hajo here), and my friend almost got beaten up. He was saying to this VERY BIG woman and a skinhead, that they were böse, and they were not richtige Deutschermänner, etc. And when they started at us I said that he's German, he doesn't know what you're saying... Later we ran away and they got bored. So we rolled in the snow iirc.
Ã,  Ã,  Before we went home my friend recorded this piece where I was telling my thoughts of the mohammed cartoons, and he has played it to me many times just to annoy me. I'm not proud that I threw up later that night at home, but most people did, it's a tradition.

The next day would be thursday I suppose, I'm kind of lost what happened on what day. Ok, THIS was the real penkkari day, when we left our goodbyes to the school. We had done the posters and had this elite-high school themem in it. This is why all of us were earing suits and such. Everyone also had a terrible hangover. The show consisted of this morning radio show in which we played music and talkied s**t.
Ã,  Ã,  Ã, Then after all the students and teachers went to the gymnastics and we started by playing the tune from Conan O'Brien or something like that We gave presents to al the teachers, I wrote a collection of poems called Tuomas Renvall - wannabe artistic crap: poems and texts to my Finnish teacher but for some reason she really liked them. We performed a couple of more joke songs, all about our teachers, and showed a video made for the show, some of which was on the terrorist thread.
Ã,  Ã,  Ã, The show lasted 1-1,5 hours and after that we climbed on the trucks with our candies and went for a ride. All the schools in my town were driving the streets and throwing candies at the same time. It was freezing cold but yet awesome and we had a great time. After riding the streets for anhour we came back and started to carry our instruments away. After that, I had only an hour to get ready for the cruise. So I went to shower and packed and left quickly, bought a bottle of Hungarian red wine for the road.

Ã,  Ã,  This was actually the first time I've ever been to a big ship.We had a fun journey, some of the people quite well drunk. I didn't take alcohol after the wine because my stomach was upset. So we climbed aboard and found our cabins. It was evening by then, and a band called PMMP, some Popstars - losers who were famous performed a playback show, and then we went disco ^_^/ I suppose...
Ã,  Ã,  I found out, that in the sam corridor as we were, were some ahlf Finnish half Swedish girls and since they were sitting on the floor, I joined them and we had a long chat. I really enjoyed talking Swedish. Don't know if they enjoyed it too a bit earlier we had a buffet, which was included in the 75e ticket price. I had been waiting to eat some crab, but couldn't find any. They said there was some, so I was very disappointed. We did a bit of a look around in the ship, and then as the disco closed and moved to a nightclub upstairs we went there.
Ã,  Ã,  Ã, One of my friends went missing, and as we found him on the deck, they started to get woriied he might jump if they didn't pull him away. I knew him better so I left tothe bight club to do a bit of party party alone. After a minute there was this nice girl from Turku dragging me around the dancefloor and the deck. I tried to escape, but succeeded only after an hour when she went someplace and we went to the deck to freeze our asses off. That was pretty much how close I managed to get to girls there
Ã,  Ã,  Ã, While I was there, my friends actually went through the whole cabin sections knocking hard on every door and attending every party. So I missed that fun. Then after we danced till 6:00 am, and at 6:30 was breakfast. After that we slept for an hour.

Friday started a bit early, as we woke up at 8:30 am and went up to the social sections of the ship. for an hour there was only me, and Toni, my friend, and one guy that kept feeling bad because the boat rocked. I had slept for 1 hour with something on my throat, so for friday, I couldn't really talk or swallow well. Now, my voice is almost back. There were 4 in our cabin, 2 of them were still sleeping, when I decided to take a shower. I had to dress up in the corridor, which was empty luckily, so that they could sleep.
Ã,  Ã,  Ã, After tht there was this karaoke contest, where they had an eq in the microphone, that kept bringing the voice closer to the tune, so the all sang more than well, but I didn't enter because of my voice.
Ã,  Ã,  Ã, I reckon we sat in a cafe for 3 hours talking and checking out girls when finally the tax-free shop opened for alcohol, and laods of people run there to buy liqour and wine and beer. After a while of drink there and a friendly chat there begun the 2nd day program, a band called Beats & Styles. Before it, my friends got a fabulous idea. I had had this mouthorgan with me for ages, and on the ship too. I used to amuse the Swedish girls with it. Anyway, I went up to the club deck, and took off my shoe, and started playing. My friends first put a few nickles in it, but then after 3 minutes, when the gig started, I had 11 euros alltogether, so I made a lot of money... \o/
Ã,  Ã,  Ã, After the gig, which no-one was listening/watching, we went down, and agreed that we were "korridorvänner" with the girls and took this photo, just to show people how much fun we had. It's a bit shaken, but I'm the guy with the odd looking nose because of my friends trembling hands
Ã,  Ã,  Ã, A bit later we took off for Tampere again, with the same hilarious atmosphere as when we came.

On saturday then we had this, again traditional, dinner with our teachers. I hadn't slept very much, and there was curling on tv, so I was a bit late. Anyway, good food, and great time with our teachers, after which we carried on in an Irish bar, O'Connels. Some of he teachers were there. And some of my friends were drunk for the 4th day in row. I took advantage of it, and wrote my name on some of their hands and told them it was cool. All one of them said was: uncle is going to have a hang over tomorrow. Wonder what that means. I left at 1:00am. with my friend. He said that he probably didn't have money to use the bus. I told him to go and ask for a loan from the friends in the bar. Later I heard he had walked home.... 10 km in snow...

Sunday was my grandmother's 65-birthday so we were there and lots of relatives too and we had a great time. In the evening we went to a bar again with my friends. This time to see a game on a screen

Today... eh, I have a bit of a flu. My throat aches a bit and my voice isn't still bad. I'm prepared to start studying maths very soon, so thus my presence at the forums will be very scarce for 2 months, same goes to IRC.

I reckoned, once I saw my friend on sunday, that this really was a change of era for all of us. WE have grown very fond of each other by the time, it's a small school I go to, so everyone knows each other. Now we all know, that most likely we won't be seeing most of the people anymore. And the way it ended, 500 people with the same circumstances and same age at the same place on a ship. My Finnish teacher put it a great way. I will be a bit depressed for the grief of an end, while my friend who I saw, had gone hyperactive. I guess we all deal with this differently. After all, all we have in common now with most are the marticulation examinations and msn.
Ã,  Ã,  So I knew I'd be doing this post, just because I tend to memorize everything as much as possible and for as long as possible, and this helps me