Today is my last day of school -- in the States -- for a very long time. I won't be coming back to school here for fifteen months of so. August 2000.

Because I'm not going to be here next year! Lalala-La! Next year, I'll be in Finland, in a town called Joensuu (which has a webpage all in Finnish).

I will have to go to school there, but it will "upper secondary school," and most of the people who don't appreciate learning will have gone to vocational school or joined the work force (I hope), mandatory education is only from 7-16. So, it will probably be harder than school here. Hopefully not too hard, though, because I will also be learning the language.

I have a Finnish language course, with tapes and stuff, and I'm only on lesson 7 so my parents are terribly disapointed in me. I've romised to work more in it when school is out. Therefore, I must start in earnest tomorrow.

(Tomorrow, tomorrow, there's always tomorrow!)

Oh! The papers I got from Finland said that Russian was offered at the school I will be going to, so I will be able to keep studying Russian and not miss that. Joensuu isn't very far from Russia at all.

I think, though, that it may be rather confusing, to be learning two languages at once. I would have to learn to translate vetween Russian and Finnish, not just between Finnish and English, or between Russian and English.