Childhood
I was born and raised up in the city of Kuopio, in provincial Savolax. My childhood in Kuopio was as safe and secured as ever, and very family-centered. I was decent at school and had loads of hobbies from music to horse-back riding and athletics, as every family girl was supposed to have. With the rights of a big sister to a two years younger little brother I perhaps adopted some despotic manners, and made some pretty harmless experiments to him (e.g made him eat my experimental cookings or colored our faces red). Still, we were both very good-natured and shy children, says our mom.
Me and my brother playing indians at our summer cottage in Pielavesi. I am the sioux chief, of course...
Adolescence
Ever since I was young, I constantly yearned for ever more intellectual and esthetical experiences - within the limits of my intelligence and talents, that is. I used to try every other hobby possible, from which music and athletics turned out to be the only really lasting ones.
Even athletics dropped off, however, when I entered the Secondary School of Music and Dance in Kuopio, and got grips on most exciting and time-consuming artistic activities of all sorts. My enthusiasm was abruptly disturbed during the second year by the realization that study success at a secondary school actually requires some work effort. So I set the arts aside and plunged into the books.
Student life
In time, Kuopio began to feel all too small for my grand personality. After the graduation - and becoming of age also in the eyes of my parents -, it was about the time to see a little bit further to the world. I traveled in Europe and studied for the entrance examination; at that time social sciences seemed to me as the most appropriate choice (typically female thinking, to say the least).
During the first years at the University of Jyväskylä I was not particularly involved in any student activities; I would rather study and stay weekends and summers in Kuopio than engage in parties or other extracurricular activities. And I just wished to get out of Finland.
Then, finally, in 1992 I got the opportunity to study one year as an exchange student in the inexplicably beautiful and romantic England! The County of Kent and the Canterbury Cathedral really brought alive England's long and fascinating history. And in England I adopted the decorating taste of a British housewife with an inclination to flower and fractal patterns… (Well, actually I must have inherited that aptitude from my mother).
Also the studies at the University of Vienna were more of an excuse for me to wander endlessly in the streets of the imperial Vienna and admire speechlessly its breathtaking architecture.
A third and so far the most interesting period in my life began when I moved to Helsinki in 1995 to work as an intern at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. It was not so much the diplomacy than the extremely lively student life I found intriguing: I joined the international student organization AIESEC University of Helsinki and dived into its activities with the whole of my heart, as usual. Again, there are no good enough secular expressions to describe the fascination, challenges and livelihood of an AIESECer's life!Maybe it is worth mentioning, that I finally managed to write the Master's thesis in Bonn and Helsinki, when the working days were over. Hadn't I had a laptop, the whole process would have been more arduous than it was.
Right here, right now
Updated 5 July, 2004 by Sari Kärkkäinen