Sigh.

As nice as my students are, they don't seem to have a clue about Finnish grammar... I've been grading papers and I'm about ready to throw in the towel. These poor kids can't tell a verb from a noun, a particle from a pronoun and they have very little idea of attributes, adverbials and predicatives. *sigh*

And that's the stuff they're supposed to know already, since there's absolutely no time in the curriculum to go over all the basic grammar rules they should know after junior high. I'm going to have to give them a little speech about how the basic grammar knowledge will be essential for them to learn any language, not just in Finnish class. I suppose most of them still couldn't care less, but maybe some of them will revise a bit...

Other than this slight disappointment, work has been good. I enjoy having something meaningful to do. I've noticed I also enjoy taking the bus to work. Gives me about a half an hour to think about things without anything else to do. Unless I decide to read instead - I've got a bunch of work related novels to read, for example. But if I don't read, my mind just basically wanders pretty idly. Which I happily allow it to do. I've got a lot on my mind these days and the time on the bus a few times a week seems like a good form of therapy. Self-reflections and other odd thoughts, with as few stressfull topics as possible. :)

Today, however, I wasn't idly thinking about random matters. I was reading a delightful novel by Erlend Loe. It's been published originally quite a few years ago, and I've been meaning to read it for some time already, but haven't gotten to it until now. The novel is called Naive. Super. and it's quite charming. In a very weird and odd way, though.

In the novel the protagonist suffers from a loss of interest and meaning to his life. He decides he wants to buy a ball and bounce it off the wall in the evenings, which basically brings him some comfort and satisfaction. During the daytime he sometimes ventures into reading a book about time. He, for example, ponders the possibility of thinking infinite amount of thoughts and is a bit doubtful whether his brains would be capable of such. He ponders this after having read in his book that if the universe is given an infinite amount of time, everything will happen. Every single thing, no matter how unprobable, will happen, if given enough time. Which, in my opinion as well, is a mindboggling thought. So it's no wonder the protagonist ends up questioning his brains - mine could get stuck trying to understand that, too.

(On the other hand, I suppose I don't really have to understand it, because it's not like I'm going to be here infinitely to see how everything happens. I just get my finite slice of infinity and I need to make the most of it, with the probabilities available.)

Ah. I really appreciate good literature for such mindboggling thoughts and I think I need to stop writing nonsense and go finish up the novel in question. :)