So the Seminary's Christmas party. I sat there last night and thought about stuff. I represent our denomination in two committees of the Estonian Council of Churches which means that I hear a lot of talk about ecumenism. Why it's good and why it's important and why we need it. Et cetera. But honestly, there are times when I don't know how I feel about it. At times it just feels like words and nothing else. Hot air. But last night I sat in the Seminary's decorated assembly hall with Adventist students and Baptist students and Adventist lecturers and Baptist lecturers, celebrating Christmas, and it was a truly beautiful thing. I think it was the real Christian oneness we talk so much about but so rarely encounter. And I realised yesterday that in my head I've stopped making the difference between 'us' and 'them'. I'm probably not the only one - I remember the principal making the same comment once. The best memory from last night was from the very end of our Christmas party when my dad sat at the piano and everyone else formed a big circle and we all sang joyfully and triumphantly O Come All Ye Faithful. And it felt like it. Like the faithful ones had gathered for a celebration.

I submitted my Hermeneutics essay yesterday. I feel very sorry for those people who have to read it. Very sorry indeed.

Late last night I landed at my cousin's and spent a wonderful evening there. And I realised - I have come to think of their home as mine. My cousin seems to do absolutely everything to make me feel that way. 'Here are the keys', 'Come and stay as long as you want', 'You know where the kettle and the fridge is', 'Next time you're in Tartu again make sure you come back'. And it's funny, I thought today as I was drinking my morning tea, you can own a place without owning it. You can refer to a place as your home without having your name on the mail box or the front door. I don't quite know how these things happen but I feel very rich. And very grateful. The memories and the emotions I collect from that home of mine are beyond price to me. Like last night. My cousin and his wife had to leave for a short while so I got to read the little monkeys their bed-time stories. After a bit of quarreling they chose Pippi Longstocking stories. The older one fell asleep in five minutes but little J. didn't - he kept interrupting my reading and telling me his own stories instead. Then my cousin came home and I think he felt a little bit embarrassed and he was like, OK, J, auntie Mervi has read you more than enough now, it's time for you to go to sleep. And he didn't even know that I needed that bed-time reading much more than those two boys did. Because, let's face it, I might never have children of my own, so it's very important for me to know that there are at least two kids in this world to whom I have told Pippi Longstocking stories and who have fallen asleep (or not) while listening to my reading. One day they'll be all tall and grown-up and cool and there will be stuff they'll remember and some they will forget. But this will stay forever. Auntie Mervi and her bed-time reading.