What did i do yesterday? store standing? collecting? give me an a name for this nameless act!

in America we would call it standing kettles. but anyway, yesterday i stood for an hour in front of stockmann holding a red thingy and standing next to a sign which basicly said "The Salvation Army is good! it helps homeless people! give us money!!!" okay, maybe not exactly that, but you get the point. so anyway, it was only an hour but it was packed with excitement and i'm gonna tell you all about it. i was supposed to stand from 3-4 pm (15-16) and so i left home about 2:45 and starting walking towards stockmann. now the fun thing about this was that i was in full Salvation army uniform(pictured:the funniest picture of people in uniform i could find). so i got a lot of stares. which i actuall really enjoy. so as i marched down the street, counting off the steps in my head (hut, 2, 3, 4...) and beaming a huge insane smile at any poor person who might have the misfortune to walk past. i got laughs, i got smiles, i got looks of pure terror. i'm not used to terror but i don't mind being laughed at. i mean heck, if i can brighten their day by giving them something to laugh at then my whole day was worth it. anyway, so after a fun march down to stockmann i met up with Major Tyrrell who immediately upon seeing me grabbed my goatee thing and in his nice british accent said "you still got this thing, do ya mate?" yeah, i do. anyway he handed me the red thingy i hold and my hour began...

after handing me the red thing Major Tyrrell bewailed the fact that he paid 30 kroon for his parking and he only collected around 40. well, i thought, i'm gonna have to do better than that, aren't i...and i did. as i smiled and nodded at everybody who went past right away someone came up and gave me 25 kroon. i gave him a huge smile and a "Tänan" (thank you). then someone gave me a 5, well major Tyrrell, there's your thirty in the first 10 minutes! so after that things got interesting. i'll tell you the good stuff first. and the bad stuff after. okay, so this older douple walked up to me and pulled out 2 kroon (maybe ten cents) and put it in. i said äitah and gave them a nice big smile. they apologized for giving so little but said "just think, if everybody gave you 2 krooni, soon you'll have a million!" i don't know why but them saying that just gives me a huge smile and was better than if they had given me a million. the next good thing to happen was a youngish guy came up and gave me 100 krooni! first of all i was shocked because it was 100 krooni, and secondly because this guy was young. he was the only person under maybe 30 to give me anything. so that made me very happy and i thanked him profusely.

now i'll tell you the not so nice stuff, and by the way, i'm not telling this stuff in the order it happened, so it wasn't like hunks of good then hunks of bad, it was nicely and evenly spread out. thank God for that! so anyway, one thing that i don't consider to be negative or positive, a bit of both is this guy who came up and informed me that the salvation army itself is a very good thing but my salvation army corps (kopli 8) is BS. and no, he did not mean battle school. but i don't really mind in the slightest. i'm a salvationist so as long as he thinks the salvation army is good that's all that matters. at least he knew we existed! then the thing that kind of did upset me slightly happened. this lady walked up to my we and asked me if i knew what the salvation army does. and i said yes i do, and tried to tell her all about it and give her a "what is the salvation army?" pamphlet. but she quickly made clear that she had a point to make to me. "NULL!!" that's what she thinks the salvation army does. nothing. zero. her logic? there's still homeless people on the streets. i won't even go into how it's not logical to blame the salvation army for that, especially when you're crappy goverment will barely even admit they have a homeless population, but i just said i was sorry she thought so and wished her a nice day. she must have been having a very bad day to be so worked up. i just didn't get what was upsetting her. and i'm not being sarcastic, i really don't understand that poor lady...

anyway, my favorite part of the whole experience when my good friend Anneli popped out of stockmann and gave me half a twix and some drink. she is too nice to me sometimes. then she went to pick up our friend Tinesha, who i hadn't seen in forever, and they walked me to the corps where we had fun doing dance, drama, and youth night! party! anyway i'm tired now so i'm gonna go protect my brother as he watches bible man. Tsau! or as the italians say it, Ciao! or as i say it, cow! (moo!)