I always felt like this blog needed to be finished, but for various reasons I never got it done. Well I suppose mainly because I'm very good at procrastinatig but also because I could never deside what to write. I've been waiting for the right moment to write this post, trying to figure out what to write. It's a rainy tuesday, I should be doing physics and my phone is broken, so I opened my computer and started to write. It's not the "right" moment and I certainly haven't desided what to say nor would I be surprised if nobody ever read this. So lets give it a go.
I arrived back in Finland over two years ago. I was surprised and touched by the warm welcome I got. Not long after I came home was I treaded like I'd never been away. Afterwards I feel a bit silly worrying about wheter my friend would take me back. I always felt like I had no right to expect anything of them but, as I've learned, true love, wether it's between friends or family, can't be affected by time or distance.
After a brief summer holiday, during which I tried to refamiliarize myself with the culture and surroundings, I went back to school. I have to admit that the first year back wasn't an easy one. Not only was the school work much more demanding than before, I'm natyrally slow to make new friends. At first I spent most of my time with my old friends but after they went on a study leave I was forced to, a bit awkwardly, find new company to have lunch with and spend time during breaks. Despite my reluctancy at the beginning I did get to know some wonderful people from my year group who I'm thankful to be able to call friends today.
During my first year back I also learned that reversed culture shock is a real thing and honestly a lot harder to deal whiht than the one one faces when starting an exchange year. It's teh strangest feeling, to feel lost in one's own culture not to mention how contradictory it feels to be home sick while already being home.
Another problem I've heard many exchange students facing upon their arrival home is simply not being an exchange student anymore because in many ways it becomes part of one's identity. I'd always had something to define myself with. Before I went to New Zealand I was a competitive swimmer, and in New Zealand I was an exchange student. Now suddently I was neither and was forced to figure out who I was without the things I'd earlier used to identify "me".
I remember talking with another exchange student who had also been in New Zealand and she said to me: "We were told how much the exchange year would chance us, but nobody told us how much we would change afterwards, and not necessarily for the better". At the time I could't have agreed with her more but now I see that coming back home was just as important part of an exchange year as the year itself. The whole thing is a huge journey full of learning and growing, and only now am I starting to see how much it changed me, and definitely for the better.
During my exchange year I learned to be more patient with different situations and most importantly people. I learned to look for the reasons for peoples sayings and doings, rather that get impatient or annoyed by them. After coming home I've started to learn to do the same for myself. During my exchange year I learned to listen to people without interrupting or giving my own opinion of the matter but only after coming back did I learn the difference between listening and listening. You see there's a difference between listening to someone, even quetly, while at the same time mentally disagreeing with them, and truly listening to someone with a completely different opinion or point of view and trying to understand. I think that sometimes understanding where the person is coming from with their thoughts and considering if there is something in their opinion that I could agree with or wether I myself might be wrong, is even more important than always being right. During my exchange year I learned to plan ahead and organize trips or parties, after coming back, I learned to plan ahead on my studies and organize my thoughts. So yes, some things take a bit more than a year to learn, but looking back three years I can see all the good things I've learned by being an exchange student.
I'm not going to tell about everything that's happened after I came back you can check my instagram for that. We had a rotaract club in my home city Lahti for more than a year, but sadly we couldn't get new members to carry on the job after finishing high school. It was still a good experience. I finished high school with good grades and made my first attempt to apply to medical school. I didn't get in this year, so I'm working part time for Lahti's swimming club and studying for the next years exams. I still go to the gym and like to run, ski and swim. I'm slowly starting to learn how to make exercise a part of my life without letting it dominate my days or being completely absent from them. So all in all I'm doing great. I love my job (most of the time), I have wonderfull friends, and I'm hopefull about getting in to uni next autumn.
I haven't been in as close contact with my host families and exchange friends as I would like, but like I said earlier, time and distance can't break true friendship. I'm hopefull that I'll have plenty of chaces to catch up with them all. I'll start planning a trip to New Zealand after I get into uni. Meanwhile I sometimes hope that I hadn't learned from Rotary to keep the two countries (and lives sort of) separate. They say one cannot live in two places at one but I think we only have one life, and wheter the people that are part of that life are right next to you or on the other side of the world, it doesen't matter, they're still a part of you and your life. I apologise to all my friend and host families that I haven't been in touch as much as I should have, and if you happen to stumbel across this text I hope you know that I think about you every day.
By writing this final post I hope to close this book of adventures. The past three years have been the best and the most demanding of my relatively short life so far. Now it's time for new adventures, new challenges and new lessons. I thank you all who have read my blog, and I hope I've been able to write something useful for the future exchange students. This blog will hopefully stay here for a long time, and I suppose I'll read it once in a while, to remind myself of how I went there and back again.
Thank you.
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