100 days

Today marks exactly 100 days since I went on a plane and flew to Finland. 100 days of experiencing exchange student life. 100 days of not seeing my family and friends in Germany. 100 days of having a different life in a foreign country with a foreign language… A third of my exchange is already over. And I can’t believe how fast that happened. Only three more weeks until I’ll pack my stuff again and move into a different family. Only two weeks until my first trip with all the exchange students. It’s unbelievable how time goes by so fast and still feels like slow-motion. In honor of that 100 days I’ll give you a little update.

Snow!

I’m a little late with that. The snow is now completely gone since weeks, but one day I woke up; feeling not really well, going to the bathroom, brushing my teeth, coming back into my room and as I looked through my window I saw that there was snow. And not only a little. Over night finland became a winter wonder land. It looked awesome. This kind of snow is very rare back home, especially that much. The finns were all annoyed and really not excited about it. Meanwhile I found myself in the happiest mood I’ve been since I’m here. I felt like a little girl again. Snow is awesome. And since here are so many trees around it just is so pretty. It got me excited for winter. It was not even halloween, but I sang christmas songs.

General feelings

In general everything is fine. I’m having a good time. Of course not everything is perfect. But I’m happy. The hardest thing for me over here is not knowing. Being an exchange student means not knowing whats going on. Not knowing what people are saying. Not knowing what to do and how to feel. Being an exchange student means having several feelings at the same time. Being happy and sad at once is not possible? Yes, it is possible. Sometimes I have no sense of belonging and then I feel like the people here already know me for years. There are days that are easy and then there are days in which I feel I need to fight through every second. But apparently that’s normal. Being an exchange student is 99% confusing. And I’m having it great. I have an awesome family and pretty cool friends. I have people to trust and to rely on. I can’t imagine how hard it must be for people who doesn’t have that incredible important basics. It’s hard, but that’s okay. Feeling weird is natural as an exchange student. It is part of it.

Homesickness

I thought it would come later. I thought homesickness would be a thing around christmas. Well, you can guess it already: I was wrong. My first experience with homesickness was on the 23rd of October. The birthday of my very best friend. I was sad to not be with her. I was homesick for her, her hugs, her smell, just being with her. My host mum, knowing that something was wrong, asked me how I was. And thats when I kinda lost it. I cried over every feeling I had in this 2,5 months. And once I started I couldn’t stop.

But host mum knew how to make me feel better. She bought cake, pulla and chocolate and we celebrated my best friends birthday 1500 km away from her celebrating it. It was awesome and I felt better immediately.

Language

I’m in Finland for 100 days now. And my Finnish definitely could be better. I barely speak Finnish. In Fact I don’t speak Finnish at all. Of course I’m learning the language. I learn to understand what people say and I learn to read and how to ask simple questions and how to order a coffee. But talking Finnish is hard and it’s mostly my fault that I don’t use it, but its just so easy because everybody speaks good english here. I make progress, I recognize that. I mostly understand the topic of conversations and when I sit in class, understanding nothing during my first month, I catch some words here and there. And I’m pretty sure the day will come in which I can follow conversations completely and know what the teacher is talking about without using google translate. But talking is hard. It’s hard to get started. And I’m kinda hoping that my change to my second family helps me because I’ll have siblings that only speak Finnish, so I’m forced to talk in order to communicate. But in comparison to other exchange students I’d say that I’m fine.