Thoughts – Rivers and Roads

Hello! It has been a while!
And a lot has changed.

Honestly I haven’t wanted to post because I felt too stressed to finish the posts about the end of my exchange. But it has literally almost been 8 months and I haven’t found the motivation to do so, so unfortunately I don’t think it will happen.
The end of my exchange was insane. Crazy busy. I traveled with friends and family all over Europe and Morocco. Eurotour with Rotary was AMAZING. And the month following traveling with my American family was great (it was hard to see them again but it was great). But all good things must come to an end. Leaving Finland, despite the ups and downs all year, was the the hardest thing I have ever had to do. At the airport I was surrounded by my Finnish family and my local friends, all of us were crying and promising to see each other soon. But it didn’t end there.
REVERSE CULTURE SHOCK IS A THING!!!!

Going home was SO HARD. It was great to see my friends and family. But no one really understood what I had been through. Many of my friends grew annoyed by my stories from Finland and my experiences and began to distance themselves. My family was not accustomed to the new me, and I had forgotten cultural norms and manners of the Southern United States. Walking into stores and having workers greet me with “Hello, Welcome…” and as I left the “have a blessed day” threw me into a nervous mess. I lived in a country for a year where no one talked to you unless they had to, this was not normal for me at all. It was apparent to me once I returned, how normal Finnish cultural values had become to me. Going back to school was probably the most difficult. Living in Finland with one of the best education systems in the world really turned me off to United States school systems. It only took two weeks for me to lose it. I was sitting in school for eight hours a day and feeling like I was doing nothing and having to just go home and reteach myself everything. I was annoyed by the amount of time I was spending in class that felt unnecessary. Most of my friends were no longer friends with each other or had no interest in being friends with me. I knew I needed to find something different despite the fact I only had one more year of high school. I began to talk to my mom to figure out what I could do. My first plan was to take college classes at the community college in my city to get the rest of my high school credits. As I was doing more research on where I wanted to go to college I found the University of Granada in Spain. It sounded AMAZING to me, but I had to learn Spanish to take the entrance exam for the course. I hit a road bump. It took a lot of courage and research for me to approach my mom and ask if I could do online school and graduate six months early in order to go abroad again and learn Spanish. I was shocked when she agreed. I began doing research and calling my friends from exchange to see if any of them had a place for me to stay for six months to study Spanish. My third phone call was a success! One of my best friends from exchange, Andrés (from Ecuador) was about to leave for Russia to go to Med school. After explaining my situation and what I wanted to do he said I could live with his mom in Ecuador for six months while he was studying in Russia. I would also help out at his aunt’s jewelry store for my keep.

I was beyond ecstatic to know I had a plan and a way to learn Spanish. Five days later I “dropped out” of high school and began classes online. For the next four months I was doing almost 9-10 hours of school a day to try to finish nine months of school in four. It was insanely stressful and online school is not the most fun. It was hard to establish trusting relationships with teachers and communicate when help was needed, but I figured it out. I was able to establish trust and relationships with my teachers which helped me reach my goal of graduating high school early.

After finishing high school all I had left was to pack and prepare for my big trip to Ecuador. More on that NEXT TIME!!!!

I have attached pictures from the end of my exchange