'It's a Process"

Moi :)
We are almost at the 1 month point! Can you believe that so much time has passed? I remember when I was counting down from 200 days! Each day here is a new adventure and challenge.
Last post was about Karkku, so now I think it is time to write about how I have been settling in, and what Espoo is all about!

My normal day consists of waking up to go to school, sitting in class trying to understand pieces of the finnish words being thrown out across that classroom, catching enough to understand where the conversation is going, but not enough to actually engage in the discussion. After class, I shuffle into the massive fray of students milling around an over crowed hallway, trying push my way towards either my next class, or more often the front door. My schedule is very loose, and not many of my classes are back to back, so I sometimes have enough time to slip out of school and get some fresh air. My classes are English 1.1, English 1.2, English 10.1, "Free-Form" Gym, and lastly Music. In each of my English classes I either help teach or sit by myself and work through my Finnish Language Lesson Books. Its a slow going task, but its helped me with the language a little bit. "Free-Form" Gym class is given such a title because the students choose what will happen in each class. An example can be found in this Fridays class, we partnered up and gave each other back massages. My good friend Sara (on exchange from Belgium) is in my class, so it may actually be an enjoyable class. Lastly there is Music. I can't understand a thing in that class, but weirdly enough the actual music that they play is usually Pop, and half the time its in English, so I can sing along with out the aid of a book, which is one small victory for the clueless girl from Alaska.
Now, a word about the people in my school before I go on. They are all clones of one another. People may tell me there name, but half the time none of them have enough variation between each other for me to keep track of who is who. So I gave up, and if on the rare occasion someone says hi (which so far has been once) I grin and use every tactic I know to avoid saying their name.
Once school is out, myself and the other two exchange students in my school, Sara from Belgium and Alex from New Zealand, usually go back to either mine or Sara's house to hang out. Making friends that are Finnish at out school has turned out to be a very difficult task indeed, so its a miracle that we have each other to spend time with. Sometimes we go to meet other exchangers in Helsinki or Tapiola, other times we turn on MTV's music station (they actually have an MTV station here that only plays music!) and dance around the kitchen as a way to shake off the school day. As Sara put it, we are the Haukilahti Exchange Trio. Maybe school won't be so bad now that they are here to brighten my day!

Living in a big city, with a new language, with new people, has shocked me into the realization that I am not in Fairbanks anymore. Ive heard some of the first day stories form my school back home, and seen how people are slowly moving on and forward into another monotonous year at West Valley High School. Some days I wish I was back there, not having to fear that I won't make friends here, or that I won't learn the language, or that when I get on a bus that I will get off at the wrong stop and I won't be able to read the signs that point the way home. But the moment that thought pops into my mind I realize that the safety of Fairbanks, Alaska is exactly what I was trying to escape. I need to see the rest of the world, and learn about the different pieces that make up one massive world community that I hope to join through going on this exchange. I am so thankful that I have been given this experience, and I wouldn't change any part of it for the world.


"If you are brave enough to leave behind everything that is comforting, which could be anything; your house to bitter old resentments, and set out on a truth seeking journey, either externally, or internally, and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue, and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher, and if you are prepared, most of all, to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be with held from you. I can't help but believe it, given my experience." -- Eat Pray Love