They always tell you being an exchange student is like being on a rollercoaster. And I can tell you, I´m really living that rollercoaster life to the fullest during the past months.
There comes a point, I can´t exactly tell when it happened to me, where you lose the rose-tinted glasses and not everything is fine anymore.
I recognized how I started to be annoyed by little things, by certain behaviours of certain people. I realized I wasn´t so eager to integrate anymore. In some moments, when someone was talking Finnish, I just wanted to cover my ears with my hands.
There were days when I thought "I just want to go home" and by home I meant Germany. I meant my family. I meant the people I´ve known for 16 years. I meant the places I´ve grown up in, the place I love.
Probably the best reason for these thoughts is the simple feeling of exhaustion. Because being an exchange student is extremely exhausting.
I am living in another family and no matter how close we are or how much I love them, they are not the people who have known and raised me my entire life and they´re voluntarily offering me a home, without gettig paid back in a material sense. And if I have a bad day, I can´t just go home and beef around, start a senseless fight or yell. Or I mean I could, but I won´t. Because I am too grateful for what they do.
In other situations where something is bothering me, I try to first think about why I feel that way and if it´s actually something that affects me in a bad way or if I just want to be mad about something.
So, being an exchange student means a lot of holding back. It means a lot of smiling and nodding while you´re screaming on the inside, maybe just because you didn´t sleep at all the last night. I don´t convulsivley try to keep my emotions inside, but I´m still more careful with them then I´ve ever been before.
But it also means a lot of room for thinking and reflecting. The actions of others and yourself, the reasons behind them and always the question "but what am I doing, to make this situation better?".
Exchange year means growing up, they also tell you that. But I never thought that it would be so suddenly. There were days, when I didn´t feel so good; nights when it was 3am and I still couldn´t find any sleep or just moments, when there was a weird kind of pain in my body and I wasn´t sure what to do -
In these moments I thought about how stepping on the plane that day in August, I left behind all the possibilities to be a little girl again. Of course I was growing up before and I managed a lot of things on my own. But there was still always this safety that I could crawl into my mums bed when I needed some cuddles in the middle of a sleepless night. I always knew there was my dad who would come and pick me up anywhere and anytime. Everytime I was feeling weak I knew there was someone to make me some tea or soup, talk to me or just hold me in their arms. Or call the doctor to make an appointment for me when I really was too anxious to do it myself.
Here I feel like I can´t be that kid anymore and sometimes it´s hard. Because at the same time everyone assumes you´re always mature, you lose a lot of freedom you´ve had before. At least I do. Finland is a pretty safe country, I can do a lot of things and my hostparents actually aren´t that strict. But still - I can´t just be like "hey I´m going to that party tonight and I´m staying there. See you tomorrow!". It´s always weighing between what I want, what others want, what is allowed, what is expected, what am I supposed to do...
Accepting that it´s not the same here takes time and will. Not the same habits, not the same rules and not the same people. Especially with the people part I was (or I am) struggling sometimes. Because even though I´m trying not to, I sometimes compare. I think everyone does. My friends here are not and they will never be the same as the friends I have in Germany. My mum is not the same as my German mum. They won´t act or react the same. And I can´t expect them to. But that they are not the same doesn´t mean they aren´t as good. They can be so different and still so great. And isn´t exchange also about hanging out with people you never even would have talked to in the first place?
But this, as dramatic it probably sounds, is only a tiny, tiny part of my year. Even though it´s tiny, I still felt the need to write about it. I don´t want anyone to think that it´s always easy and perfect. It is not and probably no one´s exchange year is, no matter how it seems on the outside. But I am still so lucky and my problems are so small, I don´t even want to call them problems. Everytime I felt absolutely tired of everything, two hours later it wasn´t a big deal anymore. And in the end the good memories are so much stronger.
And besides the really really rare nights where I feel like I don´t want to do this anymore, there is a lot of great stuff happening. This is the time of the year where I really realize who I am close to. I´ve built a lot of really good friendships. With Finns and with other exchange students. I am more than thankful for the other little family I found in my beloved fellow exchange students. Everyone says, you shouldn´t hang out with exchange students so much and befriend local people. Of course you, but no one ever tells you how good it is, to have other exchange students. People in the same situation, who always understand you, who can become the closest friends in such a short time, even though you all come from the most different cultures. I honestly wouldn´t know what I´d be doing without my other foreign friends.
I also start too feel worried about not having enough time to do all the things I want to do and see all the places I want to see. That´s why I am planning some trips and visits for the next weeks.
My New Year´s Eve was pretty chill, as I spent it with my family. We went bowling and ate raclette and had a pleasant time.
Otherwise I spent a lot of time with my friends during the holidays, at least the time I wasn´t sick. We went ice skating, played pool or just met to play cards and eat. The last weekend of the holidays my family rented a cottage in a sports resort place, one and a half hours from Tuusula. We spent wonderful three days there, eating, swimming, going to sauna and on beautiful walks in the forest. And my new wintershoes survived the two hours marching through the snow (because the path was too icy) without my feet getting wet - so I think they passed the test.
The weather is still not really cold (compared to what I hear from all the exchange students in the USA/Canada), but luckily the last days the temperature stayed under zero degrees and we had amazing sunny winterdays.
In school we´re busy practicing the dances for the Wanhat. It´s the prom in Finnish schools, organized for second year students. They celebrate that they´re the oldest ones in school (wanhat), after the seniors graduate. We have to learn 13 different dances, which are not really difficult themselves but can be kind of confusing. Anyhow I´m really enjoying it because learning old traditional dances is such a "once in a lifetime" thing. And even though I feel like all the outfit and getting ready part is a little overrated, I´m looking forward to the "big day".
I finally got a gym membership to feel better about all the Fazer chocolate I´m eating and I joined a theatre project.
Most of the time I´m in a really good mood and when I play piggy in the middle with my family and laugh so hard I almost drown in the pool or when I look at the sky burning in pink and orange as the sun sets or when I just fall asleep with this deeply happy feeling in my stomach, I know I´m still just right here.
Being an exchange student is like being on a rollercoaster. It has happened to me that I started crying because I have to leave everything here one day and it hurts so much to know that and 10 min after that I was crying because I missed my German family.
It´s a rollercoaster but exactly this is what makes it so special. It is what makes you grow and learn.
And the main thing is, that I know I will get off that rollercoaster one day and I would totally do it all over again.
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