Finland, the land of lakes, Santa Clause’s home and the best school system in the world; that’s what I knew about Finland before I actually came and, as everybody who has spent at least a month here knows, that is not everything Finland has to offer. I was amazed by the level of morality Finland has as a country, everybody is honest and reliable (as far as I can tell).
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| Ana kuvassa vasemmalla. |
I arrived in Finland August 2nd 2015 and for a week I was in a camp with 100 other exchange students. Everything was fun and games, but after that I came to the real world that would be my house for the next 11 months or so. This camp didn’t really prepare me for anything, but I sure made amazing friends there.
When I arrived in Kuhmo I knew nobody and nobody knew me, I was going to be introduced to a group of people whose language I didn’t speak, so I felt really vulnerable. I had never met a Finnish person before and I’m sure that most of the people here had never met a Mexican before, so it was going to be really interesting to see how people reacted when I said that I was Mexican. Of course I was asked if any of my family members were part of a drug cartel, because come on, she’s Mexican so it’s the obvious question to make. Well for the ones that haven’t asked but still have the question, no I don’t have relatives in a drug cartel or in the mafia.
The first week in school I was really weirded out by the fact that nobody talked to me, literally not a single person would come up and say a simple hi. I just knew the girls that I had met the day before school started, and I’d follow them around (it was kind of embarrassing because we weren’t really talkative back then) but anyway I got through the first month without giving up.
The weeks after have gone by in the blink of an eye, I really feel like I got here not so long ago, but I’ve been here for 5 months and a half already!
About winter, well, I’m honestly freezing every time I go out, it’s just amazing how cold it can actually get, my coldest winters where about 12º Celsius, and I could tell you I was really cold at that point, now I just accept the fact that it can be -30º and people aren’t dying. Also the darkness took me by surprise, even though everybody told me that it was going to be hard and really dark, I never really imagined how true it was.
Talking specifically about my time here in Kuhmo, well, I come from a city with 400,000 people, and I had the belief that it was a really small city, how wrong was I? Even though Kuhmo is 40 times smaller than my home town it is a really beautiful city, in summer and in winter, as a jarocha (people in my state are known like that) that had never seen snow before, for me this is a wonderland and if anyone ever sees me playing in the snow, don’t think that I’m weird, I’m just making up for a childhood that had a big lack of snow.
Teksti ja kuvat Ana
Hyvä Ana!! :)
VastaaPoista