Skip to main content

Finland's mark



Today in Finnish class I went up to a Nepali classmate and asked him if he knew a Nepali song that I have been obsessed with for the past two weeks. I told him that I was in love with the song but couldn’t understand a word so could he please translate it? In the middle of asking my question I realized he had no idea what I was talking about and that this was really awkward but it was too late to back out so I ploughed ahead anyway. The result was that I avoided him for the rest of class. But part of me didn’t care. Being in a new country gives you thick skin for awkward encounters.

Being in a new country also shapes you and molds you into a different version of yourself. A friend of mine wisely said that “where you live leaves a mark on you.” I’m still only a couple months into my two year long stay here in Finland but it is leaving a mark already.

On our way to Naantali, a town 18 km away from Turku.
There are the little things. I drink coffee (well, half of it is milk and sugar but still, baby steps). I wear reflectors now. With the winter being so dark, multiple people have said reflectors are an important way to avoid accidents when you have to walk both to class and back home in darkness. Biking is my preferred means of transportation and has forced me to learn to bundle up. And after years of my mother unsuccessfully imploring me to wear a hat, I now don’t leave the apartment without one.

I have taken charge of my education and social life as well. These are two very broad topics and probably deserve posts of their own but I will be brief here. In Finnish higher education, most of the learning is done by yourself rather than in class. The result is that you need to take the initiative to read, discuss and complete assignments without a teacher breathing down you neck. Most of the readings that are due for classes aren’t ever mentioned by the teacher. And socially, I have transformed into a planner to prepare for the impending winter. Keeping an active social life, I have
heard, keeps the winter blues away.

Some of my lovely classmates at our first potluck.
Subtle changes add up and sometimes I wonder how it will feel to go back to the US after two years of living here. Turku feels like home and has already made many of the changes I wanted to make on my lifestyle but was never able to back in the States. But as that same wise friend said, I haven’t seen a Finnish winter yet so we shall see how much I love this country in December. But to quote the Finns (and Game of Thrones) winter is coming.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Heart of the City

The past week in New York was jarring to say the least. Though the city still makes me overwhelmed by even the smallest of tasks (where do you go to buy a pack of cards??), I have begun to slowly get used to the constant movement of the city and everything that comes with it. The sound of airplanes flying constantly from La Guardia over my apartment doesn't register any more. I can estimate how crowded the train will be based on what time I am leaving my apartment in the morning or TC in the evening. And although the feeling of always needing to do more still raises the specter of anxiety to make everything I do feel inadequate, I've become resigned to its presence to the point that it is part and parcel of the city itself. Solitude is rare in the city, but last week it was the norm All of these things fell apart this week though, one by one, as another phantom seeped into our lives. Starting with an email from our college president that optimistically called off only no...
Post a Comment
Read more

Holding Sand

 My mother once gave me the sound advice to avoid holding tightly onto things (she was specifically talking about people at the time) because if you do, they have a habit of slipping away. She did this through a marvelous metaphor that went like this: If you have sand in your hand and make a fist, the sand begins to fall out and you are left with less sand than you started with. If you gently cup you hand and let the sand come in however, it remains in your hand, and you can perhaps even add more. This metaphor has stuck with me because it helped me with the problem that I was having back then. But I’ve come back to it again and again and slowly been realizing the smaller and more subtle ways that I grab onto things. These things are now always visible or tangible, but they still have important implications. Take meditation. I meditate every day. It’s like brushing my teeth, I simply can’t skip this part of my day. But unlike brushing my teeth, which is a methodical and easy ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Monkey Mug

We have these mugs in our house that have Japanese-anime-style whales on them. Their smiles are wide and innocent, the shade of blue in which they swim is pleasant, not the sad kind that makes you cry inside. Years ago, my parents decided they wanted more of these mugs but the store they bought them in no longer stocked them. So we went online and discovered that there were yellow monkey mugs, and pink rabbit mugs too, a whole world of cute animal mugs that kept their chai hot long enough for them to slowly drink it each morning while they read the paper and ate khakra. So they ordered the monkey mugs. My mother only had my dad order 6 of them. Each mug is $12 so this felt like a splurge. The monkey’s joined the whales in the shelf, breaking up the sea of blue with their gentle yellow. She now regrets that decision. These mugs were already a Prized Possession then for their superiority to other mugs. But they are more valuable now because we can no longer find ...
Post a Comment
Read more