Skip to main content

Changing Seasons


The leaves in Turku are changing color. It took me by surprise for some reason, it feels like the change just crept up on me. I looked at the trees in the cemetery behind my apartment and suddenly realized they were no longer the sea of green that they had been two weeks ago.

The change from summer to fall used to make me a little sad. Fall meant the coming of cold weather, cloudy, shorter days and the stress of school resuming. The only way I appreciated the changing colors of the leaves was that they made me realize how green everything had been during the summer.

Last year was the first year when this feeling did not hit me at all. Everything was too new and exciting for me to care that the weather was changing, that classes were bringing copious amounts of work or that there was increasingly fewer daylight hours. In fact, I welcomed all of it as part of the adventure.

This year though, all of the nerves and apprehension returned. The newness of the Finnish adventure is gone, I thought. I felt that there was no possibility for this year to match the wonderful new people I had met last year or the opportunities I had found. And how much more could I have to learn about the new country I was in?

(This last one arose out of the despair the first two thoughts caused. There are, of course, plenty of new things to learn, they just require a little more effort to find.)

But the fall colors are coming again and I have found the changing of the season has also brought a change of perspective. Looking back at last year, I realized that my time here has been in phases, with different friends, activities, worries and adventures dominating each. They are like the planets moving in and out of your life, each combination bringing a unique tenor to your days.

This new year is a new phase. I have new people who have come in place of those who left. People who I look forward to baking homemade pop-tarts with, relaxing in summer cottages with, and attending dance shows with (not to mention drinking copious amounts of chai). They have their own stories to tell and interests to share. I have also found a rhythm to my work, to build from what we all started when we came to the LLEES program. And I have started to look to the future-- to what happens after this master’s is over.
While the new season for me has been easy to accept and find the good in, I know that this is not always the case. There are times when the combination of planets brings bad tides. But they will change again and eventually bring good again.

I am now welcoming the changing color of the leaves. I am welcoming fall and all the phases it will bring. And I am feeling gratitude for what past seasons have already brought.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Policy, Privilege and Pudding

Temptation incarnate I have now told myself that I really need to cut down on my sugar habit at least five times since coming to Berkeley. To be clear, this only counts the times I have said this with the serious will power to try changing my eating habits. There are numerous other times when I have thought I ought to change my eating whilst eating a cookie or buying the fourth ice cream in the past five days. My poor fellow has had to deal with listening to me say on every one of these occasions that this time will be different or listen to me dwell excessively on how the day went in terms of eating sugar for the entire time. He’s been a good sport about it and doesn’t judge me for my inability to stay away. I am about to start on my sixth endeavor. This time, I have set a time frame and I am planning on sticking to it. Even though it makes the hours seem so much longer as I continuously talk myself out of eating the chocolate pudding temptingly sitting in the fridge....
Post a Comment
Read more

Becoming Finnish

I have spent the past six months passionately insisting that I will never join in on the uniquely Finnish experience of ice sauna-ing. Ice sauna-ing is a made up word for one of Finnish people’s favorite past times: going to a sauna and then jumping into a freezing lake. My friend is extremely persuasive and after six months of describing her own sauna-ing adventures managed to get me to agree to join her and her husband at a public sauna near a river. The sauna itself is a small wooden building attached to locker rooms and a common area where you can sit and eat after you are done. The first thing that catches your attention is the bridge going out above the water. Around the bridge the water is freely moving but farther out you can see it is frozen over and covered in snow. At the end of the bridge there are six sets of stairs leading into the water. What arrests the eye though is the people walking out onto the bridge wearing swimsuits and confidently walking straig...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Simple Joys

Central Park My answer to people when they ask me how I like New York is to say something diplomatic like “I’m glad it’s only for five years” or “I’ll get used to it” or “It’s the complete opposite of Turku.” This last answer is my favorite to think about. Turku was quiet, peaceful, homogeneous, clean, easy-going. New York is loud, aggressive, diverse, dirty and rushed. I felt at home in Turku, I do not feel at home here. (Though diversity is one thing that New York has going for it over Turku) But there are small pleasures I have discovered and so I will devote this post to those small moments of joy in my new, temporary home. My version of coffee 1.      Coffee. This is not unique to New York— in fact, I actually make it at home so I could make it anywhere—but I have found that nothing compares to making a cup of Indian style cappuccino (hand whipped instant coffee with lots of sugar and only milk) while I read articles...
Post a Comment
Read more