I'm home 4 months early
Hi there again
it's been a while but I hope you'll understand, at least after reading this text.
I had to return home early but that was a decision neither me or my parents could've affected.
I had to return home early but that was a decision neither me or my parents could've affected.
What? When? Why? How?
So what happened?
Everything leads back to the coronavirus.
About a month ago everything was still quite normal in Chile but as you all know, the coronavirus started spreading very fast and before we even knew it, there was a lot of countries in which the amount of people with the contagion so high they decided to close the borders. It was around that time the first confirmed cases of the covid-19 aired in Chile. When the virus originally started spreading in China, many exchange students in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc. got sent back home, so we knew that if the virus started spreading more, there could be a possibility of us being sent home if it got really bad at our host countries. Regardless, that felt really far away at that point, we exchange students (in Chile) didn't really believe it would get there, at least not that fast. Everyone
was making memes about it. Little did we know what was coming.
Two weeks ago, on Friday 13th (!!!!) of March, I got to know that the two guys (from Norway & Denmark) I was staying in San Fernando with, were being sent back home. That was because their families wanted them to get back, or at least that's what I understood. That was heartbreaking, even more so because the Norwegian had less than 24 hours to his flight, but we didn't know when the Danish was going back.
That same afternoon I talked with Ilona, the other Finn in Chile. We were lowkey panicking because we weren't ready to leave Chile and the lives we had built there yet. During the next day our exchange student group chat was also filling with screenshots of emails and social media posts from AFS staff in other countries. First they said that all AFS programs in Europe will be suspended and later it changed to all countries. We had gotten nothing official from AFS Chile nor from AFS Finland, so we (I) decided to keep a positive mentality. No news is good news right?
On Sunday 15th of March when I woke up, I noticed my parents had called me and asked to call them back when I wake up. I already at this point knew what it was about and they finally confirmed it to me when I called them: they had gotten an email from AFS Finland saying all the exchange students will be sent home. I processed the news for a while by myself before telling my family in Chile. That same day we were supposed to go to Santiago to get some things to my brother's future apartment and on the way I got an email from AFS Chile saying the same thing, I would be leaving Chile as soon as possible.
My sister's birthday was on Monday so we invited some of our closest friends to our house to "celebrate her birthday" which was actually to tell them that I have to leave early which most of my friends already knew. Some of my friends couldn't make it because as the whole world was closing down, so was Chile. Borders were set to close and a quarantine was happening, a lot of parents restricted their children from going out. Regardless of that some couldn't make it, I was still lucky to see most of them. There is a lot of exchange students who I know didn't have the chance to say goodbye to anyone.
The next couple of days were quite blurry, I remember crying a lot but I was also trying to enjoy my last moments in Chile. Those couple of days were also probably the longest days of my life. Pretty much every minute I was checking my emails for more information on my passages back home. I had entered a stage where I had already made my peace with the fact that I have to leave earlier and I just wanted to get home as quickly as possible, the hardest part was to sit still and wait uncertainly. It was horrible, It kinda felt like I was just floating above the time which wasn't moving at all. Well, on Wednesday I received my flights. I was supposed to fly from Santiago to Paris and so on to Helsinki on Friday night. "Great, finally some closure" I thought. Oh well, turns out our flight from Santiago to Paris had been to changed to leave from Buenos Aires instead of Santiago, so now we were out of flight. We quickly got new flights on Thursday morning and we would be flying a couple of hours earlier on a route Santiago - Saõ Paulo - Frankfurt - Helsinki.
On Thursday I packed my bags and met my AFS volunteer for the last (and the first) time, and on Friday morning I was all set to go. I said goodbye to my brother in the house since he had to stay and study but my other family came to drop me off at the bus terminal. Before leaving I had left my chilean flag to my room for my sister to give it to my friends if they want to write something to it, so they could send it to me afterwards but as we were in the terminal my sister gave me a flag which had messages from my whole family and my closest friends, which was so sweet. The goodbyes altogether were quite emotional, keeping in mind we didn't know when we would see each other again. At 10 am sharp I got on the bus and started my journey to Finland.
In the bus terminal an AFS volunteer was waiting for me and we drove to the airport. At the airport I finally met Ilona and we hugged, even though it was kinda against the rules, but we figured that if we were gonna be the next about 30 hours together sharing our germs anyways, one more hug wouldn't hurt us. We were given masks to wear in the airplane and airports (picture attached yes don't worry) and after dropping off our slightly too heavy luggage we continued our journey through passport control and so on to our first flight. A few people have asked me about the precautions on the airports so, yes, there was a lot of announcements through the loud speakers both in the airports and the planes about the symptoms and instructions what to do if you feel sick and the bathrooms had signs reminding you to wash your hands constantly but there wasn't any kinds of concrete checks done at any of the airports.
On Sunday 15th of March when I woke up, I noticed my parents had called me and asked to call them back when I wake up. I already at this point knew what it was about and they finally confirmed it to me when I called them: they had gotten an email from AFS Finland saying all the exchange students will be sent home. I processed the news for a while by myself before telling my family in Chile. That same day we were supposed to go to Santiago to get some things to my brother's future apartment and on the way I got an email from AFS Chile saying the same thing, I would be leaving Chile as soon as possible.
My sister's birthday was on Monday so we invited some of our closest friends to our house to "celebrate her birthday" which was actually to tell them that I have to leave early which most of my friends already knew. Some of my friends couldn't make it because as the whole world was closing down, so was Chile. Borders were set to close and a quarantine was happening, a lot of parents restricted their children from going out. Regardless of that some couldn't make it, I was still lucky to see most of them. There is a lot of exchange students who I know didn't have the chance to say goodbye to anyone.
The next couple of days were quite blurry, I remember crying a lot but I was also trying to enjoy my last moments in Chile. Those couple of days were also probably the longest days of my life. Pretty much every minute I was checking my emails for more information on my passages back home. I had entered a stage where I had already made my peace with the fact that I have to leave earlier and I just wanted to get home as quickly as possible, the hardest part was to sit still and wait uncertainly. It was horrible, It kinda felt like I was just floating above the time which wasn't moving at all. Well, on Wednesday I received my flights. I was supposed to fly from Santiago to Paris and so on to Helsinki on Friday night. "Great, finally some closure" I thought. Oh well, turns out our flight from Santiago to Paris had been to changed to leave from Buenos Aires instead of Santiago, so now we were out of flight. We quickly got new flights on Thursday morning and we would be flying a couple of hours earlier on a route Santiago - Saõ Paulo - Frankfurt - Helsinki.
On Thursday I packed my bags and met my AFS volunteer for the last (and the first) time, and on Friday morning I was all set to go. I said goodbye to my brother in the house since he had to stay and study but my other family came to drop me off at the bus terminal. Before leaving I had left my chilean flag to my room for my sister to give it to my friends if they want to write something to it, so they could send it to me afterwards but as we were in the terminal my sister gave me a flag which had messages from my whole family and my closest friends, which was so sweet. The goodbyes altogether were quite emotional, keeping in mind we didn't know when we would see each other again. At 10 am sharp I got on the bus and started my journey to Finland.
In the bus terminal an AFS volunteer was waiting for me and we drove to the airport. At the airport I finally met Ilona and we hugged, even though it was kinda against the rules, but we figured that if we were gonna be the next about 30 hours together sharing our germs anyways, one more hug wouldn't hurt us. We were given masks to wear in the airplane and airports (picture attached yes don't worry) and after dropping off our slightly too heavy luggage we continued our journey through passport control and so on to our first flight. A few people have asked me about the precautions on the airports so, yes, there was a lot of announcements through the loud speakers both in the airports and the planes about the symptoms and instructions what to do if you feel sick and the bathrooms had signs reminding you to wash your hands constantly but there wasn't any kinds of concrete checks done at any of the airports.
Our flights went by great, our hand luggage was a bit too heavy to carry around and we were super tired but we made it through all three flights. It felt very weird to hear people speak Finnish on the gate of our last flight since we hadn't hear anyone speak Finnish in months. Well we finally made it to Finland, after over 30 hours traveling. Seeing my family felt quite weird but at the same time nice. The first thing I did when I came home, I obviously went to sauna and self-quarantined myself for two weeks.
I've now been two weeks quarantined at home, trying a lot of new stuff to keep my thoughts busy, but this starts to be really long already and I just want to get this published so about I'll try to write about my quarantine more in the coming days. Thank you for reading, see you soon again!
In the meantime, stay at home!!
Saara
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