Vaihtariblogiko?

Vibe check I have been here in Finland for two months already, crazy!! I thought I'd write some things down and tell those who might be interested in how I've been coping during these weeks :D Disclaimer: this is quite confusing but I felt like I needed to get a closure to my blog posting -saga, so here you go. How does it feel to be in Finland again? I would say that this is actually the question I have gotten asked the most since I came back. I mean it does feel a bit weird yes but honestly, I thought it would've been worse. The first few days I was kinda waiting for something to feel different, I thought I'd be hit by the reverse culture shock as well, which I've heard can be quite common when coming back from a such a different culture. I think I was the most weirded out by the fact that I did not feel like anything had changed. Obviously now the whole world is in a situation that is indeed quite odd and nobody was really prepared for it so my theory ...

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. 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 e...

Eritttttäin hyvää huomenta ...Tai iltaa tai päivää tai iltapäivää, paljon kello nyt ikinä onkaan kun tätä lueskelet. Ajattelin taas vaihteeks tehä yhen blogipostauksen suomeksikin :D Lomalla Kuten oon täällä blogissa jo useesti maininnutkin niin oon tällähetkellä kesälomalla, ollut jo joulukuun alusta asti. Nyt lomalla on tullut tehtyä kaikenlaista, mutta lähinnä oon keskittynyt rentoutumiseen, en oo ottanut stressiä yhtään mistään, nyt vihdoin kun espanjan kielikin on kunnolla alkanu sujumaan. Tällä hetkellä fiilikset on aika hyvät, vaikka kyllä se koti-ikävä sieltä vähän pilkottaakin. Vaikka jo yli puolenvälin oonkin, tätä mun seikkailua on kuitenkin vielä about 5 kuukautta jäljellä.  Mitäs kaikkea sitä on sit tullu tehtyä? Käväsin tammikuun lopulla Santiagossa Fantasilandia -nimisessä huvipuistossa kavereiden kanssa, jossa sain auringonpistoksen ja aivan järkyttävän päänsäryn, mutta siitäkin selvittiin.  Lähes koko helmikuun oon ollu "yksin" kotona, kun mun is...

Hi there!!  This is gonna be a long one so I hope you got time As you all know, now in January I took a bit of a break from writing to my blog. But there's a reason for that. In the first few weeks I wasn't really doing anything, so I had nothing to write about and for the past two weeks I've been busy vacationing and getting to know Chile a bit better. So here's some highlights from January ;) January 2020202020202020202020202020 Things that happened during January: I slept. On a trampoline. Outside. Which maybe wasn't that smart but we did it anyway with our friends. Although I was pretty much the only one who actually slept. For about three hours in bits but that's still something. For the rest of the day I was just taking naps because I was so tired lol. I played a lot of ultimate and a bit of basketball. I also had a basketball game where I - obviously - got my 5th foul in the fourth period and flew to the shower. Yes, we all thought th...

Happy new year!! Currently still in 2019 as I am writing this but when I publish this in a few days we'll already be counting days for the end of the next year and decade. Lol hopefully not though. Christmas On Christmas eve I called back home to my family. There At my house, having christmas dinner was my mom, my dad, my sister and her boyfriend, my grandparents and my uncle's family, as in my cousins. I also called separately to my aunt and cousins who weren't there and wished them merry christmas. I've actually never seen a christmas dinner so big at my house, and of course just this year I wasn't invited :( ahaha no just kidding I had a great christmas dinner with my family here in Chile. The actual dinner was a bit different from the usual traditional Finnish christmas dinner but it was really good, and we spent pretty much the whole day preparing it and the cocktails that came before the dinner. After eating we opened presents. My mom and sister had sen...

Hi there It's been a while. I don't really know why I ever decided to start writing a blog since I knew very well I would run out of motivation eventually. I thought by writing a blog I could get people in Finland (and elsewhere) informed on how and what am I doing here and that afterwards I wouldn't have a hundred persons asking me how am I actually doing. Oh boy was I wrong ahahaha keeping a blog has definitely scraped off a few of the extra questions but I still get a lot of q's about a lot of things, such as my weekly schedule and wellbeing. Oh and one of my friends still thinks that I'm in France.  Now that this unnecessary rant is over, I'm just gonna say that I'm not giving up on this blog thing, at least not yet. So here, have a quick summary of my December so far. December in a nutshell During December, I decorated the christmas tree, left my school for summer vacations, celebrated Finland's independence day, wrapped christmas prese...

Today, on December 6th we celebrate the independency in Finland. In honor of the independence day I'm going to write this text in Finnish, so take in mind that if you are translating the text, the translations will not be accurate. Hyvää itsenäisyyspäivää! Näin itsenäisyyspäivän kunniaks aattelin kirjata ylös jotain asioita Suomesta. Nää asiat saattaa olla jotain mitä ikävöin tai mitä oon alkanu Suomesta arvostaa ihan uudella tavalla täällä ollessani. En siis tosiaankaan vielä nyt kirjottaessani oo ihan kartalla et mitä tää tulee sisältään mut ehkä tää tästä vielä kokonaiseks tekstiks muodostuu. Tänään, 6.12.2019, kun itsenäinen Suomi täyttää 102 vuotta, mä oon maailman toisella puolella Chilessä. Itsenäisyyspäivään, ainakin meidän perheessä, kuuluu jonkinnäköisiä perinteitä. Tänä vuonna itsenäisyyspäivänä en siis pääse katsomaan linnan juhlia taikka tuntematonta sotilasta, paleltumaan iltapäiväkävelyllä kun en oo laittanut tarpeeksi vaatetta päälle, käymään isoisoäidin Gre...

Hi hei hola hello again As you know, I   haven't been that productive here in my blog during November. Took a break from writing, tried to keep at least myself on the same page with me. The truth with it is that I've been dealing with a terrible tiredness (involving a few breakdowns) and I just haven't felt like writing. Trying to keep this blog as real as possible, without hiding any problems, so if you find that interesting, keep on reading. Now things are going a bit better than before and I thought I'd write something here quickly. Let's see how this evolves.  Are you even tired? As I said, I have been incredibly tired now during November. This would probably be normal if I was in Finland since Kaamosmasennus  is a real thing, and the lack of sunlight does actually affect you in ways you can't even imagine / remember before it starts to affect you, again .  But here in Chile  the sunlight is on a really  decent level so this just can't be about...

Happy Halloween! ..oops I'm late with the halloween thing Time for me to write some new stuff here :) There isn't much to tell from the past weeks EXCEPT there actually is since I realised that I haven't really been talking about what I've been doing here. (can you see my memory is not the best kind) Nevertheless I thought I'd make this one about my general feelings, kinda in honor of three months here in Chile, but I'll also make a quick summary (in a nonsense order) of what's been going on during October. Also as a side note, the situation in Chile has still not cleared entirely, and probably won't fully clear up anytime soon. The people are still demanding better human rights, there is a lot of marches and for example schools and stores have been functioning on a more limited schedule. Two international summits (APEC & COP25) scheduled to be organised in Chile in the next two months have been canceled due to the unstable state of the coun...

Mitä Chilessä tapahtuu just nyt? Tää blogiteksti tulee olemaan vähän erilainen. Kuten osa on varmaan jostain lukenutkin, Chilessä on aloitettu mellakoimaan, eikä pelkästään ihan pienellä mittakaavalla. Tässä postauksessa yritän selittää että mitä täällä oikein tapahtuu. Omat lähteeni ei välttämättä myöskään ole 100% luotettavia, lähinnä chileläisiltä kuultua ja sosiaalisessa mediassa useasti esiintynyttä tietoa. Tämän postauksen tarkoituksena ei myöskään ole rauhoitella ketään, vaan kertoa asiat niinkuin ne on. Medianäkyvyys tän asian osalta on jo valmiiksi aika vähäistä ja puutteellista / virheellistä, että tätä postausta ja / tai muuten tietoa tapahtuvasta saa vapaasti (ja mieluusti) jakaa.  Vietin siis itse viime viikonlopun Santiagossa orientaatioleirillä muiden vaihto-oppilaiden kanssa. Mä, ja muut vaihto-oppilaat ollaan kaikki turvassa. Itse tällä hetkellä omassa kotikaupungissa, jossa tapahtumat ei ole niin radikaaleja. Chilen pääkaupungissa Santiagossa alkoi siis ...

It has again been a while since my last blog posting oops.. But here I am again writing about my week since I can actually write about it without the text being just a stub :D Quality content (not) but here you have it, enjoy :) Last weekend we went to buy me the last pieces of my school uniform, and a pair of shoes to use with it. I'm not feeling that comfortable with the skirt yet but I guess that's just a minor downside that I'll have to (and I will) deal with. The skirts were a bit too big for me so we had to drop them off to some woman who will sew them to fit me better. Not waiting too anxiously for next Tuesday when I have to start using the uniform... but anyways! I did my first test here on Monday! It was obviously maths since I can't really understand that much of any other subjects yet (and so far we haven't had tests in English). The test was about second grade equations and inverse functions (probably had something else to it as well but I don'...

The week of Fiestas Patrias Ok so this past week I didn't have school, because of fiestas patrias. So during this week, we were all celebrating Chileanity and the independence of Chile. This meant a lot of dancing and even more food. Everywhere I have been now during september, I have seen Chilean flags. Literally everywhere. On our front yard, there is also a Finnish flag, which was a super nice thing to do, even though I didn't even ask for it. The national dance of Chile is Cueca which was danced everywhere in Chile during this week. I myself am a terrible dancer so it was kinda relieving for me to find out that in my school, unlike many other chilean schools, dancing cueca is not obligated. Instead I did get to ride a mechanical bull, play musical chairs and participate in tug of war. We even came the king and queen of sack race with Pedro! That's pretty much all I did on the last day of school before the break. In the friday evening we had the first roast o...

THIS ONE IS GOING TO BE IN FINNISH. Finnish is the enemy of all the translators so take that in mind if you are reading a translated version of this and it gives you some really weird sentences. Mitä mä oikee teen tääl? Ja muuta turhaa Aattelin nyt tänne kertoo vähä et mistä mun normi viikko koostuu pääasias, koska en nyt tiiä mistä muustakaa kirjottaisin. Herään jokasena kouluaamuna 6.30, ja syön aamupalaa joka on joka aamu kupillinen pikakahvia ja pala leipää juuston kans. Ei mulla siitä oikeestaan mitää valitettavaa oo, aika jees vaan saada aikaseks syötyy jotain. :D (tunnustan täs vaihees et suomessa ei oikeestaan koskaan tullu syötyy aamusin mitään) Mul on siis koulua maanantaista torstaihin 8.00-14.30, ja perjantaina 8.00-13.45, joka on aika sama mitä mul oli suomessa. toi on kuitenki semi harvinaista et päivät loppuu jo noin aikasin, useimmissa kouluissa tunnit loppuu joskus viiden tai jopa kuuden aikaan, ja niissä on keskellä päivää lounasbreikki millon voi käydä kot...

Have I actually been here in Chile for a  month  already?  First of all, oops skipped a week with this blog thing, sorry not sorry, probably gonna skip even more in the future. My brain just simply does not work. Also there's so much more I feel like I should tell about but my brain is just overlapping right now (it has been like this for too long lol I should do something about it) so I can't really form sentences that would make sense oops. I also want to get this out as soon as I can so I'll just probably leave it here. Maybe some day we're gonna hear about everything else as well. But for now you'll gonna have to settle with this. Enjoy (or don't, I don't really know) A month?? Feels like it's been maybe like a week or something.  I never really believed it, when ex-exchange students told that a year is actually a quite short amount of time and you don't necessarily have the time to do everything you want. But now that it has been a month ...

Feelings about Chile so far How am I feeling right now ? Right now, when I'm writing this, very frustrated. I had written a lot to this but somehow I managed to delete it all and here I am, writing all of this again but you know it's fine it's not like I don't have time for it or anything. I probably also would've rephrased the whole thing again which I did not do in my previous text and I think it was kinda stiff to read. Aiming for this to be better than that lol. Enjoy Culture shock? Don't know her. If I am to believe what my afs books tell me, the fact that I am so tired all the time is because of the cultural shock we're supposed to be having. But I would probably say that for me, the cultural shock stops there. I mean yes, Chilean culture is very different to the Finnish culture and I haven't been used to saying hello with a kiss on the cheek, being stared at just because I'm blonde, being transferred everywhere by car and even having...