Christmas in Finland 19-29.12.2006

This posting is coming now funnily not in chronological order but let's write it anyway. So just some thoughts from Christmas time in Finland... During the Christmas time I visited my friends in Tampere, my friends and family in Varkaus and friends and family in Helsinki. I think I just concentrate on describing my emotions; describing how it felt to go back to home, go back to Finland after being the longest time (4 months) in my life abroad… Otherwise there didn't happend anything so special during that time.

For the ones who have experienced returning home after a long time being abroad this won’t be anything new. For me it was something strange to go back to home, to go back in Finland. My feelings of being back in Finland were two sided: on the other hand it was really nice to be back but on the other hand it was really sad.

The couple of months that I had spent abroad in Berlin had taught me a lesson. Now I know for sure that I don’t want to get stuck in Finland. No way! Now I’m sure that during the next few years I want to travel around, experience, see new places, meet new people and learn about the World and myself. I would like to live in several different countries in different cultures. At the moment I have a feeling that I might never live in Finland permanently. At the moment I feel that I have "levottomat jalat" (Finnish -> restless legs) as one friend described it. On the other hand I’ve also learned, that you should never say never. Life is so strange, it pushes you around and you will never know where you will end up one day…

When writing this I don’t mean that I wouldn’t like Finland. I think that Finland is one of the best places on Earth to live, to grow up and to have a family. But I mean that I don’t want to stay there. In Berlin I have learned that one learns a lot about oneself when living abroad. I have already learned a lot during those few months in Berlin.

However the Christmas in Finland was nice. It was really nice to see family and to meet friends. It was the best to meet them again! They mean the most to me! One nice thing when being back in Finland was also that suddenly people understand you and you understand them:) And of course there are some things that I really love about Finland. In fact I am sure that I would always miss some things from there because Finland has really strongly affected on my personality, on me as a human being. Therefore I will always be inseparable in a way from Finland.

I don’t know if anything above made any sense. I wrote it almost with using mind stream method...