Long Needed Update

Well, I guess it's that time of year again, time for me to update whoever is still reading this (which is a surprisingly large amount more than I ever thought) about what I've been doing here in Finland.

This time it's been three months since my last update. So I've got a lot to cover.

It's really getting to that time of the year that every exchange student dreads. The days when we realize that this in not to last. The best things in life never do last long, and nothing we can do will change it, so accept it and enjoy what we were blessed enough to experience at all. So my main goal for these next two months is to live in the moment and not worry about what I'll be missing later, because after I leave I would only be able to look back and see how I spent the most important time worried about what memories I will have to look back on.

Now, time to try and remember some of the things that I've done over the last few months.

I went to Stockholm by a cruise ship for a day.

Danced in the Wanhat where you practice classic European ballroom dances and then present them to the school and parents.

Went to Lapland for a second time, touring a reindeer farm, went cross country skiing up a tunturi (mountain in Lapland), went in the hole in the ice before sauna, went downhill skiing, saw the Northern Lights twice, and toured an ice castle.

I went to St. Petersburg for a weekend, and

I went to some pretty big museums.

So that's basically a quick run over of the big things I've done in the last three months. I've also moved to my third host-family, given my goodbye speech, I went to Helsinki twice, once was to see a musical performance of Broadway classics. I took the Finnish National Fluency Test, at the beginner level, which by the way requires advanced knowledge of the Finnish Language.

This weekend I go to Kuopio for a Rotary conference with the rest of my district's exchange students, and those are always a good time for everyone. 

The things I've done this year have far surpassed my greatest expectations. I reached a point two months ago where I realized that if tomorrow I were sent home for some unknown reason, I would be 100% content with the way I lived this year and the only regret I would have is that my time here is so limited.

I didn't believe it to be possible to become so attached in such a short period of time. Of course I am excited to go home and share my stories and travels with my family, but I'm afraid to leave because I know that as soon as I step foot on that plane, there is a chance I might never come back, and I can't have that. But, as I wrap up living through one of my life dreams, it's time to explore and set my eyes on another, because what are your dreams worth if you never set out to make them a reality. 

It's a bit late, so I'm going to forego editing and make a hasty decision to just post this as is. Hopefully my English hasn't become so terrible that I can no longer express myself in a grammatically correct way. But, it probably has, and I could care less.