"A couple of days ago I had my two month anniversary of being in Croatia and it got me thinking how grateful I really am to be here. If I could go back and tell my past self one year ago where I'd be now I wouldn't believe myself. But that's how life goes; things happen so fast and you'll never know how it will be but I'm really happy my autumn turned out this way. I have one month left before I'll go back to Finland and I when I have to start thinking about my future all over again but I can definitely say I've grown during these two months so much. I'm thankful to all the people I've met, I will meet and myself for just going for it and volunteering in Croatia." 4/12/2018 - via Instagram That was a caption I wrote on Instagram the other day together with the picture on the left. I decided to use it again because it seemed to fit the theme of this post. Leaving Croatia. So as I quote Rob: Yesterday we bought plane tickets back to Funland. Now the time has come when I'll need to get back to "real world" and face the responsibilities I will have when I go back home (though Croatia has become another place I can call home which will lead us to the next topic). When I first got to know I'd spend my last months of 2018 in Croatia I honestly didn't have any big expectations. My approach to the country was suspiciously neutral since I had never been there nor really tried to figure out this beautiful nation in the Balkans. I just needed to get out of Lahti (my home town) for awhile and so I stepped in a plane and after two and a half hours I was in Zagreb. On the way I also met another Finnish girl who shared her experiences of living in Croatia with me and it was somewhat soothing to know there are other people with same kind of situations in life than me at the moment. First I was confused about everything, places, people, who is who, where should I be, what should I do? I had a mild culture shock because all the new things came at me all at once. But that's just normal I just didn't realise it at that moment so I was lost. But after some time I started settling in and all the things I was confused about became clearer. Sometimes I still feel lost but in a different way than in the beginning but sometimes it's good to wonder around and not to have everything handed to you on a silver plate. But you see my point is that after all that jizz I got to know people more and I got merged into the family as we now know it as Awkward Bound (it's a WhatsApp group name for those who are confused). I really think the name is more than suitable for us. Anyways, I feel like I've gained so much from our five OB volunteers (well six including me) and if you're reading this you can give a tap on your shoulder, good job you thought me something. Also I'm grateful for my mentor who has helped me in many situations and been a friend. Ivana, you also deserve one clap. And also a round of applauds for my super supervisor and all the others from our OB staff who were there to support my EVS journey. Now that the credits have been given we can continue on the next topic; What have I done and learned? Well, you'll get the answers for the first questions by reading my blog posts and the answer for the second question is still on the progress. But for the most I've learned about people. Others and myself. The ones back home and here. I now know how it feels to be far away from your loved ones but then again I've found new people I care about. Aaaand then I need to give them up soon also (for some time at least). Life is rough, huh? But the thing is that through out life I have to do that and that is an inevitable bad I can't run away from but it'll teach me acceptance. That everything will come to an end at some point and for me the end of this project is coming soon even though it just started. Naturally, I feel sad but I'm still going to concentrate on the positive parts. At least it happened, I was here and hopefully left some kind of trace of myself. Croatia definitely left its mark on me. I got so many memories out of this experience, new faces, new places, lots of love. I hope I was able to give that love back too to all the people I came across. If I didn't I still have a month left to do that so I better be fast! And to have a proof of this period of time I spent here, I'm working on a video with the other volunteers to have as memory (and there are also some promotional reasons behind it) so you'll probably see that as I may put a link of the video in here (as soon as it's done I mean). But all in all this is how I'm handling pain, no I mean departure, so hope you enjoyed being a part of my life for a little while. :) Sanni
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AuthorA younging Finn far from home living and breathing. Archives
January 2019
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