Feeling homesick

I have less than 2 months left here and I'm feeling a bit sad. But also today I felt something for the first time in France: I'm homesick. I miss Finland. I miss exams in Finnish. I miss my pets, my friends and my studies. I miss winter! The winter here was so lame that I was almost depressed. I miss Finnish candy. I miss exchange students in Finland and having fun with them. I miss life where my grandmother was the only person to come to me and say "I don't like the pink part in your hair".

I'm sad that I had to realize that it was a wise decision to color my pink hair partly black before coming here. France lacks some kind of tolerance and is too old-fashioned for the hair that I had for 5 years. I had a friend who after 6 months came to me and told me that now she was used to my hair. I still have friends who say "it's not natural, dye it brown". I'm happy to go back to Finland and I'm already thinking of dying my hair pink again :) I miss a country where my personality was more important than my haircolor.

I miss knowing what I have to do when I get sick or something. I miss the feeling of knowing that the system works. I miss speaking a language that I can actually speak. I miss knowing that I'll pass my exams if I study. I miss having 3 hours to do each and every exam. I miss being able to have pets in my student apartment. I miss Finnish food (karjalanpiirakka!!). I miss less expensive calls and text messages. I miss a system where being on strike is rare. I miss a system where everything is based on trust and people want to help you.

I miss a system where they inform you if a class is cancelled and you'll find all the information on the internet. I miss being able to do my exams as many times as I wish without any penalty. I miss being able to surbscribe to exams and courses over the internet. I miss Finnish flexibility alltogether when it comes to studying. I miss people speaking foreign anguages. I miss a country where you can say your opinion about religion without someone getting hurt.

Well. I think I could come up with a longer list but I give up :) that's how I see Finland now. Open-minded, understanding young people, flexibility with studies and a working system. I'm not saying that I wouldn't live abroad anymore, the contrary :) I would love to live in other countries again some day. This is just a fraction of all the stuff that I'm going to miss when I leave Finland. Maybe next I'll do a list about what I'm going to miss from Paris :)

The cats in the picture are my future roommate's (but I <3 them so much)

About languages and winter

Timmy playing in snow in Finland

 I started thinking about languages today while giving a Finnish lesson to a French guy. He is a professor in this Uni and for some unknown reason he wants to study Finnish. He has already learned Swedish so he wanted to study something harder.

How difficult can it be to tell the difference between conjugations in your own native language? I really had to think a lot for good examples and such. I've already taught him the alphabets and prononciation and now I should move on to teaching verbs and such. Moreover I'm trying to teach him in French so at the momen it feels like too much work!

I'm thinking like crazy during the lessons trying to translate all the Finnish cases to French when they don't actually exist in French. It's giving me a headache even to think about it now. For tomorrow's lesson I have to think of good examples of conjugation and I'll teach him how to tell the time. Pfff...

Also tomorrow I have my German course after the Finnish course so I'll be happily in confusion when I go there :D

 The pictures don't have anything to do with languages - I know, but I also started to think about winter. I really miss it! Now in Finland it's around +5C and here it's +15C.  I'm already missing snow. And also a funny fact that I realized: people are using winter clother right now! I've seen people wearing same clothing that I use when it's more than -15C and I'm taking the dog out for a long walk. I find it so comical because I think those shoes are too warm to were when it's warmer than -15C :D Timmy in the pictures is my dog btw.

 A list of things that I miss at the moment:

- sauna
- polite people

- Finnish

- salmiakki!!

- my pets

- snow

- most of my clothes

- ease of studying

- hanging out with my friends

I miss Finnish sauna even though I almost never go there.. It's because it's so cold in my room and taking showers here doesn't guarantee that there is any warm water.

Polite people is on the list bacause today my copying card for printing and taking photocopies was stolen. I forgot it in the copying machine and when I remembered that I forgot it (less than 10 minutes later) it was already gone. In Finland I'm sure that someone would have just put it on top of the machine or taken it to someone in the library where I can pick it up later. 

Finnish is on the list because I miss speaking a language where I don't have to think so much about the words or be afraid all the time that I make a bad mistake. Unlike almost all the other exchange students here I don't have anyone to speak my mother tongue with. Of course it's easier for me to also study in Finnish and I miss studying with a language from which I understand all the words.

 Salmiakki, my clother and my pets, oh well. I can't have them here and that's why it's kinda hard. The same applies to being with my friends. I especially miss stuff that doesn't include alcohol or partying. For counterbalance I think I'm going to miss French cheese and living in a huge city.

Well I think I'd better go prepare my Finnish lesson for tomorrow. Ciao ciao!