A year later

Yesterday, we celebrated the anniversary of our arriving here one year ago and today I remembered why I don't get drunk very often...the day after. :)

When we left Boston last year, both Iceland and Helsinki were warmer at the time even though friends and family were joking about how cold it would be in Finland. I was filled with both relief of getting everything done in time and anxiety for relocating to the great mostly unknown. It has been an interesting year with something new nearly every day. Relocating from Denver to Milwaukee isn't like expatriating to a place where everything including the language is utterly different than anything you're used to. It's a radical change even when you know what to expect. I had prepared myself for most of the issues that face expats though it was still a year of difficult times and difficult language classes. I remain optimistic about learning the language, but I think it will take a bit longer than I had originally anticipated.

I rode with Jarkko's father, HB and the bags from the airport in a borrowed van while Jarkko and his mother took a cab. I hadn't seen the apartment prior to our arrival and when Erkki turns to me as we were climbing the stairs and says, "It was a bit of a compromise." I braced myself for the worst-case scenario and the apartment was a lot better than I had feared after he said that. The wind howled and whistled through the bedroom window that night and I started to wonder why I couldn't have married someone from the British Virgin Islands or Fiji. :) We spent the next six months renovating the apartment and taking Finnish language classes so I didn't really have a lot of time to ponder the depths of the insanity of moving to Finland until midsummer and by then I found that I had grown quite fond of this small corner of the Nordic lands.

I don't really have any words of wisdom or insight on being an expat because I have seen that nearly everyone has a different experience. Adjusting to Finland has been difficult at times and easy at other times, but it hasn't been dull. You can prepare yourself for the larger obstacles, such as the language barrier, but the little things like not finding peanut butter where you expect to find it in the grocery are what will send you into bouts of petty despair. The dark, foggy days of November sneak up on you when you aren't looking, too. It has been a year of challenge and adjustment but I am curious to see how long it will be before Finland becomes as familiar and comfortable as home. I hope it isn't terribly soon as I'm still enjoying the newness of everything which people don't get the opportunity to enjoy very often in life, especially now that world is becoming a smaller, more familiar landscape all the time.