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All of the exchange students in Sweden, on the last day of their tour.
(Photo provided)

Last report from Finland

As the days wind down, a look back and ahead

Chelsea Kennard, a 2013 graduate of Watkins Glen High School and a two-time member of The Odessa File-sponsored Top Drawer 24 team of outstanding high school student-athletes, has been spending the past school year as an exchange student in Finland. This her fourth and final report on her experiences overseas.

By Chelsea Kennard

FINLAND, July 9, 2014 -- Every day each of us experiences a few little moments that have just a bit more resonance than other moments. We hear a word that sticks in our mind, due to a small experience that pulls us out of ourselves, if only briefly. For example, when I hear the word subway, my mind instantly jumps back to the time when I was lost in Paris trying to find the subway with eight other exchange students. One of the only languages lacking was, of course, French.

And if I were to collect these small moments in a notebook and save them over a period of months, I would see certain voices emerge that have been trying to speak through me. These moments have also had the power to turn everything inside out -- what is real becomes unreal, what is unreal becomes tangible. Traveling through 8 countries and 13 cities with 83 exchange students for one month didn’t simply take my breath away, but rather abruptly robbed every last molecule of air from my chest. To say the experience “shocked” me would be pathetic understatement. This “shock” faded suddenly, though, as we stepped off the ship from Sweden, left with only teary-eyed last goodbyes as we now found ourselves in Finland, marking the end of the tour.

We are an unlikely group of friends; all from different countries, backgrounds, most of us not even sharing a common native language, but somehow we are a testament to the fact that the depth of friendship does not depend on length of acquaintance.

Almost every day since our arrival back in Finland, one exchange student or more has reluctantly made the journey to the airport, going back to the places that they came from, returning to the same things they did last summer and every summer before, but with no idea how to proceed. A year has passed and it is now time for us to return to our worlds where we will be surrounded by everything familiar, and yet nothing will be the same. In no time at all, I will warily give my hugs here and, fighting the tears, say goodbye to the people who were once just names on a sheet of paper to return to people that I hugged and fought tears to say goodbye to before I ever left. We are leaving our best friends to return to our best friends.

As we come into our towns on those same recognizable roads, it will seem like only yesterday that we left, even though it has been a year. Some of us have already stepped into our old bedrooms, every emotion passing through us as we think back to our bedrooms of the past year, reflecting on the way our lives have changed and the people we have become. We realize that the things that were most important to us a year ago don’t seem to matter so much anymore, and the things we hold highest now, no one at home will ever quite understand. We also realize that everyone has to leave. Everyone has to go back home so they can love it again for all new reasons.

The hardest part of being an exchange student is balancing the completely different worlds we now live in. We try desperately to hold on to everything, every memory, all while trying to understand what it is we have to leave behind. We worry about who we will call first when we land in our countries, how we could possibly explain our exchange year to anyone who asks, including the people closest to us. And our thoughts are also consumed with the idea of time. How long will it be until we start missing our host country and how it differs from home? How long until I can see my host families and friends again? We’ve left our worlds to deal with the real world. We’ve challenged ourselves and have learned immensely.

Exchange is not as simple as learning whatever is taught in school. It’s about learning how to listen, how to speak, and how to think. Learning who you are, who your friends are and the type of people you want as friends. We now know the meaning of true friendship. We know who we have kept in touch with over the past year and who we have met over the past year that we now hold dearest to our hearts. We've had our hearts broken, we've fallen in love, we've helped our best friends overcome heartache, stress, and death. We've had to be helped through the same things as well and we've stayed up all night just to talk to a friend. There have been times when we've felt so helpless being hours away from home when we knew families or friends needed us the most, and there are times when we know we have made a difference.

You learn how to trust your innermost feelings, and how to find these feelings in the first place. You learn how to tolerate, how to accept, how to like and how to love. Learning how to give as you receive and how to trust that everything will even itself out on its own. You learn that your Mom and Dad do have the right answers sometimes, and that your little sister isn’t so little anymore.

Exchange is learning how to achieve, how to succeed, and how to accomplish. You learn how to not come in first place and still be proud, and how to come in last and admit that you could do better.

Learning that large parties don't necessarily mean a good time, and learning that loneliness doesn’t go away in a crowd, and that sometimes it’s okay to be on your own on a Friday or Saturday night. Learning that your lunchtime crowd doesn’t constitute your popularity, and that popularity is all a matter of perspective. You learn that boredom is simply laziness of the mind, and that watching three hours of TV isn’t quality relaxation time.

Exchange is about learning how to pack a bag and to pack away a room full of way too much stuff. Learning that people probably like you more than they’ll ever tell you and that it’s your responsibility to make sure your friends know how much you appreciate them.

Learning how to miss people enough to not stick them in the past, and how to not miss them so much that it keeps you from moving into the future. We have to apply this to our entire exchange year. We will have those days filled with sadness as we yearn for our host countries, but we will eventually learn how to balance.

As I see my time dwindling here, I realize that days from now I will leave. Just days from now I will take down my pictures, and pack up my clothes. No more walking into town just to take a walk. No more speaking my second language every day. I am leaving my friends whose random messages and phone calls brought me to laughter and tears. I am taking my memories and dreams and putting them away for now, saving them for my return to this world.

The world where I learned to grow up and be my own person.

Just days from now I will arrive. I will unpack my bags and have dinner with my family. I will return to the same friends whose random messages and Skype calls have brought me to laughter and tears over the year. I will unpack old dreams and memories that have been put away for the past year. In just days I will dig deep inside to find the strength and conviction to adjust to change and still keep my friends in all corners of the world close.

And somehow, in some way, I will find my place between these two worlds.

Photos in text:

From top: Chelsea Kennard, with the Eiffel Tower in the background; a model of the Eiffel Tower in the foreground, with the real thing in the background; Exchange students posing in front of a German museum; and a small section of a "lock bridge" in Paris, where padlocks left there by visitors express love and wishes. (Photos provided)

 

To see Part 1 of Chelsea's account, visit SchuyLines.

To see Part 2 of Chelsea's account, click here.

To see Part 3 of Chelsea's account, click here.

 

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Charles Haeffner
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