The next 37 days

"Everything has changed and yet, I am more me that I have ever been" - Unknown

Already since the first seminars and meetings back in my home country, all the volunteers have been telling us exchange students, how hard it is going to be to come back, how sad is the day you finally realize how little time you have left of your year or when you back your last shirt in your suitcase. Because we have heard this story for more than a year now, the story comes easily out of our mouths. We see how the number in the Day Counter app gets smaller and smaller and we complain how scary that is. Yet, it isn't that scary, it isn't that sad, we just have heard it soooo much, that the story kind of sticks. Like we have to say it, it's part of it all. And then it happens, totally by accident, out of the blue and then... then you'd want to cry. For me the feeling came on a Thursday, while on the bus to home form school. Just yesterday we went on a tour in the city with my Norwegian class and grilled by the fjord and  I felt like I've always been part of that class. No one is ignoring me like it was in the beginning and they know that I actually do understand what they are talking in Norwegian (although there are moments I pretend, but let that be our little secret). That Thursday was also a usual day. I went to school, spent time with my friends, understand what the teacher is talking about (at some point I thought it will never happen, yet here I am) and we made plans for the weekend with my classmates. A regular Thursday and so I'm sitting there on the bus, there are mountains in the far on my left and right. The mountain tops have still a tiny drop of snow on them, though it is about 15 degrees in the city. All the sugarcube shaped houses, which are mostly painted red, yellow or white with their little gardens around them. And then it happened, out of the blue, like a knife in the back (not that I really know how it feels, but yeah...). I have only 37 days left in Norway and then that's it. No more cyclers on the streets, mountains, fjords, the beautiful Nidaros catheral just a view streets down from me and no more of my friends. I have thought and told how sad it will be to leave, how difficult, but in that moment it hit me just like that.

Honestly, my first 2/3 of the year I didn't do anything. The only thing that held be back from giving up at some point and going home was my stubbornness. That if I'm not happy, then at least I'll be unhappy in Norway then go back to Estonia and have people think I gave up or say "I told you so". Nah, i was too proud for that. I think I have never been so proud of my stubbornness, because without it I wouldn't be her e now. I wouldn't have my new host family, my friends, my favourite teacher in school. Without it, I would have never felt as I do now, the pain and happiness mixed. I am sad, hurt, because I can't imagine the life without these people surrounding me, yet I am so grateful, that I have done, gone through and experienced enough to feel this way. I have so much here to miss. I have so much that I have to say farewell to and I do not want to!! One thing is to tell that and another things is to actually feel it. On that bus the feeling creeped up and suddenly I didn't want to reach my stop. I just wanted to sit there forever and watch those hills with snow, the little houses. I won't see them in a while I guess. This last 1/3 of my year is the best. I can say that I speak Norwegian, I have friends, I have Trondheim, which streets I know as well as the streets back in Estonia and now this all is taken from me. Or so it feels.

Of course I'll come back, of course I'll come and visit, but it will never ever be my exchange year again. It won't be the same, than to live here and only 37 days until that reality. When I come back, here wont' be my YFU sisters, who I could just call and tell: "Hey, losers! Be ready in 15, let's get coffee." I would have never thought, that at the end of this year there girls would be so dear to me. I can't imagine my year, if any of them wouldn't have lived in Trondheim, when any of them wouldn't be in my life. I don't know if  exchange students in other countries and cities are as tight as we, but they are like my little YFU family. My homies.

37 days to enjoy it all, do the last things on my bucket list, do some other stupid stuff, cause there is never enough of that, righ?

Okay, next 37 days, I'm not planning to waste you!

Kyss og klem,

Johanna