As the semester is drawing to an end and winter is easing its way over Finland many of the year long Erasmus students are taking small trips back home to visit friends and family. Students are often surprised to find that their Erasmus studies do not end when they leave Finland. Once they return to their home country students are often faced with reverse culture shock making their once perfectly comfortable home country seem foreign or confusing as they begin to figure out what has changed within themselves.
Year long Erasmus students have a great opportunty to glance these subtle changes when they visit their home countries and often find a surprising sort of relief when they arrive back to the calm and silence of Finland. Ibrahim, a Nursing student from the UK, recently realized this when he took a trip to London. Afterwards he reflected on some things he had never noticed about his home city of London and found himself in awe of the beauty and nature that Finland provided upon his return.
Here is Ibrahim's reflection on Pori from the begining of August until now.
Ibrahim Ghazy
Academic Year 2013-2014
Home Country: UK
I have to say, I felt the need to write this post, as it is an important moment of my stay here in Finland. This time has been extremely remarkable in many ways.
Firstly, the change of weather, nature and atmosphere, I came here at the end of July when the sun only went down for few hours, I can remember enjoying my drink while watching the sunset at 11:30 am on a boat along the river in Pori, then few hours later at 2:30 am the sun comes up again. Now, the sun disappears at 16:00 pm and I wake at 7:30 am in complete darkness. The lush bright green trees everywhere all of the sudden tuned into complete beautiful golden yellowy, picky, reddish colour then few weeks later all the leaves completely gone.
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| View from my window in August |
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| View from my window in early November |
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| View from my window mid October |
One other important factor is that most of my friends, who I met during the EILC course and I met through my exchange period since August, will be gone by the end of this month. It will make me sad to see all of them go.
This massive transition and leavening and coming back to Finland during my autumn break inspired me to create two videos to show what I have experienced in the past few months. I made this also for all my friends who are going to leave Finland, as memory when they look at it, they remember the beautiful time that we spent together is this beautiful place.
Enjoy watching J
If you are interested in reading his full reaction and seeing the beautiful sights he saw in Pori, you can read his post here. He also has his first reactions to Finland posted on the same blogging site.
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