I am going to Finland. I am going to be an au-pair. I am going to be an au-pair in Finland. I have to repeat it a couple of times so I maybe believe it. I got tired of not being able to win any scholarship at my university to this country so one night I just signed up to aupair-world.com and filled my profile in EN and FI. I browsed my families but didn't message any. The one who seemed the nicest and I totally wanted to message them messaged me the day after and we seemed to like each other enough. And here I am, with a plane ticket in my hand and I totally cannot believe and really understand this whole thing.
When I was 12-13 years old I was completely crazy about Finland. You know how it works with teenagers and fanatism, almost everybody becomes a fan of something or gets idols and so, it is a psychological thing and they need it. It won't surpise anybody, I got to know and fell in love with Finland because of Finnish metal. My first favourites were Lordi, Nightwish, Sonata Arctica, then Korpiklaani and so on. I was a Finland freak and believed it was simply awesome, if there was a Church of Finland I would have joined. Then I graduated from the secondary school and got to university where I finally got to study the language. The years before I had been already learning some words and expressions and asking Finnish friends to help me, which of course gave me something, but not too much. And then there I was, doing the thing for which I would have given anything in my teens. And loving it, of course. Because the teenage fanatism didn't get lost just changed. I still abolutely love this language and enjoy studying it and love listening to it. I learnt about the country, its culture, its history and its literature and there is something lovely in it still. There is a lot to admire in how Finland works, and I am very ok with the 'It is ok to be alone. It is also ok to be silent.' mentality.
And now I am going there. It will not be the first time that I am far away from home, I live anyway in a dormitory in Budapest and only visit home sometimes just once in a month, but I have also been to Germany from my secondary school with a social scholarship for 10 months and I only visited home for Christmas. So I am quite used to travelling, being on my own, being alone and in a completely foreign place - and you know what? I enjoy it. I don't know what it feels like to be homesick. In Germany maybe I cried just once when I was visiting a friend and staying at her house for a week when I had holidays. They had a little son who wanted everybody to care about him and I got frustrated and also wanted somebody to finally care about me too, because noone had in the past months. But apart from that, I was very ok. So now I am also not afraid that, of distances, of travels and of so. I won't lie, I am a bit stressed about the responsibility that comes, I will be taking care of a 3 year old and a 5 year old lively little boy. If they will be with me for hours, then it will be totally my responsibility. I think of myself as a responsible person, but of course, this gives me some stress. And then, the language. I have studied Finnish already for two years and I can express myself on an OK level both written and spoken, just spoken communication goes slowly, and I am not too good at understanding. Finns are hard to understand, the colloquial language is coommpleetely different from what they write, trust me. On the class sometimes we deal with the colloquial forms, but it is not so much. If I really want the conversation to flow, I just switch to English. I don't know what I should be more thankful for, that the mother speaks English well and we will get understood or that the father speaks only Finnish and I will be forced to use the language. And the children... I believe they will laugh at me for expressing myself funnily and making mistakes. The first week will be surely tough :)
And then, it will be a very sudden change, once I am at home, and suddenly I am at a new place. But I will have my own room, that is so cool. I feel that suddenly I will need to know so many things. What are children? What do they eat? How to get them tired? How to get them calm from a hysteria? Yeah, this last is a huge matter for me and a big question mark in my head.
Two weeks, two exams, and a long -long packing period yet to come. I need to pack for 9 months. After Finland there comes Estonia. Let's make it big. Avagy ha lúd, legyen kövér. Ez már obese lesz.
