Leaving my host family

Monday morning I had to wake up really early (earlier than for school) to go to Tampere Rautatieasema (train station) to catch my train to Helsinki. It was also the morning that I’d be leaving my host family and my Finnish house. I must say that it was a bit awkward to leave, since staying with my family in their house in Nokia became so normal. We all knew I was leaving, but we just tried to keep our morning as normal as we possibly could.

I got ready just like every other morning, had my open-faced sandwich breakfast with coffee (caffeine…) and pretty quickly I was back in my room putting my two backpacks on along with my suitcase (I packed the two days before then).

And then we said bye. I tried to put myself away from this moment as much as possible, and I guess not thinking about what was happening too much helped. It still felt really weird to leave the house and family I’d been living in for over a month though. I said bye to my mom Anne, and my brother Eeti and left the house. I saw my other brother for the last time the night before because he was staying the night at his grandpa’s house. I didn’t say bye to my host dad, Matti, because he was the one taking me to the train station. We drove the twenty minutes or so it takes to get from Nokia to downtown Tampere and it just seemed like any other normal car ride I had taken with him (except it was super early in the morning). The ride was filled with useless facts being streamed from one of us to the other, just like I would do with my biological dad.

When we got to the train station, Matti and I met up with two other Tampere students, Emily and Tristan, along with Emily’s host mom and sister. We went up to the platform to find our train and then that was the time I said bye to the last of my family. I said bye to my host dad right in front of the door to train car number two, and then I was off. My host family and I have unofficial plans of meeting in the coming years, so I think that kept me from getting even more weird about leaving. But of course, I was sad to leave my favorite Finnish family. My family.

Eeti, Ante, Anne, me, and Matti