A year in Paraguay and the changes it brought
Maija Hannunkari's process of recalibration is taking its time
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By Johanna Pohjola
“Was it cool, then?”
The whole question seems an absurd one, impossible to answer, when you have just come back to Finland from a packed late-teens year as an exchange student.
All the ups and downs of those twelve months - how on earth are you supposed to distill it all into some snappy little answer?
“There really isn’t anything you can say to that, except to say ‘Yeah, it was cool’. You get this feeling that the person who is asking you isn’t really interested in what you have to say anyhow”, says Maija Hannunkari, who returned last summer from a year in Paraguay.
“Another infuriating comment is when they say ‘You haven’t changed a bit’. Of course you know you’ve changed a ton, and then after five minutes’ talking to you, someone says it’s good you haven’t changed.”
Hannunkari says she is still suffering difficulties arising out of her return.
The Espoo upper secondary school pupil’s absence file has had a record number of ticks this year.
Many of the friendships held dear before she left have gone by the wayside.
It has been hard to find anything to talk about with the old bunch she used to hang out with.
By contrast, others with whom she had only distant relations before have now become close friends.
“I knew coming back was going to be difficult. What I didn’t believe, all the same, was that it was going to be so hard. It’s mainly a matter of social difficulties, personal relationships.”
She wound up going to Paraguay more or less by accident. There were free places there on the programme, and the thought of a country far away appealed to her.
Maija kept in touch with Finland by phone and via the Net. Now the lines are buzzing between her and her family in Paraguay and as she stays in touch with other exchange students.
“I really couldn’t imagine when I went that it would be such a different country relative to Finland. Two completely different worlds. It feels right now that I don’t belong in either of them. That’s why I don’t have the energy to concentrate on either one”, says Hannunkari.
She has gone through her return with a psychologist. A trip now on the drawing board may also help.
She intends to take off for Paraguay for a month in the summer, accompanied by a friend who was also an exchange student in the same country.
“It motivates me and gives me energy”, says Maija Hannunkari.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 7.4.2008
More on this subject:
 Many (not so) happy returns
MAKING THINGS EASIER: Prepare well in advance
FACTFILE: The 1980s were the big decade for returnees
"Fortunately we have a home country to come back to"
Helsingin Sanomat
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