Life in Jyvaskyla .

I stopped writing for a while. It's not because my life wasn't interesting enough. I didn't feel like sharing my life experiences, mainly because I spent the last two months organizing this life I'm living right now. My Erasmus life.

I left Italy last Monday, January the 4th. I was already packing through Christmas holiday and that is also why I haven't done posts regarding presents and other christmas related stuff. After December the 25th time passed by and few days after New Year's Eve I already was on a plane.
From Rome to Helsinky, 8 hours waiting, from Helsinky to Jyvaskyla. I arrived at my apartment at 2 a.m. and I was completely shocked by the weather. It was -26 (Celsius degree). The days after it also dropped to -33. Even my eyelashes became white, covered in ice. It was a real trauma, I even asked myself ''Why the hell did I choose to come here instead of Spain?".

However, I managed to survive and I'm still alive ! After this life-threatening experience I decided to start writing again, in order to let everybody know that I'm fine and Alive.
Just kidding ;) I boughed myself a good pair of woolen socks (for way too many euros, but that's another story).
Truth is that I found myself having a lot of spare time. My life is actually bounded by bus's time tables and the few hours of light they have here in Finland. Yes, I wrote light because sun is pretty rare to experience. I'm still trying to synchronize my biological clock with the local one. I need to admit that I appreciate their over-spiced food. They use ginger and cinnamon on everything ❤

I met many new people, surprisingly a lot of Italians. All students here in Erasmus with who I daily share many adventures, difficulties, experiences and discoveries. I'll slowly try to talk with each one of them, but after a week I obviously know my neighbors an flatmates only.

I already noticed that in my luggage I managed to take with me my clumsiness and  bad luck.
- I locked myself out of my own room on the 2nd day. The doors in the different apartments lock themself automatically both from the inside and the outside. I took my shower and discovered that the wind closed my bedroom. The maintenance guy came over after 2 hours I phoned him, opened the door and asked for 35 euro. 35 ! -.-
- I broke my iPhone's screen. I was just sitting on a chair, scarf on my knees and phone over the scarf. I moved a little bit forward and the scarf fell. The phone fell. It happened many other times but last Friday...the screen was composed of black and blue bars. I still don't know if it's all about the chrystals inside or if there's any damage on the internal mechanisms. I'm hoping for the best, which is the screen replacemente only. I don't want to buy a new phone, mostly because I know that mine was perfectly working !

I hope you enjoyed this update, hopefully more will come :) 

Have a nice week !

Fede

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The National Route 2014 .

HeyHey

So, since when I was 8 years old I've been a scout. Not a ''boy scout'' as we're called worldwide, but just a scout. I started because my parents were both scouts when they were younger, they both went in the group we have in Assisi and so did I when it came my time. After me my brother and all my 5 cousins started this journey.

 I spent 4 years with the ''Lupetti'' that is the first group in which you play, do several activities and slowly get involved in the mentality that is required to be a scout. You learn to share things, to help the others and when you finally think that you understand how this all system works, than you change group.

In fact, on the 2nd year of middle school, I started the ''Reparto'' that is another group that lasts for 4 years, that I left on my 2nd year of high school. Basically this is where the stereotype of the average scout is created. You walk a lot, you sell calendars and other things for charity (not biscuits, sorry!), you sleep in tents and you cook and eat on structures that you build with woods and ropes. Also in this case, when you know everything it's time to move on.

And here I am, at the end of my 3rd year of ''clan'', the last group in which you learn how to be yourself in society, to help the others out. 

I started this long journey, that can be defined as a lifestyle as well, back in 2003 I believe, and this year I had the opportunity to be part of one of the most amazing scout experience you can live: the National Route.

The ''vacation'' of 10 days you do when you're in the Clan, is called route, mainly because you walk, change location almost every night and you carry on your shoulder everything you need (the essential). It's a period that you spend with your group...but this year was different.

In 1975 there was the first National Route; all the Clans (or at least, the biggest part of them) that existed at the time in Italy, all went together in Route. In 1986 the same thing happened. And finally...after almost 30 years, in 2014 we had the opportunity to live this event on a National level.

We were 35.000 scouts, we were divided in 460 groups composed by guys from different Clans. Every group was composed by 70 to 60 people. From the 1st to the 5th of August, the different groups walked in different parts of Italy, on the 6th everyone traveled to San Rossore, a park near Pisa, and there we met, all 35.000 !

My group was the Route 190. My Clan hosted the others, this means that we walked and did our activities in the territory close to Assisi (where I live). The Clans that we hosted where from Alba, Cava dei Tirreni, Pescara and Gorizia. This last one is a city located on the bound between Slovenia and Italy, so they all speak fluently both Italian and Slovenian. We were in 67 and I miss every single person.

On the 6th all the buses left from a city close to Assisi, so we went there, traveled for 4h or so and finally arrived in the night in Pisa! And when we met all the other 35.000...well...let's say this picture doesn't give you the smallest idea of what it was!

I want to thank everyone! It was an amazing experience...and it makes me emotional to think that I was so lucky to be one of those people, one of those that had the opportunity to be part of such an amazing event!

Probably this blog post wasn't as interesting as you expected, it was different from what I normally write about. The quality of the pictures is not high, none of us had a DSLR camera ofc, and these are all photos taken by friends of mine. Hope you liked this post in any case, maybe you learned something new, who knows? If you're a little bit more interested in the event now, you can google and look for information and videos on YouTube about the event. There are lots of them, and they'll give you the idea of what it was better than all the words I wrote to describe it. Have a nice week everyone :)

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Long distance relationship .

HeyHey

I recently found out about a  TV show on MTV that tells stories of people that, at a certain point of their relationship, have to be divided because one of them has to leave. So they spend the last weeks together and than the one that has to leave for some months goes away in a black car. At that point, we know if they kept the relationship alive, despite the distance, or if they decided to give up. I'm sorry if you don't understand what show this is, it's just that I watch it on TV here in Italy and we have the bad habit to change every movie/show's title, translating it as awkwardly as possible; so I don't know what the real name of the show is. 

This program, in some way, reminded me that I wrote about the fact that I had a distance relationship but that I've never really wrote about it in a proper way. I'm not going to talk about my private life, I'm just going to tell you how did it feel for me to be in this kind of relation and, maybe, I will help some of you, who knows?

Basically, first thing to say is that this relationship was the most important and the longest one I've ever had in my life. I didn't have many relationship, to be honest, but this one could have been the best over thousand relationships. This guy and I were together for two years and our story ended on September 2013. 

We met thanks to school ! On the 2nd year of high school (2011) my class had this exchange with a dutch school. Yes, we're the same age but he's Dutch and I'm Italian and the only way we had to communicate was talking in English. I have to admit that right now I feel pretty confident writing in a language that is not my official one, but at the time...I couldn't tell the difference between ''why'' and ''because'' ! Ok no, this is too much...I couldn't understand everything and when it came to talking I was always really nervous because my vocabulary was really poor. Despite this massive barrier we managed to start talking, getting to know each other and after the exchange I decided to go back in The Netherlands with other three friends of mine during summer holiday. We had ten lovely days there, and this guy and I decided that we wanted to try to have a proper relationship, although 1169.36 kms that were going to divide us for the biggest part of the time. 

We kept having our relationship only seeing each other during Christmas, Easter and summer holidays. Even if it was for four days, those four days were going to make the difference, after 4 months away from each other. 

Although it is now over, I need to admit that this was one of the most important experience of my life. I made huge efforts to keep this relationship working, I trusted him, although I couldn't always check if he was loyal etc. ,and I keep believing that my trust was properly given. We both grow with each other's realities that were different. In his country they always use bikes, they eat lots of foreign dishes, their cities are clean and the houses are small but tall. When he came in my city he was surprised that I didn't need car or bikes to meet my friends, but that I just needed a couple of minute walking to see them in the square, he was happy he could eat all that pasta and he liked the fact that my house was not that tall but pretty large. 

I'm still in love with The Netherlands and I'm seriously thinking about planning my future there, as an Italian teacher (if I'll ever be able to find that job in that country). 

What I'm trying to say in this blog post is that nothing should scares you, every barrier can be destroyed if you strongly believe in what you're doing. Today I read this on twitter:

''If something is meant to be, than it will find his way''

In my situation, it was meant to be although age, distance, language and other obstacles. 

And I'm glad that I, at least, tried to make it work in a beautiful way until when it was possible.

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