Thoughts from half-way through

The total time I will be spending in South America is about a half a year. This you all probably know. What you probably don't know, because you probably haven't done that math, and most of you don't even know when I left and when I'm returning to Finland, but the exact time of my travel is actually 27 weeks and one day, from when I left my parents place in February to when I land back in Finland in August. This week is week 14. Which means I am (almost, still a couple of days off) half-way through my time here.

I think often people would start with "I can't believe half of my time here has already gone!" But not me. Because I can't quite believe I still have half of my time left. It feels like I've been here a really long time. Some of that is probably due to the fact that I left my own home already in December, and then spent a month and a half at my parents' place doing pretty much nothing. And then after I got here, I spent another month and a half here doing pretty much nothing. A bit of being a tourist. A bit of getting used to being here.
And because it feels like I've been here a long time, I feel like I'd be ready to get back to my real life. Because being here apparently doesn't count as real life. And there are a lot of things I miss about Finland.
I miss being able to understand what people are saying. All of it, not just the main points.
I miss only having mosquitoes for a few months a year.
I miss not being sweaty. Actually, I miss this surprisingly little. I'm a person who doesn't sweat very much (and not because I'm always cold), and as such when I do sweat it's really uncomfortable. But I just noticed the other week that while just walking to a lecture gets we as sweaty as capoeira training does in Finland, I don't pay much attention to it anymore. It's just the normal state of being while walking (because it's not hot enough to be sweaty all the time. As long as you're just sitting in shade, the temperature is actually really comfortable and no sweat). But yeah, apparently I've gotten used to being a little sweaty, which is probably good, because it would be really terrible here if I was as uncomfortable sweaty as I'm used to being. (What I am not used to, however, is the muscle cramps that come from sweating out all the things that stop them from happening, instead of keeping them in the body where they'd actually be needed.)
I miss drinkable water coming out the tab.
I miss having a bike, although I wouldn't want to move around by bike here. So I miss being in a city where you can comfortably move around by bike. I don't actually like cycling all that much, it's just super-practical.
I miss being able to carry my computer and camera around without being scared. I miss being able to walk around when it's dark outside.
I miss my plants. Those of you who have been to my place know I have a lot of those. I keep wondering if and how much my mango sapling has grown.
I miss being able to tell what time of the year it is. Because I am used to being able to do that. It looks completely different in Finland now than it did when I left in February, because that was in the dead of winter, and now it's almost summer. Here, every time I want to know what time of the year it is, I actually have to think for a moment about what month it is, because it looks the same outside now than it did when I got here. People keep telling me the raining will get less and the weather warmer, but I haven't noticed any change. It might be that the weather is different now, but the seasonal change from "28 degrees and probably raining at some point during the day" to "30 degrees and possibly raining at some point during the day" is just not the same as the change from "-15 degrees, snowing, and dark for most of the day" to "20 degrees, some clouds, and never dark". I think this might actually be one of the reasons why it feels like I've been here so long: because for me it's been a very warm July for three months, and July isn't supposed to last for three months.
I miss (literally) some of the food. I couldn't quite believe it when I realised it's the first of may (which I somehow didn't see coming, because that's supposed to be in the spring, not in the middle of summer) and I will miss out on the sima and doughnuts. And the strawberries. Oh, the strawberries. I'm coming back in mid-August, which means there maybe are still some strawberries around, but the best season will be past. Way past, if it's a warm summer. But as you may have deduced from the post I made about the food, I love the food here, so it's hard to feel too bad about missing the Finnish highlights of the year.

(Speaking of food, I recently found out that there are also sweet banana chips, coated with sugar instead of salt. They're the brown ones in the picture. Why are they brown and the salty ones yellow? I don't know. Maybe they're made of differently ripe bananas or something. Either way, I like the salty ones better. Although that can be simply that the salt sticks to the chips better than the sugar, and they're better when there's something on them instead of tasting only like banana.)
Weirdly, a thing I don't miss is living alone. I mean, I kinda do, but not once have I thought here "I wish I was living alone". Because I wouldn't want to live alone here. I would want to live without pets, though. Because the entire time here I've lived in houses with at least two animals, and I could really do without them. And once I get back to Finland, well, there I wouldn't want to live in a house with five other people, because it is really annoying that two days after I scrub the stove it's covered in grease again because other people are using it too. But still, I like living with people here. Because I know it's only temporary.
And, I was reminded (by a friend on Facebook complaining about it the other day) that you're currently going through all the birch pollen, and man, do I not miss that. So I really do not mind missing one pollen season. Then again, I keep living with people with cats here, and I'm also allergic to them. Then again again, I'm not getting any allergic reaction from those cats. Or the dogs I've been living with. Or the peanuts I've gotten a mild reaction from before. So I don't know what's up with my allergies and this country. But I'm still happy I'm not there for the birch pollen season. Especially if it's bad this year. Is it bad this year?

Although honestly, I think if I was leaving now and heading back home, I would feel like the time hasn't been enough. I've just gotten used to the rhythm of studying here (and I still have half of my courses coming up!). I've just gotten to know some the people studying in the ecology program a little, which is how much I usually get to know people in general, because I have absolutely no idea how to go from "I now this person's name" to "I know this person". I've just gotten my Portuguese skills to a level where I feel like I can say I speak some Portuguese instead of a little Portuguese. Enough Portuguese that I'm not super-nervous about going out knowing I will have to talk to people a little.
And thinking of this I once again realised that I still have half my time left. Which means I still have the time to maybe get to know the people a bit more than a little, I still have time to learn the language. I won't be great at Portuguese once I leave, but considering how much more confident I feel about my language skills now than I did when I got here, I will be able to speak enough to say I speak Portuguese, unlike most of the languages I've studied in my life. (I started to read The Name of the Wind in Portuguese a couple of days back, and while it's a lot slower than reading in English or Finnish, and I definitely don't understand all the words, I understand enough to read it!) And knowing I still have all that time for that makes me feel good.
(I have no idea how I'm going to keep up those Portuguese skills once I get back home, though.)

I think probably another reason why it feels like the half of the time I have left is a long time is because (and a lot of you already know this) for the last month, I'm going to Peru, to travel, and then to participate in the Interamerican Scout Moot in Cusco, which yes, to those of you who don't know scouts very well (or at all) is a scout camp, but the participants are 18-25-year-olds, instead of the kids, and I am really, really excited about it. Both the camp and the traveling in Peru. (Just last week we got to know the international 10-person teams we'll be doing everything with at the camp, and there is so much Spanish happening in my Whatsapp now, because my team has me, two Brazilians, and the rest are from Spanish-speaking countries. I guess I fill the spot of the non-Latin-American, so they didn't put anyone from US or Canada in my team. But it's very exciting.) And of course time goes slow when there's something in the future you're eagerly waiting for. But I think the second half of my time here will go a lot faster. I mean, all I have left is a few courses, and then I'm off to Peru, where I have a few days here and there, and then there's the camp, and then I'm already returning to Finland. Three months from now I will probably be wondering where the last three months disappeared.

So yeah. That is my thoughts at this point in time. I can't believe I'm only half way through, and I'd want it to be July already (because that's when I'm leaving for Peru), but at the same time I'm happy I still have all that time to do things I haven't had time to do yet. And keep eating the amazing food.

~matu

PS. I saw a huge lizard on my way home the other day and by huge I mean easily over half a meter with the tail, it was turquoise with some black stripes. I wanted to put a picture of it up here, because it was really cool, and it was just sitting there on the other side of a fence, so I was literally a meter away from it, but my phone battery had died about a half an hour earlier, so no pictures of huge lizards for you.