You're not in Kansas anymore

My Vietnamese seat mate on the plane, a junior at a University in central Finland, pointed out the glass doors directly ahead once we'd picked up our luggage.  "You'll catch your bus there, at number 13" she said,  "We can find a place to wait until then".  I looked around, surprised.  We hadn't shown our passports to anyone.  I'd forgotten all about the European casualness towards moving between countries.  No paperwork to fill out on the plane, no questions asked, no residence permit shown.  All I did was passed my passport to the young border guard at Charles de Gaulle airport in France, who barely glanced up from Angry Birds as he stamped my passport.

Headed out into the evening, I boarded a bus to Turku.  As the sun set in front of us, we traveled past forests of pine and birch, lakes nestled with cabins, fields with red buildings that looked like they may have been the same one photographed on my Finnish book.  Moose crossing signs dotted the road at regular intervals.

I had a small scare when the bus stopped at a small town still over 50 kilometers from Turku and everyone got off.  Had I taken the wrong bus?  Was I going to be stranded in a place I'd never even heard of?  I asked the driver (in English) if the bus went all the way to Turku.  He didn't understand, so I just repeated "Turku?".  "No." He said firmly.  For a second my stomach dropped as I thought he meant, no, we don't go to Turku".  But the next second I realized he really thought I was asking if we'd arrived in Turku.  "Sit down!" he told me.

Finally arriving at Turku, my student tutor picked me up.  We swung by a 24 hour convenience store (it was 10:30 pm by then) and she showed me how to weigh my fruit and print out the barcode label for the bag.  Ready with breakfast food for the next day, I stepped into my apartment.  To say it was everything I ever dreamed would be an overstatement.  There was no mattress on the bed (I'd been forewarned), no working light in my room, and the color scheme of white EVERYWHERE seemed rather drab to me. But, it was a decent size, relatively clean, the kitchen had an oven and a freezer (I wasn't sure about those) and, of course, there was the balcony I'd been so excited about.  I excitedly called home and unpacked, and then tried to sleep, the combination of jet lag and excitement making it difficult.  It's crazy to think this dream, that started just over a year ago, is finally really HERE.