Looking Back

I seem to have a lot of time in my hands right now, today we were ice skating again with school (you can read about the last trip here). I also haven't been feeling so energetic recently, due to who knows, the weather (never ending darkness -you'd think I'd be used to that already, no snow but still so cold), maybe the travels and the training (it was quite exhausting I have to admit) are still pressing on. Well, sitting here I was wondering about a subject I already have been writing about; how much this experience has changed me. However, I'm still the same me as in the picture above (very finnish photos I have to admit). At least I hope I am and hope always to be. If the sight of looking at myself through the eyes of myself 15 years ago would make me feel like that's where I want to be, I know I have succeeded. For funsies I checked my application, written in august 2013, to see if there's a big difference to my being at this moment - I didn't remember any of it and was kind of disappointed when it was not so interesting as I thought it would be.

But there was one line in my application that specially caught my eye. "I intend to be very loving, understanding and a non-judgemental person." Can I say, getting closer to the end of my project, that I have succeeded in this? Has this kept its position as the guideline to my life as I have set it to be? To tell the truth, I'm just human. I'm young and I have a lot to learn from life, and sometimes even this simplest thing has hid itself away from view. Maybe I should remind myself more of these things, keep my eyes on the goals I set.
In the trainings we always talked about our competences, which basically mean the ability to do something successfully or efficiently. In the on-arrival training we talked about what kind of competences we already have, what we would like to improve and what we want to gain, set to some point (the end of the project). In the mid-term training again we looked on these things from the view of the end of the project, how well did we succeed in these goals we set. Or maybe we found something we back then weren't even aware about.

One of my competences I wanted to gain/improve was budgeting. Handling and spending my money wisely and efficiently. Well now at this point, I still have some time left on my project to try to change that, but I'm still bad at this. I guess I did improve my ability of communicating in polish language; this being something I'm planning to improve also after my departure. I'm still not sure how I should measure these competences; I always find place of improvement in everything. But I could say, I learned about working with children, also working with other people, living with other people, even actually living on my own for the first time, independence. I learned about not only polish culture, but a lot of other cultures too. I learned communication skills, to listen and something that has always been harder to me; to speak, to ask and try my best to get my voice heard. I can not say I would have succeeded to improve these competences to 100% but I am just as proud to have improved them even just by 1%.

 "My important life values are to treat people equally and always give your everything. I want to enjoy life, and smile as much as I can."