Today my stomach feels a little better, though. Maybe it's because it's totally empty except for the small amount of scrambled eggs and mate I've drank, and my stomach still hurts a bit, but at least I don't feel bad. That being said, I do have flu now. My nose is running and I'm sneezing all the time. I have three layers of clothing on me to keep me warm, while I lay next to the heater.

What I noticed while talking to my two closest friends back in Finland was that even though I'm sick and I feel bad constantly, it still doesn't get to me. I'm still in good mood and I can handle it well. I can do stuff if I really want to or need to.

Now, what I really want to tell is that I have changed. The thing is, back in Finland whenever I was feeling just a little bit bad or I was sick, I allowed myself to feel sorry for myself and I came up with all the excuses why I shouldn't or couldn't do something. If I was a little tired, I would just stay at home. If I felt pain, I would complain about it to my mom to the point she'd get annoyed, and I definitely wouldn't do exercising if I felt pain. I just let the smallest things bother me and let it take away my motivation and energy and all the will to do stuff. And now that I realize it, I'm so ashamed of myself. Who knows what I could have accomplished back then if I only had not let things bring me down so easily!

A good example of my attitude towards pain is how even though this one muscle in my back has been painful to the point when I couldn't breathe properly or sit in a moving car without involuntarily wincing out of pain every now and then, I still went to every pole dance class I had, and even more. I showed middle finger to the pain and kept on doing what I love to do. Add on hand full of blisters to that, and you have my last Thursday's condition - and I still went to my class and kicked ass.

Other examples are just how I approach obstacles in life nowadays. After struggling with so many things during my exchange year and doing mistakes and realizing all the things I was doing wrong, I learned that no obstacle is impermeable. Obstacles turned into challenged and mistakes into lessons. i now know that I need to keep on moving and not let people or things or fears hold me down and keeping me from doing what I enjoy doing. Hell, I can make some problems disappear by just changing my attitude towards it.

In the end, it's not like I don't have any bad days and sometimes feel like the world is against me or something. The difference is, I don't stay in the ground for long. I apply this to my friends too. Sometimes they have problems, and I give them empathy, but if the same problem continued and I just keep on hearing the same things over and over, I give them some tough love and help them to at least try and figure out a way to solve the problem. It's one think to fall down and feel sad or disappointed or something else, but a whole another to stay in your misery and do nothing. If my exchange year has taught me something, it's that other people won't solve my problems. Nobody else is responsible for my own happiness but me. And that thing, that thought, it has given me control over my life. It has given me motivation to work hard on what I want because only if I keep on trying and working and learning, can I reach whatever my goals are.

I am so thankful to be an exchange student.