ovi on auki

I started applying to AFS in July. My application was sent to AFS Finland on March 12. And today, exactly a week later, on March 19 at 12:30pm, I was officially accepted as an exchange student to Finland.

Excuse me while I sit back and excitedly ponder that statement for a moment.


Alright, I suppose I'll take my eyes off of it now and give you a bit of an introduction. My name is Aliza Hoover, I am a 17 year old homeschooler in Natick, Massachusetts, and I will be spending my senior year of highschool in Finland. I will be living with a host family and attending highschool there as if I were a Finnish 17-18 year old.

Whenever I really think about where I am going to be next year, what I am going to be doing, I get almost unbearably excited. The main impetus for my applying to AFS was the prospect of learning another language via immersion [<-- prolative case!]. Finnish is an undeniably fascinating language, unrelated to Indo-European languages, and one with which I look forward to saying that I am familiar. I have always loved reading folktales and listening to/singing folksongs, and someday I would love to be able to read the Kalevala, Finland's national epic poem.

I am also, of course, hugely excited at the prospect of being immersed in another country, becoming part of another family 4000mi away, seeing northern lights (!) and, naturally, representing a little bit of America to my Finnish friends and family -- maybe a bit of America that they would not have gotten to know otherwise.

In this blog, I will (hopefully) be posting updates on this adventure. I plan to take pictures at least weekly, even if I don't have time to write in it, or if I forget how to spell English. Right now, however, I want to make use of this blog to ask you to kindly consider helping out with my tuition, because the less of it my parents and I have to pay, the more diamond-studded nick-knacks we can buy for ourselves.

In all seriousness, I want to raise as much of my own tuition as I can because while studying abroad is (quite literally) a dream come true for me, I also know that it is a financial indulgence and as one of four children, I know this comes as an additional strain on my parents. In essence, it would feel irresponsible of me if I didn't raise as large a portion of the funds necessary as I could.

To contribute to my AFS program, kindly refer to the ChipIn button here on my blog. Between now and my departure at the end of the summer, I am going to be babysitting and/or animal-watching and/or trying to sell photographs (and hopefully coming up with some other fund-raising ideas), but I deeply appreciate any contribution to help me out.

Kiitos paljon!
aliza