I had never been outside the United States when I booked a solo flight to Finland at nineteen years old. Nether had my mother, grandmother, or any of my descendants in living memory. Still, I knew that I wanted to and felt that I needed to, because seeing the world was and remains my lifelong dream. Needless to say, I did not know what I was doing. What I did know was that this crazy idea--spending a month far away, somewhere new, seeing something I'd never seen before--had been floating around my mind, nipping at my thoughts for months. Looking at my modest stash of student savings, I found myself asking, why not? So when I googled "round-trip flights to Finland" and found a cheap, non-refundable option, I booked it. I was absolutely flushed with adrenaline when I called my mom to boast about what I'd just done, though that hot pride turned to ice in my stomach when she asked, "But where are you going to stay?" One internet scam, a failed farm homestay, and a near border-crossing rejection later, the answer to that question turned out to be a small, intimate hostel in a quiet riverside town called Porvoo. My seventeen-year-old sister had decided to join me in the adventure using her own savings from her part-time job at Denny's. Together, we paid for a double-bed room that served as the home-base to a month of catching inter-city busses, long hikes and bikes that I loved and she hated, shopping-mall marathons that she loved and I hated, international dating mishaps with servers at our favorite riverside cafe, and a particularly scary episode wherein we became convinced that a skin-walker was haunting the forest adjacent to our hostel. In all this, what surprised me most was the the steady quietness of the the "Happiest Country On Earth." Being truthful, I had expected Finland to be all bright smiles and personalities--like Disneyland if it were a country instead of a theme-park. Instead, beneath a culture that initially struck me as reserved and even gruff, I uncovered a foundation of genuineness. I grew a respect for the way cashiers and bus drivers met my habitual smiles with blank stares, and for how the hostess of our hostel openly declared that the salmon I burnt one night "smelt horrible." I came to understand how my own definition of happiness was tainted by performatism, and I began to wonder if maybe Finland's cultural honesty contributed to its life-satisfaction. When my mom picked me up from LAX to return home after a restless fourteen-hour flight proceeded by a sleepless eighteen-hour layover, I was completely exhausted. But over the remaining weeks of my summer break it began to settle in how different I felt--how much I had grown, how much I had changed, and how much I had met myself on a level deeper than ever before. I recognized vestiges of Finland in my increased comfortability being quiet and truthful in my opinions. I still smiled often, but I did so less out of a sense of obligation and more as an expression of my joy. A newfound sense of capability seemed to adorn me. For the first time since going off to college, I felt like a real adult able to improvise and adapt to challenges as they arose. And I carried my shoulders higher as I walked into a new school year to tell my friends, "yeah, I did that."