ETA: really long, I'm sorry! But I would really appreciate any advice!
The following post is very much unrelated to weight loss, but I have found that people on this site often give such thoughtful advice that I wanted to see what others on here think about my current dilemma.
I graduated from college during the summer with a B.A. in Classics (the study of Ancient Greece and Rome, for those not in the know), and I am currently teaching English at a primary school in Finland. My contract ends in June, and I am trying to decide what I should do with myself, both next year and in a more general sense.
I absolutely love my job. I enjoy working with the kids, my coworkers are wonderful people, and the hours are superb. I'm not getting paid a ton of money, but I am pretty frugal and my rent is surprisingly cheap, so I'm able to save a nice chunk of money each month. I really like the town in which I live, and I really appreciate many things about Finnish culture (the emphasis on physical fitness and the love of nature, especially). I am very much enjoying living in Europe, and I have already had the opportunity to travel a bit during the two short months that I have lived here. To top it all off, I am good at my job, and my supervisor has told me that I am welcome to stay for another year if I would like, which would put my departure date sometime in June of 2012.
Despite all of the good things about living here, I am having trouble deciding whether or not I should stay for a second year. I pretty much have three main concerns. I'm not really loving the cold and the dark (it's consistently below freezing and the sun sets before 5 pm, and we're not even anywhere near the worst part of winter yet), I'm having a harder time than I expected coping with the language barrier, and I'm not really sure of what I want to do long-term when it comes to jobs or a career. The winter isn't completely horrible, and I'm sure that once it starts snowing on a regular basis, the landscape will seem much prettier, but I've lived most of my life in very warm climates (in or near deserts much of the time, when you really get right down to it), and I'm sorely missing the warmth of the sun and long hours of daylight. I am taking Finnish lessons, but the going is slow, and I don't believe that I will be anywhere near fluent by the end of the year. Though most people here speak very good English, it gets under my skin that I can't really understand the language. I spent a lot of my childhood years overseas, so this shocked me a bit, but I guess having spent the last five years in the States has changed me and my comfort zone in some ways. Partially due to the language barrier, I'm finding it difficult to make friends outside of my work, and I'm feeling a little bit lonely. Nothing really serious, but I'm not sure that I want to extend for another year. To be fair, it has always taken me some time (up to a year, in some cases) in a new place to make friends, so staying another year might actually be a good thing.
Perhaps most importantly, although I do love my job, I'm not sure that teaching is really something that I want to do long-term. I like it, I'm good at it, and it would allow me to continue travelling, but, at the end of the day, I don't think that I would be satisfied with a teaching career. Unfortunately, most of my job experience is in education, and I'm not really interested in going to grad school in Classics or Archaeology (which my undergraduate work sort of prepped me for). I'm also pretty confused about stuff that I would actually like to do. Among the possibilities that I find appealing: disaster relief work, long-term humanitarian aid work, work as a wildlife or marine biologist, environmental work. But these are still broad categories! I also know that I really dislike desk jobs, and I don't mind going back to school, even for a long time, even as an undergraduate again (as I would need to for the biology stuff). I feel that if I am indeed going to go back to school, I should probably consider doing so soon, rather than continuing with something that I know I am not interested in long-term.
On another note, there are so many things that I want to do in my life and so many places that I want to go that even if I don't return to school next year, I feel like I should try something new instead of staying here. I know that I'm young still (23), but I don't want to put anything off, assuming that it will happen at some point. I want to travel, I want to have new experiences, and though staying here would allow me to explore Europe a little bit more, I still haven't even been to Asia, South America, or Australia. Maybe I should do some temp work on one of those continents?
So, I guess I have several separate questions buried in all of this. Should I stay here another year? Should I just suck it up and get certified as a teacher since I know that I am good at it, I have experience in it, and it would allow me to keep travelling? If not, should I return to school now? Or should I just put most of these decisions off another year and try to find another job overseas? If I do so, should I keep teaching English or should I try something new (like doing a working holiday visa in Australia or New Zealand)?
Sorry for the length, and thanks for reading! I know that I'm probably overthinking things, so any advice/comments would be very helpful!