How curiosity shaped Thao Nguyen’s journey from Vietnam to Finland.
Vietnam, a vibrant Southeast Asian country known for its rich history, close-knit families and resilient people, was where Thao’s story began. Thousands of kilometers away from Finland, it was the place she called home before setting out in search of a new adventure.
At first, Finland was never part of Thao Nguyen’s plan.
Like many young graduates searching for new opportunities abroad, she imagined a different destination.
”I actually wanted to move to Japan,” she says. ”I even learned Japanese for about a year.”
Japan seemed like the obvious choice. She had invested time in learning the language and had already begun imagining a future there.
Then something changed.
”But to me, it looked predictable,” she says. ”I wanted something adventurous.”
That search for something unknown brought her to Finland instead.
She arrived without speaking Finnish, without knowing much about the country, and without a carefully designed roadmap for what her future would look like. Unlike many migrants who arrive with a clear career path or family network waiting for them, Thao began with uncertainty.
Looking back, she does not romanticize that decision.
She simply sees it as the beginning of another lesson.
Learning, as she would later discover, would become the one constant throughout her life in Finland.
Not waiting for the perfect opportunity
When Thao talks about integration, she rarely speaks about luck.
She speaks about decisions.
One of the first, came soon after arriving in Finland.
Like many newcomers, she wanted to join the official integration programme. She had heard positive things about the courses and believed they would give her a strong foundation for building a life in Finland.
But there was one problem.
The waiting list.
”I wanted to join the integration classes,” she says. ”But the waiting time was quite long.”
For some people, that might simply have meant waiting.
For Thao, it meant looking for another path.
”I didn’t want to wait.”
Instead, she enrolled in courses at Alma Adult Education Centre and began studying Finnish on her own while searching for every opportunity to practise outside the classroom.
Language quickly became more than grammar exercises.
It became a way of participating.
”I watched videos with Finnish and English subtitles,” she says. ”I listened over and over again. At first I couldn’t really speak, so listening was the best way to learn.”
The classroom gave her structure.
Daily life became her teacher.
Looking back now, she believes those first decisions shaped everything that followed.
After completing her degree in International Business, however, another uncertainty appeared.
”Right after I graduated from university, I didn’t really like it,” she admits. ”Not because I didn’t enjoy studying, but because I didn’t feel it was easy to get a job.”
She questioned the programme itself.
”I partly blamed the curriculum.”
Years later, her perspective changed completely.
”Now, after three years of living here, I’ve changed my mind,” she says. ”Now I know what a good foundation I got.”
The degree had not failed her.
She had simply needed time to understand how to use it.
That realization would become another reminder that learning rarely reveals its value immediately. Sometimes its importance only becomes visible years later, when experience catches up with education.
Learning together, mom by son
When Thao speaks about learning Finnish, the conversation unexpectedly turns to her son.
She smiles before explaining why.
”My son has been one of my biggest encouragements.”
For years, learning Finnish had been connected to education and employment.
Motherhood changed that completely.
”When he started daycare, I realised I had to improve my Finnish even more,” she says.
She wanted to understand the letters from daycare.
Thao’s Ways to Improve Finnish Skills in Daily Life
She wanted to communicate confidently with teachers.
Most importantly, she wanted to be able to support her son as he grew up in Finland.
”I wanted to help him with school later,” she says. ”I wanted to be able to support him.”
Then she remembers something that still makes her smile.
”In a way, we learned Finnish together.”
While her son was discovering his first words in daycare, Thao continued expanding her own vocabulary through work, studies and everyday conversations.
Their classrooms were different.
Their goal was the same.
One was learning how to grow up in Finland.
The other was learning how to help him do exactly that.
For Thao, language stopped being only a personal achievement.
It became part of being a parent.
And perhaps that is why she never talks about reaching fluency.
Instead, she talks about continuing the journey.
Because, as she says,
”Language is something you keep learning.”
It does not end when the course ends.
It grows with life itself.
Language grows with relationships
For Thao, learning Finnish has never been about reaching a finish line.
Even now, after years of studying, working and raising a family in Finland, she hesitates when people ask whether she has finally ”learned the language.”
Instead, she offers a different way of thinking about it.
”Language is not something you finish,” she says. ”You keep learning.”
She believes that grammar and vocabulary are only the beginning. The deeper challenge comes later—understanding the people behind the language.
”Sometimes my Finnish friends make jokes with each other,” she says. ”Everyone laughs, but I don’t understand.”
She doesn’t say it with frustration.
She says it with honesty.
”It isn’t because of the language itself,” she explains. ”It’s because they have grown up here. They know the culture. They know the history behind those jokes.”
Then she recalls something that has made those moments easier.
”Luckily, I’ve met people who are kind and patient enough to explain everything to me.”
Those explanations have become just as important as language lessons.
They taught her not only what people were saying, but why they were saying it.
Looking back, she believes that is how real language develops.
”Our language grows with our relationships.”
It is a simple sentence, yet it echoes one of the strongest themes emerging throughout her story. Language opens the first door, but relationships allow people to walk through it.
The same idea surfaced in another story from the Multilingual Voices of Vaasa series. Jordi Storm described work as the place where he finally felt he had become part of Finnish society—not because his Finnish suddenly improved, but because daily interactions with colleagues allowed him to participate in ordinary working life. (See the article about Jordi in Pomedia.)
For Thao, the path is remarkably similar.
Not identical.
But parallel.
Belonging has never been built through language alone.
It has grown conversation by conversation.
Relationship by relationship.
How to support migrants to learn Finnish and integrate into Finnish community
1. Accessible Language Education
2.Workplace Integration
3.Community Connections
Part of me belongs to Finland
When people ask Thao where home is, the answer has become more complicated than it once was.
She no longer thinks in absolutes.
”I’m Vietnamese,” she says without hesitation.
That part has never changed.
Nor does she want it to.
”I accept that.”
Then she pauses before adding another sentence.
”But part of me belongs to Finland.”
She doesn’t see those two identities as competing with each other.
Instead, they have gradually learned to exist side by side.
She believes many people misunderstand what integration means.
It is not about replacing one identity with another.
Nor is it about becoming indistinguishable from everyone else.
Instead, it is about allowing a new place to become part of your story while carrying your old one with you.
That feeling, she says, did not appear overnight.
”I don’t recognise when it really started,” she reflects. ”But I guess the feeling gets stronger and stronger each year.”
Today, Vaasa has become much more than the city where she lives.
”At this point, Vaasa feels like home to me,” she says. ”I really like Vaasa. If I don’t have to move, then I don’t move.”
It is striking how closely that reflection mirrors another conversation from this project.
Melisa Benchish described home not as a destination reached after enough years had passed, but as something built quietly through everyday routines, friendships and ordinary moments. (See the article in Pomedia.)
Thao arrives at the same conclusion from a different direction.
For her, home was never created by one decisive moment.
It accumulated.
One friendship.
One workplace.
One conversation.
One year at a time.
And perhaps that is why she cannot point to the exact day Finland became home.
Because home, like language, kept growing.
Showing up, another travel for a stable life
For Thao, work has never been only about earning a living.
It has always been another classroom.
Throughout the interview, she returns to the same idea in different ways. Learning did not stop after university. It did not stop after learning Finnish. And it certainly did not stop after finding a job.
There is always another environment to understand.
Another culture to experience.
Another opportunity to grow.
That philosophy explains the decision she is about to make.
In the coming weeks, Thao will leave Vaasa for a three-month work assignment in Pietarsaari. During that time, her husband will remain at home with their three-year-old son.
The arrangement is not mandatory.
Her employer had already offered her another option.
”I could just stay at home and work remotely,” she says.
For many people, that would have been the obvious choice.
It would have meant sleeping in her own bed.
Having dinner with her family every evening.
Watching her son grow through another ordinary season of childhood.
But Thao chose differently.
”Then I wouldn’t learn anything new about the workplace,” she explains. ”I want to be there. I want to see how people work.”
She knows what the decision will cost.
”I know that being away from my husband and my little son isn’t easy,” she says. ”I know many people probably wouldn’t choose to do this.”
Yet she has never measured opportunities only by convenience.
”For me, it isn’t only about the salary.”
She speaks slowly, choosing every word with care.
”I want to use one hundred percent of my capacity. When somebody works with me, I want them to benefit from working with me.”
Even before arriving in Pietarsaari, she is already preparing herself for another challenge.
”The people there might mostly speak Swedish,” she says. ”Although I had my interview in Finnish, I have to prepare myself for Swedish as well.”
There is no anxiety in her voice.
Only curiosity.
Another language.
Another workplace.
Another lesson.
The stories we choose to tell
Towards the end of the interview, Thao reflects on a perception she believes still exists about migrants in Finland.
She has heard people assume that immigrants come to Finland simply to receive benefits.
She quietly disagrees.
”I think some people believe that foreigners come here just to use the benefits,” she says. ”But that isn’t true.”
She does not deny that support systems exist.
Nor does she question why they are needed.
Instead, she wants people to understand what happens after newcomer students arrive.
”Most of us want to work,” she says. ”We want to contribute. We want to become part of society.”
Throughout her own journey, that desire has shaped almost every decision she has made.
She refused to wait months for an integration course because she wanted to start learning immediately.
She continued studying in Finnish because she wanted employers to trust her abilities.
She chose to travel to Pietarsaari rather than work comfortably from home because she believed being present would help her become a better colleague.
None of those choices were driven by convenience.
They were driven by the belief that contributing matters.
”I want to use one hundred percent of my capacity,” she says. ”When somebody works with me, I want them to benefit from working with me.”
For Thao, integration is not measured by how much support someone receives.
It is measured by what they are able—and willing—to give back.
”I hope people don’t only see foreigners as people who come here for benefits,” she says. ”I hope they see us as residents who want to build a life here, who want to work, and who want to make Finland a better place.”
Her words are not a complaint.
They are an invitation to look beyond assumptions.
To see migrants not simply as recipients of help, but as neighbours, colleagues, parents and citizens in the making—people whose ambitions often begin with a simple wish:
To contribute.
Everything will be OK
As the interview draws to a close, I ask Thao one final question.
If someone arrived in Finland tomorrow, what would she tell them?
She smiles.
Before talking about language, she asks a different question.
”Do you plan to live here for a long time?”
If the answer is yes, then her advice is simple.
”Really, really plan strategically to learn the language as early as possible.”
She doesn’t describe language as homework.
Or obligation.
Instead, she compares it to something much more familiar.
”It is a relationship between you and the language,” she says. ”Like any relationship, you need to meet. You need to spend time together. You need to nurture it.”
Watch films.
Watch cartoons.
Find small ways to make the language part of everyday life.
Little by little, she believes, it becomes part of you.
Then, before the cameras stop recording, she leaves one final message.
Not only for newcomers.
But perhaps for anyone standing at the beginning of an uncertain journey.
”I don’t know why,” she says, laughing softly, ”but I would like to say…”
”Everything will be OK.”
After listening to her story, those four words no longer sound like simple optimism.
They sound earned.
They come from someone who arrived in Finland without a detailed plan.
Who changed countries before changing adulthood.
Who built a career one decision at a time.
Who learned a language alongside her son.
Who chose growth over comfort.
Who never stopped believing that learning was another way of belonging.
And perhaps that is the quiet lesson running through Thao Nguyen’s story.
Home is not found all at once.
It is built—in conversations, in classrooms, in workplaces, around the family table, and in the countless small decisions to keep showing up, to keep learning, and to keep contributing.
Until, one day, a place that was once unfamiliar simply feels like home.
Thao’s journey reminds us that migration cannot be understood through numbers alone.
It is lived through everyday choices, quiet determination, and countless moments of learning.
That is the purpose of Multilingual Voices of Vaasa—to create space for these personal stories, allowing people to speak in their own words and inviting readers to see migration not as an abstract issue, but as a collection of human experiences that continue to shape Vaasa and Finland.
For further details, watch the video below and hear from her self.
