This week I experienced more of Finland’s culture. I visited another city (Tampere) with other exchange students, Finland played Ice-hockey against Sweden and I gave a presentation to Grade 8 students (14 year-olds).
Firstly, at the weekend I visited Tampere – the third largest city in Finland, and having knowledge of this fact, I expected it to be interesting and exciting. It appeared to be a nice city and I saw the Finlayson Factory, famous for making textile machinery and then moved to cotton production. I have noticed that Finlayson is branded on household cotton items, such as towels, so I suppose this is something to be recognised. However it seemed there was not much to do in the city so I decided to visit the Sarkanniemi adventure park and observation tower. This turned out to be expensive but worth experiencing as it is supposedly Tampere’s largest tourist attraction. All in all, it was lovely way to spend time with what remains of the other exchange students.
In addition to this, Finland versus Sweden in the Ice-hockey championship final was a massive celebration for the Finn’s. I watched the match online and Finland were awarded the World Championship 2011 title at a result of 6 – 1! The players returned home to Helsinki where there was a large crowd of people to welcome them back. There was entertainment and footage of the match shown. Meanwhile, in Turku there was a television screen in the city centre showing this homecoming. I found that although the Finn’s were out drinking alcohol (as they usually do for celebrations), there was not the same atmosphere as in Helsinki. They waved their Finnish flags here and there, with a few cheers and chants.
In addition to all of this, I visited St: Olofsskolan, a school for Grades 7 -9 (13 -15 year-olds). This school’s language of instruction was Swedish; however the students were fluent in English, with a number being bilingual. I voluntarily participated in this as part of the Erasmus in Schools project and presented a talk about Erasmus, my experiences of the Finnish culture compared to Northern Ireland, and informed the students about the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. (Grade 8 had been learning about the United Kingdom).
This was my first real experience of presenting and interacting with 14 year-olds, never mind being foreign students; so naturally I was somewhat apprehensive. However in the end I realised there was need to be as it all went very well. The students were well behaved, good humoured and appeared interested. I look forward to visiting the school next week to continue these lessons.
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