My first week and a half in Lahti

Hello, I have been here in Lahti for about one and a half week and it has gone really fast :) I really like to be here, everybody are so kind and nice :)
I arrived November 15th and my mentors Lauri and Vesa picked us up from the bus station. Then we went to the apartment to sign some papers and do talk and to get some information.

The second day contained more information, basically the first few days was informative. That day we walked around in the market square and then we made a quick visit at Ohjaamo, the place where I'll be work during my stay here in Finland.

Later that day me and Lasse, the Swedish coordinator,
 went for a walk to Sibelius Hall

This is Sibelius Hall from the inside

Thursday 17.11: first day at Ohjaamo. More information about what Ohjaamo is and what my work coaches, Riina and Susanna do. Then tour in Ohjaamo. At the office there is a turtle called Orbi :)
I don't have a picture of Orbi right now but i will take one and put it in the blog.

Friday Riina and I went to Multi-Culti to meet my finnish teachers, then to Tiimari to buy material for the window decorations for the FIS Nordic World Championships in feb/march 2017.


On Saturday me and Irene went to the market square to see Santa arrive in a helicopter. It was many families with kids there ofcourse.
Then after that we went for a Coffee and it was a nice day :)


Sunday I went with Susanna and her son to one of her sons schoolfair. We went through everything  then we watched a play, Snow white, played by 5th graders i think ,in  finnish ofcourse. It was nice to hear finnish and i understood pretty much everything :) then we went to one of the Cafes. It was really nice of Susanna to ask if I wanted to come with her and her son :)
The kids at that school do really creative stuff

Second week is almost over but it started on monday with a mentor meeting and work at Ohjaamo. I started doing Finnish flags that are supposed to be window decoration at Ohjaamo during the FIS Nordic World Championships.

On Tuesday I had my first finnish lesson here, it was fun and I'm excited for the up coming lessons because I already understand some finnish but I want to be able to and get the courage to also speak finnish. We'll see how it goes :)

The rest of the days i continued doing the flags and on Thursday I was finally done :)
I also started with my other task which is to translate powerpoints from English into Swedish.

Aerial Yoga

 On Thursday evening I tried Aerial Yoga for the first time with Susanna. It was a lot of fun and relaxing. At first I was like 'what have I gotten myself into..' but it turned out to be a really good experience and I would like to try this at home in Gothenburg and bring my friends or my aunt who I think is in to Yoga :) so thanks Susanna :)

I have probably forgotten something but i feel that this text is very long now..

Until next week
Linnea

Meet Linnea- volunteer from Sweden

First name:

Linnea

Where am I now?
I am now in Lahti, Finland

Age
19

What am I expecting for my time in Finland?
I would like to improve my Finnish, this is a good experience for me that also can be used in the future.

Is there something that I find exciting?
To see a new part of Finland since I have only been in the northern Finland. To meet new people and learn new things.

What are my hobbies? what kind of stuff am I interested in?
I like to watch TV-series for example The Vampire Diaries and others, I like hanging with friends and I like to read.

What is the most important thing I am going to take with me?
An open mindset and my phone

What would I like tell about  Sweden to people I'll meet in Finland?
I don't really know but if anyone have questions I will try to answer them. I live in Gothenburg, the second largest city in Sweden.

What do I wish for my future? What is my dream?
I would like to study or work abroad in a warm country in the future.

Coordinators regards!

Hi everyone!

We coordinators just realized that our project Here we go again! is allmost in it's half way! Oh how the time flies :)

We have had three good periods; Allu and Juuso in Ireland, Teja and Denis here in Lahti and Mikko in Slovenia.

And in this week Lahti will have two volunteers from Sweden, Jacob and Linnea who will be working in Ohjaamo for a month. They are arriving tomorrow with their coach Lasse. Yay! Lasse will be with us for a couple of days, just like Vesa and Susanna were in Ireland. We all are looking forward meeting them, welcome to Lahti!

At the same time when we have planned in our EVS-team the Ohjaamo period, we have been looking for volunteers from Lahti to go on a two month period in Slovenia in the beginning of next year. We have founded three awesome dudes, you will hear about them later on. And in the to do-list for us, is still interview youngsters; two volunteers are going to Slovenia later on the spring. Luckily we have good candidates for this also :)

We had our EVS-team meeting a moment ago. There we planned the coming period here in Lahti, when the volunteers from Ireland are coming in spring. Team spirit - yes we have!

We coordinators have been doing the administrative side; booked flight tickets, updated the volunteers guide, checked the budget, send emails to Slovenia and Sweden etc. Also we spend a day doing the receipt rumba and updating the Mobility Tool+ which is an online tool for administrative work. We made it!

Kaisa with the receipts!

Terhi with the Mobility Tool+

Luckily the project isn't over yet! 

Terhi & Kaisa, coordinators

Feelings about returning home!

Hello guys!

It's been 3 weeks since I came1 back home from Finland. I have finally found some time to write this post. To be honest, I don't even know how to describe my feelings, because I've been too busy studying (you know - attending the faculty from the morning 'till evening, then studying etc.) that this is actually the first time when I sat down and started really processing things.

This has been an amazing experience for me! I've learned a lot of new things and gained a lot of new skills. I haven't really realised it until I had to aplly my knowledge about Finnish culture to my studying, until school-mates started asking questions "What were you doing? What did you learn? Would you like to go back?" It was very hard for me to adjust back to my "normal" life, because I got used of living in Finland and speaking English, I miss that :( .

I know I will defenitely come back to Finland! My goal is to study really hard and after two years go back to Finland, to study there-I hope I will make it! Country is amazing, people I've met are amazing (I still keep in touch with them). This was an amazing period of life for me, and I'm really thankfull to the EVS project and all people cooperating in it for giving me this oppurtunity.

Soooooo I hope you won't be angry but after a whole day of studying I want to catch one episode of Family guy (amazing TV-series by the way!).

At the end I would only like to say, that I wish to the other volunteers to have the best experience while living and working abroad, no mather in which country you are - just pull the best out of it, it's worth it! :)

Teja

Teja, Denis and the gang!

On Wednesday we had Teja's and Denis's farewell and good bye-party! They got their Youthpasses, we all got to enjoy some coffee and carrot cake in the luchcafeteria workshop. Emotional speeches were given and just hanging together for the last time, at least for now :)

Thank you some much for everyone involved in :) Teja and Denis we hope for you a nice and safe journey home and of course everything good for your future! Hopefully we will hear from you guys soon <3

Terhi, coordinator

First Impression and also something else

Okay so it has been a month now and there has been lots to do, see and experience

After the introduction to the apartment for few days we started to work with the practical things like repainting the fence and building a new warehouse for bikes and lawnmower 

also there has been lots of time to travel around Slovenia to see all kinds of things

working with practical things at mornigns and looking after children afternoon is not too hard but its still nice to have plenty of free time.

thats it for now i wiwll try to keep this blog updated as well as i can

What's happening? Regards from the coordinator!

Hi everyone! I thought that I could let you in to see whats happening in the "scenes" :)

As you know, we have had our first volunteers here in Lahti, Teja and Denis from Slovenia. Working with them has been awesome! Tomorrow we are doing things concerning coordinator role; checking receips from the traveling here, getting signatures to the participant list, they will give us feedback about the period and some other things as well.

In the same time Mikko is in Slovenia. We have been in touch with him by messages, checking up how is he doing there, what's the work been there like etc.

Also we have keeping contact with Slovenian workers Barbara and David by email. Just to let everybody in the same page and checking that everything is going as it's planned :)

AND! November is coming fast! So this means that the volunteers from Sweden are coming to Lahti at Ohjaamo :) We have been in contact with Anna in Sweden, sending different documents and agreements to her and of course planning together the period with our EVS-team! We are hoping to have a skype meeting with Anna and the volunteers before they arrive here.

So lots and lots of emails, WhatsApp messages, writing documents, doing things together and enjoying our work! I think it's refeshing to do work with international level. It might take a little bit of more time to write the emails and documents in english, but if the volunteers and youngsters have learning experiances, so do us workers! And it's been nice to notice how youngsters in the workshops speak english, take part in the conversations and help our volunteers to adjust living here in Lahti.

We had a attitude indicator with our younsters in Drama, Media and Interior desing workshops before Denis and Teja arrived. The goal of this indicator was to discuss about attitudes, prejudices and how do the volunteers see Finland and Lahti when they come here for the firts time.  We are having the second meeting with the younsters next week. It's also about giving an opportunity to the younsters tell and talk about what they have learned from internationalism and possible tell if have they learned something about themselves! We are doing these indicators in every period that happens in Lahti. So stay tuned, we will make a summary of it.

Can't wait the to see the next volunteers!

Terhi, coordinator