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 

Final post about my trip to Ireland

Hello guys!

It has been over a month since we came back to Finland from Ireland, and a lot have happened! I started in a new workshop and I try to make plans for future etc.

I really want to say thanks to all who've been included in this whole EVS project, especially Juuso, who've been with me all that time in Ireland. It was really nice to get to know you!

I was surprised how pretty easy it was to live an abroad. Well, yeah, there was a lots of people helping but I still survived on my own. And now my dream to live in Canada grew even bigger, because I know that I can survive an abroad alone. It was nice to notice that I understood English and even nicer that people understood me and said that I speak really good English. I thought that I suck at English because I don't use it in Finland that often, so it was like a really big surprise to me.

Overall my time in Ireland was awesome, even tough I cried some nights because wanted to be in Finland with people dear to me. But still, I didn't forget to enjoy my time in Ireland and get to know to local people. Irish people were so nice and I wanted to know them better, but one month was kinda short time there.

After we arrived back to Finland we had some meetups where we talked about how our time in Ireland went etc. It was really refreshing to let it all out, what bothered me and what I liked in Ireland. I hope next volunteers who go to Ireland have even better experience!

Okay I'm pretty clumsy to write blogs, because it's not really my thing (I love to write and have few novels of my own, but writing a blog text is really different thing), but I hope that you enjoyed reading my blog!

See you again! :)

Dublin was really beautiful city!