First THREE weeks of ARMENIANS in LAHTI

Was it challanging or no?

We arrived in Lahti on the 21 of July. Our first impressions were really good, because people who met us were very kind and hospitable and the weather here was perfect, which also helped us to keep a good mood.

Since day 1 we had entertaining city tours. We saw real finnish summer for about 2 weeks. During the city tours we explored some ’’hidden’’ corners of Lahti, but there are much more things to discover.

We visited our workplaces: Ohjaamo, Multi-Culti and Mukkula. We met people who work there. We got some information about the work of the organisation and mainly about this three workplces. And we were told what work we are ging to do. Later we had a tour to youth centers and visited some of youth workshops.

We visited some young people from different workshops and we were on a picnic with them in Mukkula beach. We had fun there.We played some games and the newest game for us was Molkky, which is traditional Finnish throwing game.

During our first weekend we were in Mukkula Sauna and later in Harbour, where met Armenians living near Lahti and we became friends, and later we found 2 two boys who are the only Armenians living in Lahti city. And as the weather was good we had amazing tours around Lahti city.

During the second week we visited Tuusula and Jarvenpaa for Meidan Festval. This was a good chance to discover Finnish culture and customs with other volunteers and foreigners while being surrounded by local people. And later we got a surprise package from Discover EU organisers)))

On the weekend we were in Helsinki with our Armenian friends, we had Helsinki city tour and later we visited Korkeasaari Zoo, this was a zoo located on an island.

During the third week we had our 3 day on-arrival training, which was really helpful and interesting. Than we visited Mukkula youth center. We were in an international CouchSurfing weekly meetups organised by one of our Armenian friends.

So this was short intriduction about our first three weeks and impressions of living in Lahti.

Best wishes,

Dusya and Levon J J

On Arrival training = ''First Aid''

On Arrival training is really important support for volunteers, who just arrived and know nothing about the surrounding world.

Everyone knows, that being a tourist in anothr country is kind of a joy, but realizing thath you are going to live somewhere for more than 7 months is really ''shocking'' fact, even if it was your decision to go there, where everything is different and new for you, starting from culture and customs ending with weather and nature. And at the moment an ON ARRIVAL TRAINING is coming to help.

We are volunteers from Armenia and we had 3day On Arrival Training, which was divided into some sections, which were really helpful. During this training we got answers to those questions which were troubling us. We had a wonderful trainer Anna-Kaisa Vihersalo, who is really professional at her job. She patiently explained everything and listened to us.

On Arrival training was not a boring thing, because during those days we spent really good time, we tried different national cuisines as well as Finnish, we were in monthly city market, we knew different and interesting methods of knowing each other better, and not only each other but ourselves as well. We built the path of our goals and drew the hand of our mental wellbeing. We knew about possible risks and challanges that can happen and found ways how to solve them. And we want to appreciate organizers for this training which really helped us.

Best Regards,
Dusya and Levon :)