European Village

Danilo Lokar -school from Ajdovscina participated Evropska vas (European village) -event in Nova Gorica on 8th of May. There were lot of schools, each school presenting some European country. We were presenting Finland - on the table there were some typical things of Finland -  Santa Claus, reindeers, Moomins (a cartoon), ice hockey, nature, northern lights...

Earlier when I visited the school we were dancing "head, shoulders, knees and toes" -song in Finnish with kids. Now we were presenting it all together on the stage! The song goes like this: "pää, olkapää, peppu, polvet, varpaat..."

 On the end two happy Santa Clauses from Finland visited us... ;-)

Let's meet Finland -study circle

You are all welcome to learn about Finland and Finnish language! :-)

About Finns

Yesterday I found a good link posted on Facebook by my friend; 

10 Things not to do in Finland

Even it's a kind of list for people who are about to travel to Finland, I found it also a good way to compare differences with other countries.

I think especially the way of having a conversation is quite different when comparing to some other countries. Finns don't interrupt a conversation, rather stay quiet if they have anything important to say and don't feel uncomfortable if there is a silence moment in between having a conversation with someone. You might think some of these as negative but you can also turn it to way that Finns are good and reliable listeners. :-)

But there is one thing in this list which I disagree with. It's always okay to talk about ice-hockey - even we are competitive when playing ice-hockey against Sweden, it shouldn't be taken too seriously :-)

Angry Birds at school

I've had some presentations about Finland at schools around Ajdovscina. Last week and this Tuesday I also visited Danilo Lokarja school in Ajdovscina, we were singing and dancing two Finnish songs with kids - that was a lot of fun! And I was surprised how quickly and well they learned the lyrics, pronouncing words like real Finns :-)

So far I've visited primary schools in Budanje, Smarje, Podnanos, Goce and Lokavec. (I'm sorry that I don't have these s, z, c -letters with "roofs" on my keypad -  it's Finnish so instead of those I have ä, ö, å ;). I have a Power point presentation about Finland and show some videos - for example about northern lights and ice-swimming after sauna. And these seem to be something what they haven't seen before :) After the presentation we have a workshop and make Angry Birds characters from cardboard - kids have really liked them! I chose Angry Birds theme because it comes from Finland and kids know them and like the game really much!

I will add some pictures later :-)

EVS presentation

On Thursday, February 21st me and other EVS-volunteer Maria had a presentation in library. It was about EVS, voluntary work, organisations we are working for (MDPM Ajdovscina and Hisa Mladih) and our home countries Finland and Lithuania.

We had presentation in Power Point and also showed some videos. You can check them from YouTube, links below:

The Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) in Finland

Winter swimming / Ice swimming in Finland 

Crazy Finnish habit after sauna :)

And a video about Lithuania

Welcome to Lithuania

After the presentation we had some really nice conversations with guests and offered wine with Finnish dessert, Runeberg's torte. I chose to bake that because every year on February 5th we celebrate Johan Ludvig Runeberg. He is our national poet and one of the poems he wrote became lyrics for our National Anthem (Maamme-laulu). So around Feb 5th we usually bake Runeberg's torte (Runebergin torttu). The main taste is about ginger biscuits and almonds. I had the idea to bake these for presentation when I found ANNAS-ginger biscuits (Swedish biscuits but we also eat those same in Finland) from Mercator. I didn't expect to find anything Scandinavian from Slovenia :)

ANNAS ginger biscuits

From Oulu to Ajdovscina

On the way to Slovenia! January 3rd I traveled from Oulu to Helsinki by plane. I chose to go by plane because Finland is quite big country (actually almost 17 times bigger than Slovenia) and the distance to Helsinki is about 600 kilometers. So by train it would take around 9 hours and by bus something between 9 and 13. And if the weather is bad on winter, they might be also late "a bit" :) In Helsinki I spend the night by my good friend Lotta.

Next morning I went to Helsinki-Vantaa airport. My flights went by route Helsinki-Berlin-Venice. And then from Venice to Ajdovscina by car. Mateja (one of the volunteers in our organisation) picked me from airport with a sign written "HELI from FINLAND WELCOME"!

Finnair in co-operation with Air Berlin

EVS-volunteer Heli

I'm 20 years old girl from Finland. I came to Slovenia 4th January to work as EVS-volunteer for one year (till December 2013). European Voluntary Service is a good chance to travel and live abroad for longer period.

At first I could write something about myself. I live in Finland, in town called Liminka (population of 9000). It's near a city called Oulu (190 000). They're located on the coast by the Baltic Sea.

About studying: After primary school (grades 1 to 9) I went to high school and hairdressing school at the same time. It took 3 years and I graduated in 2011. Right after finishing school I started working in hair salon in my home town. So before I came here I had been working there for 1,5 years.

I was living with my parents. I didn't move by my own yet because I was expecting to spend one year here in Slovenia. My dad is a farmer and mum works at office. I have also one sister, called Laura. She is 5 years older than me. At the moment she's studying civil engineering in university of applied sciences.

There are also 2 cats in my family :) They are called Pöpskä and Milla. They're living with my dad - on the farm there is a lot of space to run outside and hunt birds and mice ;)

Pöpskä - 9 years old

Milla - 13 years old

I like sports veeeeery much. I've played floorball (indoor hockey) like 10 years already. We are playing in women's 2. division and have tournaments 1-2 times per month and practicing twice a week. I am a goalkeeper.

I'm also a cheerleader. Our team is called Baby Beast Cheerleaders (check our websites here) and we are cheering for an ice-hockey team from Oulu called Kärpät. Because we are dancing in ice-hockey hall with not so much space, we don't do stunts etc. It's more like cheerdance.

Besides these hobbies, if i still have some freetime I usually go running, snowboarding, fishing or rollerblading.

Fishing in Lapland: 12,2 kg salmon from river Muonionjoki