Outdoor Living

Yesterday night I went orienteering with the parents of a student in the 2E class, and their 17 year old exchange student from Germany. Orienteering is big in Finland, or at least in Kokkola. I honestly do not know if people do this in the states. What happens is you show up at whatever place has been picked at anytime during say, an 8 hour period. They hand you a map of where you are and you go to a table and mark the spots that you need to find, in order, from 1 to 10. This time the map was a bunch of criss-crossing lines that amounted to 4.4 kilometers in all. Usually the check points are contained in secluded, forested areas but sometimes they can abut neighborhoods. The father, before I agreed to go, said that they don't take it seriously... some people do, but they just do it for fun and take their time. Well, that might be true, but I still got an intense workout jogging over rocks and small creeks and fallen trees. Then we ran into farmland with horses on it; we started climbing through the scant fence. It had a current running through it and shocked me. So now I know what it feels like to be shocked by an electric fence. I said “ow.” But it was actually quite fun and now I wish I knew how to use a compass to read maps. Orienteering is also a mandatory part of primary school education, and all of the primary school classes in Kokkola have been going orienteering in one form or another for the past two weeks.

In other, less awesome, news, flus have been going around and I have fallen prey to a small spell of one. I had a fever for a couple hours at the school as well as a bad headache. I took some medicine, came home, and slept for almost 3 hours. Now I feel better but still 'out of it'. I guess it's just that time of year everywhere above latitude 47 in the world.

Drawings

Computer problems plague me, still. Highly disappointing. I will never complain about GCI service again. It would be a godly connection in Kokkola, Finland. It's strange because everything else here is so much more modern than in America. Their houses, their lights, their heating systems, the fact that every child has a cell phone... I guess they are just more modern in different ways. Less children here have gaming systems. My host family doesn't even have one. Not even a gameboy. That would be totally unheard of in a household of 3 young boys in America, unless you happen to live in some parts of Pennsylvania.

Today in 2E there was a substitute, so when they were finished with their art project she let them draw. I stood over two little boys who were making quite a lot of noise. One boy was drawing fighter jets, helicopters, parachuters, and tanks. Then, after he had finished drawing these things, he would draw guns or cannons shooting them up and would add explosions to the previously unharmed machines and people. There was obviously one side against another. “Who are these people and those people?” I asked. “This is English,” he says, pointing to the blown up plane, “and this is Finland.” He motions at the cannons and men with big guns. I turn to the other boy, who has drawn a parachuter with a magic gun that can spray hundreds of bullets in many directions, and the fire is landing on a group of people on a cliff. I ask him the same question. “This is American,” he points at the helpless cliff group, “and this is from Finland... no, no, from England.” Oookay, I think. There is nothing you can say to these boys. Not “that's not nice.” They don't care if it's not nice. The interesting thing is that I bet if an American 8 year old boy was drawing something similar and I asked who was who, he would come up with something like “That's James Bond and those are the bad guys” or “that's the vampire army and these are the humans.” Americans are very influenced by the media they watch and stories they hear, and are therefore more likely to imagine wars that are not morally ambiguous or culturally biased, but wars that have very definite sides of good and bad. As an American, I can also say that I believe for lots of us, history is vague and confusing, and wars fought in the past hold little meaning or interest. Except the civil war, but even that escapes the interest of most American 8 year olds. But America is very strange in this way, it seems. People in Europe and Asia know about many wars in their country's past, and they carry them throughout their lives, carry the knowledge and emotion of them. Little Finnish boys think of England when they think of wars because Finland was at war with England, albeit briefly, in the 19 th century. And people still talk about it often, and hold resentment toward Russia for dragging Finland into a war it did not want to fight. I think that maybe another reason, maybe even a deeper and more meaningful reason, that American children only imagine fantastical and unrealistic wars is because of our politically correct culture. No child would dare say they were drawing America slaughter Japan, even though it happened, and even if a child did dare to, they would certainly be given a very serious talk or even punished. Maybe that would have happened if the normal teacher was there today, though. I will have to ask what some of the teachers think of this. But I think it is an important lesson nonetheless, that Americans are in a way not allowed to imagine realistic wars, unless they have already been structured in a board or video game... I don't know why this is. Maybe because in those board and video games, who you end up attacking or defending against is a thing of chance, but coming up with who is on what side for a drawing takes intention.

Two Weeks In

So, I haven't updated this blog since I arrived here because I had computer troubles. Loooots of computer troubles. But that is a long and boring story. The less long, less boring (hopefully) stories I have scribbled on loose paper I finally transposed onto the computer, and now can post and back-date them to make it look like I was on top of things! Yay! So look to the titles on your left, scroll down and start from the beginning! Or read them completely out-of-order, whatever suits your fancy. And keep checking back every now and then. I promise I will be good about updating from here on out.

-Summer

P.S.
you have to click on the link that tells the number of comments to leave a comment

Bite Me

There are lots of little differences about the food here that combine to make it significantly foreign, but still quite good and not too weird. One thing I miss about America is the cheese, though. The cheese here is all so mild! It tastes kind of like lightly flavored rubber. I even bought gouda cheese at the store and it was extremely mild, though of course not labeled so. That's just what everyone is used to. They also do not sell cheddar cheese. Oh yes, the labels say cheddar, but it all tastes like that gross Kraft American cheese. So to someone who wishes they were a cheese connoisseur, there is a lot lacking over here.

One thing that surprised me the first day I came was when my host mother pulled out a jar of peanut butter. I thought Europeans hated peanut butter! But she had been to the states before, and she was prepared for me. Though the peanut butter sold here is all less oily and sugary. I miss the oil. The Finns also like to point out that they do not like spicy foods or adding spices very much, although earlier today my host father made one of the spiciest pasta sauces I have ever eaten (one of the boys was sure it was really chili). And there seems to have been a national memo sent out that everyone should stop eating real butter. I don't think I've even seen it sold in the stores... or if it is, it is hidden. It is all margarine and vegetable fat here, with a dozen different brands to choose from. I don't mind it much but it is less salty than margarine in the US. Everything is less salty. Even their salt. I'm not kidding! Their salt is less salty... its flakes are less heavy and less uniformly shaped. Somehow this leads to a teaspoon of salt in your soup tasting like 5 flecks of normal USA salt. I don't know why I notice this stuff. It is also amusing to watch the Finns put pineapple in everything that is foreign. Something called “American Pizza”? It is lathered with a bunch of different meats and cheese and pineapple. A burrito in a “Mexican” restaurant? The three staple ingredients are beans, cheese, and pineapple. Not to mention this “Mexican” restaurant has pictures of Native Americans like Sitting Bull and Native American headresses all over the place, mingling with the pinatas and cacti. And yes, this was supposed to be a purely Mexican restaurant. Quite amusing.

As for their overall diet, I've never seen anyone drinking milk higher in fat than 1%, and they eat way less processed foods than Americans do. They also are obsessed with the fat content of cheese and butter, and it is usually advertised in big numbers on the front. I don't miss the fat, but I also don't think it is so important to be obsessed with counting calories in foods that are naturally high in fat. In that way, I guess a lot of their food IS processed... just processed to remove things rather than add them.

There is this one yogurt dish called melja made by danone that is sooo good, it is better than ice cream to me. But then there is this other kind of yogurt dish called viili that is like stringy sour yogurt and I did not like it. They also like to eat this kind of super dark licorice that I did not enjoy the taste of one bit. And they have more boring ice cream flavors. Well, I think that is enough espousing about food for one night. I didn't realize I had accumulated so many opinions on foods here already!

School Shooting

Today we were called in to the teacher's room right after lunch. At that moment, about 200 kilometers to the south, a gunman was shooting up his school, a vocational school. I cannot get much more information, 9 people have been confirmed dead now and possibly the gunman, too, who shot himself. I have no access to the internet and my host father isn't watching the news on tv. I believe this is only the second time ever something like this has happened in Finland, the first time it was at a secondary school about a year ago, I have been told. It is not all over the television. After we were told about it a teacher turned to me and started asking about lesson plans for next week. My thesis about most Finns being unwilling to talk about bad things is hard to determine through personal relationships, but it seems to have some truth to it on a national scale. In the least there is certainly a difference between American and Finnish reactions to tragedies... Americans would have the news of it all over every basic channel and radio station, and everyone would be talking about it a lot. Especially if it was happening less than 200 kilometers away. Now the television has turned to a press conference about the shooting—although it is being reported on now, it still is markedly different than how American television would report it. It is a paneled press conference, with specific people reading prepared remarks. And this is happening about 3 hours after the shooting took place. In America, there would probably be journalists interviewing shocked and horrified witnesses and anyone else who so much as had an opinion about it, there would be video footage rolling nonstop of fellow students screaming and crying, terrified and angry. Both ways of handling the tragedy seem strange to me—one too business-like, the other too sensational. But I don't know how I would direct media to deal with it. How does one deal with something so horrible and senseless?

A teacher also said that it was 'big news' last year when the first shooting happened, because no one expected it to occur in Finland. “We have no locks on our classroom doors, no sealed gates, nothing by the way of security,” she said, “there wasn't need for it. Maybe that's changing.” It might be that I have come to admire the trust and respect for students in one of the last and dying systems where teachers trust to leave their students unsupervised... it may be that some of what I want to bring back to America are values that it cannot afford to employ, values that are going to start being swept away in Finland because the world is afraid of youth with guns for good reason. But why are there so many murderers among us? Why so many murder-suicides at places of education??!

Joo

The second day I was here the headmaster came over to my host family's to discuss the details of my internship and have coffee and pie. I noticed that everyone was breathing very heavily in a wheezing-like manner. After the meeting, I wondered to myself if there was something in the air like dust that was making everyone breathe like this. Then after a few days I realized something. They weren't breathing, they were saying “Yes”! Or, probably a better translation would be “Yeah”. The word 'yes' in Finnish is “Joo”, which is pronounced “Yo”. Now I want everyone reading this to say “yo” while breathing in. Now do it while trying to whisper. This is what Finns pepper the silences in conversations with! And I thought everyone had a breathing problem at first! Hahaha!

I have also noticed that there is less chivalry here than in the states. I hope this is not an effect of a greater amount of political and social equality between men and women (the president of Finland is a woman). But men do not open the doors for me here, and I have not seen them do it for any other woman. A few times I thought they were, but then it was just that they were opening the door slowly, and when I walked through it first everyone looked confused, including me.

Today was Wednesday, and every Wednesday there is an all-school assembly. Every other Wednesday there is a story read out of the bible and a bible song performed by a Lutheran minister. I couldn't understand anything because it was all in Finnish, though.

Oh, also at Hollihaka the teachers lead every single activity for their classes, except the immersion classes sometimes have a separate teacher come to do the Finnish lessons. But art, gym, cooking, library, all of these activities are organized and led by the children's same teacher.

Rules

Today when I was working with the 1^st graders, they were acting up and would not cease until I said “Remember one of the rules is being polite, and what you are doing is not polite, you are not following the rules.” I don't know if that would work with 7 year old Americans. It would be interesting to find out more about the disciplinary system in the higher grades here... there doesn't seem to be one in the elementary aside from contacting parents and having meetings with them, and that I think is not so different from American elementary schools, at least in Alaska.

First Day at School

After my first day at Hollihaka, spent with the 7 and 8 year olds (1st and 2nd grade), I have noticed many things about how this elementary school is run differently than what I am used to. First of all, it is interesting to notice that the children are allowed to run around and goof off much more freely, yet when it is time to listen and do work they are much more respectful and obedient—it takes a lot oess effort for the teachers to get them in order. This made me realize how bizarre it is that in America we are so obsessed with making children form perfect, straight, quiet lines to get from place to place, where the children are not allowed to touch each other or even the wall or say a whisper—I have always felt strange about this custom but now I feel that it is almost deranged. Americans, I think, become confused as to what 'being good' and 'obedient' are. They think it is being stone statues in front of other people (adults), when really I think it is being eager to learn and understanding that that takes a certain amount of self-restraint... not repression of their humanity.

Secondly, between every learning session, maybe 3 or 4 times a day discluding lunch and recess, there is a 15 minute break where the children play outside and most of the teachers gather in the lounge and have coffee and tea. It creates a mental break that I think is great for both teachers and students, but especially teachers. This also creates a space of community and communication for the different teachers.

Then there is the issue of supervision. Americans are either too paranoid, too distrusting, or both. There is not truly any difference between a hyper Finnish 8 year old and a hyper American 8 year old. But an American would never leave a class of them unsupervised. Finnish teachers, however, do not mind leaving their classes unsupervised if there is something that needs to be attended to elsewhere. They let the class know where they are going, and what the children should do when they are gone. They also do not have a panic attack if the children did not listen to their instructions, they don't expect them to be as good without supervision as with, and if things have gotten too out of hand for their liking they tell the children so. But they also can trust the children enough to not kill each other... and at least today I observed most of the children actually doing the work they were told to when the teacher was out of the classroom.

There also is a greater emphasis on technical skill, and I believe it is in 3rd grade when they start to go to what we Americans would call shop class. All classes also do 'textiles' at least a few times a year it seems, which I think is mostly sewing. The school's Headmaster told me that “We believe the human is more than just a brain, so it only makes sense to work with the hands in school.” Today outside the door I saw a 9 or 10 year old hammering on iron for the shop class.

As for more traditional lessons, the 1st grade lesson book on letters also had things to color on almost every page. At least when I was a child in school, lessons were lessons and coloring time was coloring time. For the younger children I think it makes sense to mix them, it provides a mental break, and incentive to finish the work on the page, and a subtle association of enjoyment is added to such lessons.

Finally, here the school has way less bureaucracy. It has grades 1 through 6 with about 300 students in all. The headmaster deals with things like what chairs to buy, what heating companies to employ, and he involves all the teachers and sometimes the parents in those decisions. This is, of course, much work for him, but it also creates a feeling that this is our school, and I think that would foster better community and respect for the institution.

First Day

Getting ready to sleep. Yesssss. Wish my laptop could be powered up because it is easier for me to journal that way. I want to write about how it is the little things that tell you you are foreign, like how the toilets in Europe are built differently and how the grocery stores in Finland are more organized, and that with these new things, in a foreign country it is almost like being a baby again, you have to assume everyone knows better than you and just mimic them. Usually it works. Tampere left me with a strange feeling that I cannot entirely shake, but I wish I could. When I am in my room sometimes it feels like it is moving or rocking. It might be residual from travelling so much.^* Or this section of the house is more 'responsive' to everyone moving around downstairs? I dunno.

*It was.

Pre-Departure Blogging

I am leaving for Finland in basically 2.5 days now! I have contact with my host family and the Hollihaka school headmaster over there, so at least I've thrown in my anchors for when I arrive. I haven't started packing. Nor does my laptop work... really... as of tonight. What can ya do? Take it to Best Buy, I'm told. For those... maybe 2? Maybe 3? People out there who are interested in what I am doing, here is the low-down, the scoop, the "extra" addendum to my life:

In the spring (of 2008) I got an e-mail from the philosophy department (for I am a philosophy major) linking me to the IE3 website (http://ie3global.ous.edu/). I immediately became interested and scanned their available internships. I was interested in a few--but only felt like it would be fair to apply for one particular one because I had actual experience in the subject--so I decided to apply to teach in Kokkola, Finland. Technically, this internship is about teaching English, and I don't have experience in that. But I do have experience in teaching, and hopefully that will count for something.

If you click on the link above, it will take you to a new, improved website that looks nary like the one I visited back in the spring. Another surprise, if you go so far as to look at the specifications for the Kokkola internship, is that they say Kokkola will help you find a dormitory residence for a fee. I, thankfully, gratefully, appear to be the last intern to be given free housing for this internship. It was difficut for them to "find" a host family, and I was given the possibility of having to pay for a shared dorm room until nearly the last minute. My host family already seems so friendly and accomadating, though, I wonder why it was so difficult for the school district to find a willing family, and it is sad to see that either IE3, or the Kokkola school district, or both, have decided to give up on trying to fanagle free housing for the interns. Oh well, Lucky Me!

So, I apply for the internship and get it, first with another person who they also gave it to which ended up transferring me from working with the High School to working with the Elementary School. The other person who was awarded the internship dropped out, but I am still going to work at the elementary school, Hollihaka (http://www.hollihaankoulu.kokkola.fi/info/english_frameset6_immersion.htm). I am not sure what to expect as far as English comprehension goes in the elementary. I am taking some of my favorite childhood stories, and maybe some short educational films if there is an opportunity to use them to good effect.

The biggest obstacle so far has certainly been UAA. Internships are kind of like enigmas. Hardly anyone does full time internships, so there is nothing in place for them to work. Never mind the fact that more people would do them if there actually was a way to... the university is generally content in telling itself that no one wants to do them so they don't need to set anything up for them. I managed... after a lot of work from myself and one great lady named Jill... to cobble together 12 credits, although 3 of them are only going to be counted as incomplete at the end of the semester until I do a community service project in Anchorage. The professor I am working with on the other 9 is actually quite good, but there are still "issues" to be worked out with Hollihaka because of the fact that UAA is not set up for this. My professor doesn't want me working full time, because she also wants me doing other projects that focus on the community in Kokkola at large. They are very lofty and challenging projects, but if it works out I am looking forward to attempting them. Needless to say, I will probably be presenting a proposal to someone or other at UAA to try to get a system that provides actual support for a 12 credit internship in the works. It is truly sad that UAA pats itself on the back for giving its students the opportunity to go abroad and do internships, yet when someone actually attempts to do just that--it is more than a pain to get it done. Beleive me, I have spent tears and many hours of frustration and confusion about whether or not I could get the 12 credits without having to write a bunch of 15 page papers about topics that might not even have anything to do with the internship at all on top of working full time. I know this is quickly turning into a UAA-bashing post, but honestly, if you have ever heard anything bad about UAA-- it's true. I am hoping that maybe when I return I can help change something at UAA for the better, but I won't get my hopes up.

As for my emotional state, I have somehow forgone the feeling of anticipation. Maybe it has been washed out by the rush to get credits and really the rush of everything. The director in Oregon told me that as of the end of August, my internship was the only one (for Europe) that hadn't been sorted out. I'm leaving in 2.5 days and it still isn't! But talking with the headmaster and the mother of the family I will be staying with by e-mail has at least given me a sense of comfort and security. Here's to the next three months! Next time I post I'll be writing directly from the old country! I'll let you know if I see any Moomin Trolls.

Signing Off,
Summer