3 months in Finland
Time to see the cold!
Hello everybody! I'm Antoine JEANSELME from the school Les Eyquems in Bordeaux in France. I'll be living 2 months and a half in Finland near Helsinki with Jussi and his family. I'm in Finland because of an Erasmus project called ICT World with Finland, Germany, Spain, Czech Republic and Latvia.
This is a photo of me, doing sled on February the 4th in front of the house. I had a lot of fun and the scenery was beautiful!
On thursday afternoon, I've been to a smoked sauna along the Kuusijärvi lake with the short term mobilities. It was a very good day. We could go into the sauna and then we we would go in the freezing lake. I did it but I won't do it again because it's really cold but not very satisfying. Most of the lake is frozen so we can walk on it without any danger but the part of the lake where we can swim isn't frozen because of a pump who moves the water and avoids the temperature of the water to fall.
So this is a sauna. Ther are two different kind of saunas: the electric ones and the wooden ones. This one is an electric one and it's quite small because it's a private one, but public ones can be very big. It is entirely made in wood. It's very hot inside so it can heat to 120°C and even more in big saunas. Sauna is very relaxing. To heat the sauna, we throw some water from the wooden bucket called "kiulu" into a machine called "kiuas" who is filled with hot rocks. The water evaporates and heats all the room.
As you can see on those photos, in Finland, most of the trees are fir trees and other trees without leaves because they are more resistant to the cold. The firs wood can be used to heat the house or saunas but it's also a very good wood to build houses or furnitures.
In Finland, there are two national sports: ice hockey and pesäpallo. Ice hockey is very famous in Finland. Their national team is called "leijonat" and it means the "lions". Today, the finnish team is the third best team in the world and in the last Olympic Games they won the bronze medal.
Pesäpallo is the second national sport; it's like baseball but instead of throwing the ball to the shooter, you just throw it in the air so it's easier to shoot and much more strategic! It isn't an olympic sport but it's appreciated by finnish people.
Today, I will talk to you about the Finnish school system, it's one of the best in the world! Their school is system gives studients a lot of independence and they are much more free compared to French studients. They also choose a lot of sujects that they learn in school such as handworking, home economics( cooking and all the house tasks). They also choose if they want to do art, music, languages or even religion.
Studients are also allowed to use their phones and to listen to music while they are working. They can also go out of the class to do their exercises and sometimes, the teacher doesn't do any lessons, he just helps the studients who needs it.
Today, I am going to tell you about the life in finland. In Finland, everything is very expensive compared to France: a bottle of water costs around 70 cents in France and at least 1 Euro in Finland. Gaz and public transports are also very expensive because one bus ticket costs 3 Euros.
Life is expensive because of a very big taxe and of the transportation because Finland is a Northern country and it's further from the rest of the world. Life is more expensive but Finnish people also have a much better salary than in France.
Last weekend, my parents came in Finland so we visited Suomenlinna. Suomenlinna is 4 islands who used to be a fortress in the South of Helsinki during the war against Russia.
Suomenlinna now has a military school on it and i's one of the most attractive place for tourism. On these photo, we can see parts of the fortress. The islands were very well protected and we could see canons and there were lots of caves and underground paths.
Hello, today, I'm going to talk to you about a finnish tradition. So one week before Easter, Finnish kids find wooden sticks and decorate them. Then they disguise and they go around their neighbourhood and they go knock at the the doors to propose the sticks that they decorated and a story in exchange of candy and sweets. It's some kind of "happy" haloween for easter and a lot of kids do it.