Finnish Friends

Before I went to Finland I applied to the "Finnish Friend" organisation at the University of Eastern Finland. International students and Finns who are interested in getting to know eachother fill-in the application forms where they write about their hobbies and interests, language competences, and expectations for their "new friend". In January, the international coordinator at the university tries to match international students with Finns of common interest and then arranges the first meeting, which in my case was held at the University a month ago.

Well, my "Finnish friend" is a Finnish family - a couple and their 8 year-old daughter. They live in an old farm on the country-side 20 km south of Joensuu. The perfect place for someone like me who loves spending time in the outdoors - in the unspoiled, and some what untouched, nature. A beautiful place and such lovely people!

I've spent two weekends at their place and met with them a few times in Joensuu for lunch and to watch their daughter training figure scating (which she btw is very good at). Together with them I've tried skiing, driving the snow mobile, ice-fishing, and I have eaten a variety of traditional Finnish/Karelian/Lapish food. This weekend I met some of their family members at their daughter's birthday as well as her friends from the figure scating team.

Well. So how does this go with my own professional development?
First of all, I get to know some Finns (at the university I mostly meet other exchange students). This enables me to learn more about Finland, Finnish traditions and how some of them see their educational system.
Secondly, I get to practice my own English on a level where I have to make an effort to make my speech as clear and understandable as possible without making any mistakes in my grammar - and to train all other communicative skills.
Intercultural Communicative Competence I get to practice and develop everywhere (when the concept of "culture" is dynamic and not static), but in a foreign country it might demand more effort from my side to succeed in this communication. Yes, it might demand more of me - but at the moment I don't think it does. At least not when it comes to the Finns in the small town of Joensuu. Maybe my biggest challenge still lies ahead of me, seeing as it might demand more work of me to communicate successfully in a big and busy city like Copenhagen. We'll see.

It could be interesting to see if it would be possible to establish a "Danish friend programme" in Copenhagen.

I'll leave you with a few pictures from this weekend..