Seminar at work

On Thursday we had a seminar day at work. I work in a company, which is owned by a Danish company. Once a year we have a seminar day, in which some chiefs from Denmark come to Finland to tell us how things are going and talk about their plans for us. This time we had two visitors from Denmark, I had met the man before but the woman was new to me. Both of them had presentations in English. The Danish accent is usually quite simple to understand after getting used to it, so I didn't have so much difficulties this time, although the subjects of the presentations were hard. I should be better in knowing economic vocabulary in English because of my work, but I still have difficulties with them. During the latest year I have started to understand more and more.

The Danish woman who was talking about figures and last years profits. I noticed, that she wasn't so used to presenting in English, because she seemed to be really nervous and forgot to talk to the audience. She was too often staring at the screen behind her, which made her voice not hearing so well.

After the seminar, we had an evening event with dinner. I was really tired after sleeping only four hours the night before, so I hoped that after very tiring seminar, I could sit down with some colleagues and relax. Luck wasn't on my side, because I got seated across the table to the Danish woman. And next to us were people, who don't really speak English too well. Naturally then, I needed to keep company to the foreign guest. I'm really not so good in small talk, but I just had to force myself to start the conversation. Luckily I could find out some topics to discuss about with the person, and actually she was really nice. Even though talking in English during the dinner took quite much effort, I felt really happy afterwards, that I handled the situation so well. I also got good feedback from my boss about that. I found out, that I can manage these situations, which is really good. It looks like I will have a trip to Denmark coming in the future, so then I might need to do something similar again.


Independent studies so far: 17/51

Field trip group so far: 11/20

Visit to The National Museum of Finland

On Wednesday the Field Trip group did a visit to The National Museum of Finland. I'm part of the museum group, who organized this visit too. We met at the museum at 4 pm, and went to see the exhibitions. Our main interest was the exhibition which is called "Come to Finland". There's a collection of old tourism posters, that are advertising Finland as a traveling destination to foreign people. There were many interesting posters, that were advertising for example old ferry companies, airlines, cities and nature resorts. I wasn't aware, that many famous artists, for example Akseli Gallen-Kallela, have done also this kind of tourism posters. One of my hobbies is traveling, so it was interesting to see how Finland has been presented in these posters in the history. Some of the posters were actually really funny! Here are some examples of the posters:

We also went to see other exhibitions, the other temporary exhibition was called The Arctic Spirit. There were some artifacts of people, who live in Arctic areas. The collection was quite small. We also went to see some of the permanent collections, parts of it are closed at the moment because of the museum's updating process. Since one of us studies art history, she could tell us a little bit more about the objects shown at the exhibition.

We were totally two hours at the museum, we needed to leave at 6 pm when it closed. It was nice to see others again, next week we will have a meeting again.


Independent studies so far: 14/51

Field trip group so far: 11/20

Holiday in London

Last week I went to London for a holiday. Travelling to an English speaking country is a good way to practice English skills too. I have been to London a couple of times before too, so I had seen the main sights already on previous trips. The idea of travelling to London once again formed in my head, when I heard that there will be two Finnish fighters fighting in UFC in London 18th of March. I was lucky enough to get the tickets (it surely wasn't so easy that one might imagine), so I booked the plane tickets and hotel too only three days after getting the idea. So, in the middle of March I headed to London.

We traveled to London with my husband already on Thursday morning, though the UFC event wasn't until Saturday. We hadn't had our winter holiday yet, so we had some extra holidays to use for the trip. On Wednesday evening we went to see a movie,  which was called Lion. It was a story of a young Indian boy, who got lost and apart from his family. After some incidents he ended up to an orphanage, and got adopted to an Australian family. When he grew up, he wanted to find his family in India, and though it was hard, he finally succeeded in it. The movie is based on a true story, and in the end of the movie they showed also some photos of the real events, when the boy traveled back to India to meet his family. The movie was really emotional, I cried a couple of times during the movie. The first part of the movie was spoken in Hindi, so there were subtitles in English. The Australian part of the movie was spoken in English, so it was a little bit harder for me to understand everything. But I understood the main points anyway, and could follow the story line quite easily. Here's the trailer of the movie, if you are interested in it.

On Friday evening we went to see a musical. I'm actually not a big fan for musicals, neither my husband, but there was one particular show that we were interested in. It is called The Book of Mormon, and it's written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the same men who are behind the animated series called South Park. The musical tells a story of two Mormon boys, who are sent to Uganda for their missionary time. The time they spend in Uganda trying to convert local people is really hilarious, and not to be taken seriously at all. I laughed so many times during the show, and it felt good to understand most of the jokes the musical contained. The sense of humor of the writers is really harsh, not everyone is able to laugh for raping babies to cure HIV etc. I was sitting next to an old man, who didn't laugh even once during the show. I really enjoyed that it was possible to drink wine etc in the theater seats also, that never happens in Finland.

On Saturday evening was finally UFC event. UFC is worlds most famous mixed martial arts organisation, which arranges fight nights in different countries. They have never had an event in Finland, though nowadays there are a couple of Finnish fighters participating too. The event in London was in the O2 arena, which is huge, it's capacity is 20 000 people. We had bought tickets to really good seats, we were quite close to the cage. We could see the fights really well from where we sat, which was good. It wouldn't have been as nice to sit somewhere far, where you could have only watched the screens to be able to follow the matches well. There were totally 12 fights that evening, one with female fighters and the rest with male. The first Finnish fighter Teemu Packalen was fighting on preliminary card fight, but Makwan Amirkhani was on the main card. Both of the matches were supposed to be 3 times 5 minutes, but Teemu Packalen got knocked out already in the beginning if his fight. That was quite disappointing for us, but anyway the whole event was so good, that it didn't matter so much.

The people around us were all British, and they were quite interested in us. We talked to many of them, and they were surprised that we had traveled all the way from Finland only to see the UFC. Some crazy Finns! People there were really friendly, and they felt bad for us after Finnish fighters losses. I found it a little bit difficult to talk about the matches with the British because of the lack of my vocabulary. I have practised some self defense sports myself, but I knew the vocabulary only in Finnish. We bought the handbill, in which there are info about the rules etc. I will take some time to read it through and learn the vocabulary later.

On Sunday it was time for us to come home. The whole weekend was such a nice getaway from the everyday life of mine. =)

Independent studies so far: 14/51

Field trip group so far: 8/20