English test at work

Today I had a chance to do an English test at my workplace. The test was made by EF, and it had two parts. The first part was about reading skills and the second part about listening. Both parts had several different exercises, and at the end the result was told. The test was a little bit under one hour, both parts taking about half of the time.

The results were really surprising for me, because I didn't expect them to be so good. I got 74/100 points of reading and 84/100 of listening, so the average was 79/100. Those results put me to level C2 in CEFR scaling and between 8,5 and 9,0 in IELTS scaling, which I couldn't believe. I have always thought that my skills aren't so good. Is it only lack of self confidence, or how accurate was the test?

If my results had been worse, I could have participated to an English course at work also. But my level seems to be well enough, so I don't get the course.


Independent studies so far: 18/51

Field trip group so far: 15/20

Pub Quiz -night 5.4.

We went with the Field Trip group to a pub quiz night to Molly Malone's on Wednesday. Actually, there were only three of us, so not so many. Our team was probably one of the smallest.

The pub quiz is held every month's first Wednesday in Molly Malone's, and it's in English. There are several rounds in the quiz, and they are about different subjects. I found it quite hard to understand the accent of the person, who was hosting the quiz and asking the questions. Luckily my team members were better in that, and usually at least one of us understood what the question was about. But we also realized, that to be able to do well in the quiz, it would have been much more likely if we were from an English speaking country or little bit older.  Anyway, in every round we got at least some of the questions right, but not enough to win any of the rounds.

The pub quiz was fun, and I actually think it would be fun to go again.

Independent studies so far: 17/51

Field trip group so far: 15/20

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

Ice skating

Yesterday we went to ice skate with the Field Trip group, although there were only three of us. We met on the ice rink which is located next to the main railway station in Helsinki. We bought the tickets, put on our ice skates and headed to the ice. It was the first time for me during this winter to ice skate, so it felt quite weird in the beginning. I also tied my laces too tight in the beginning, so I needed to loosen them after a couple of rounds. I like the ice rink in the city center, because they also play music there. But on the other hand, it makes talking to each other a little bit more difficult.

At the moment there is a demonstration of asylum seekers who have got negative decision for their applications for asylum, and they are protesting against Finland's politics about asylum seekers. The demonstration is next to the ice rink, so we saw those people all the time while skating. On the other side of the rink was another demonstration, it was about "Suomi ensin" (Finland first), and those people want to get rid of all the asylum seekers in Finland. There were a lot of less people on that side of the rink. While skating, we discussed about the situation of the asylum seekers, who are in danger to be sent back to their home counties. We all thought, that it feels really wrong to send people back to the countries, where they have a risk to get killed.

We also had a small break, when the ice resurfacer came to fix the ice. We went to the cafe and bought hot chocolates. We had hard times remembering which is the name that is often used for the ice resurfacer machine, but then one of us remembered that it's Zamboni. I looked it up just now, and that name comes from the man, who invented the machine. The first Zamboni was built in 1949.

After finishing the hot chocolates we headed back to the ice rink, and ice skated some more time. We talked about different subjects, like parties in the University and student associations. We also talked about different kind of ice skates, like the ones used in speed skating are different from ours. We had a good time. After some time we thought that now we are finished, took off our ice skates and left to go home.

Independent studies so far: 8/51

Field trip group so far: 8/20

Visit to The Finnish Museum of Photography

Today we did a visit to The Finnish Museum of Photography with a small amount of people from the Field Trip group. Only five persons showed up, so not too many. The museum is located in Kaapelitehdas, which is an old cable factory in Ruoholahti area. I have always liked that building, it has beautiful white halls with black velvet curtains. I had never visited the photography museum before, although I enjoy looking at good photos a lot.

The first exhibition that we saw was part of The Festival od Political Photography 2017, and it was called Post-Food. There were photos from several different photographers, and all of them had different themes that were somehow about food and politics around it.

I enjoyed much about the photos, that were taken by Tim Franco. The collection was called Metamorpolis, and the photos were taken in Chongqing area of western China. The area around the metropolis used to be for farming, many poor people got their living out of it. But the growing of the metropolis had taken lands from the farmers, who are still trying to cope by farming in the city. They still have small farming areas next to skyscrapers and motorways. This collections also gave me some ideas how the life is in huge cities in China. I haven't been to China yet, but I'm trying to visit at least one new country every year, so I think that China will be my destination some day.

I also liked Yann Mingard's collection called Deposit. It was about how humans have started to deposit the world's biological heritage. People have built vaults to store seeds and DNA information of different species. The vault that I have heard before is located in Svalbard, and the seeds of each crop known to mankind is stored there. I found some of the photos, especially those about collecting semen samples from animals, quite harsh.

The most emotional part of the exhibition for me was the photo collection from Pablo Ernesto Piovano, which was called The human cost of agrotoxins. He had taken the photos in Argentina, where a company called Monsanto has used toxic pesticides on their fields, where they grow genetically modified soybeans. On those areas the amounts of cancers, miscarriages and malformations among people have increased. Even though it's now known that the pesticides are the reason for it, the use of them is continuing, because mainstream media hasn't reported about it. The photos show people with extreme malformations standing on the fields. Pablo Piovano has said: "If major corporations have control over seeds and food production, they also have control over our health and our freedom."

We also went to see another exhibition, which was called Mobile Albums. It had mobile photos from some asylum seekers, who had arrived to Finland. The asylum seekers had chosen some photos from their phones, that meant really much for them. Some photos where taken before they left from their home countries, some were from their travel, and some even from the time spent in Finland. I found it very interesting, because I do volunteer work among young asylum seekers, so I got some more ideas of their thoughts again.

During the museum visit we discussed only in English, and when we wanted to know more about the photos, we read the information in English. 

Independent studies so far: 8/51

Field trip group so far: 5/20