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