It is a fine opportunity to work with a colleague and a class from China. My students have asked lot of questions from their new friends, like: How long are your school days? What is your favourite movie? What hobbies do you have? It is good to see that there are things that are pretty much the same in both countries but also to see and to understand the differencies. My students were quite amazed about schooldays in Beijing: 5th graders have eight school hours per day!

My students have made A3-sized postcards to their friends in Beijing. I will take them to China as a souvenir from Finland.

Raini Sipilä, SYK

A lot of things has happened this spring between Helsinki and Beijing. I have got WeChat -messages nearly everyday from my Chinese colleague Sienna,  my class has worked well with the theme Nest and now Sienna’s class in Beijing has started the project aswell.

Today we finally met: a FaceTime call let us talk face to face. I think it is marvellous how technology helps us to build relationships between people from different parts of the world. I and Sienna had a wonderful conversation about our schools, our jobs as teachers, and about becoming GEC Conference. We decided to meet at least twice before our teaching demo. We also decided to make another FaceTime call on next Monday so that our students could see each other and ask some questions. It is nice that the same project is happening in Finland and in China at the same time!

Raini from SYK