On Monday February 12th our dear guests (14) from Hong Kong arrived. It was so nice to finally meet them after chatting with them through Skype, email and seeing some videos and pictures! I really appreciate the fact that they came to see us and had also prepared lessons!

Theme of the week was friendship because of Valentine’s Day. The student’s union had planned a colour week. Each day we had a colour in which we were encouraged to dress. The colour of Monday was red. We started the day by going to see our schools talent show “Mestarit lavalla”. Children had prepared many performances (dancing, singing, gymnastics, hobby introduction video etc.) and a small group of teachers (including me) performed too. Together we also sang a song about friendship, in English. Our guests really enjoyed the show and they appreciated the fact that the kids had really prepared the performances all by themselves without teachers’ involvement.

Then we all went outside during break time. They were amazed on how freely we let the kids play outside. They were wondering why we don’t have fences and more teachers monitoring the break time so that the kids won’t get hurt.

After the break we gathered together to have some tea and discuss about our school. Besides me, there were also our principal Pirjo and one of our teachers Heidi. Our time ran out so we didn’t have that much time to introduce our school properly. But I sent the introduction slides and our weekly schedules to Cam later.
After lunch we went to say hi to a number of classes and then it was already time for them to go.

On Tuesday and Wednesday they organized lessons for 4th, 3rd and 5th graders. First they told us some things about their culture and especially about the Chinese New Year. Then they asked the students to prepare a drum using toilet paper cones and some extra material. It was great to see how excited the kids were and how they used their creativity in making different drums. Then we’d sing a Chinese song and play those drums. What a lot of fun that was! 😊

On Tuesday and Wednesday the guests went to observe some lessons to different classrooms. On Wednesday there was also a magic show by a real magician. Our student’s union had requested it. On Wednesday the guests also interviewed our principal before leaving.

I hope they had a lovely trip here in Finland! It sure was amazing to have them here!

Greetings,
Linda