Selena spent 6 weeks during spring 2014 working in Jyväskylä for the Kindergarten project at Kindergarten Majakkasaari. This is her story:
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| Selena and Santa Claus in Rovaniemi |
Finland,
the fairytale…
I am Selena from China, my hometown is a rather small but beautiful city called Changzhou. I am
now a junior student in Tianjin Normal University, majoring in International
economics and trade.
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| Karjalanpiirakka made by Selena |
When I am now sitting at my desk,
recalling my memories, everything seems to be still happening… I still remember
when I first caught the news of the AIESEC Finland on the website of AIESEC,
how excited I was. I didn't even think of anything before I sent my
first letter to the deputy (Talvkki), I was desperate to go to that country. At that time, the reason for going to
Finland was so simple---- I wanted to gain a better understand how that
beautiful country develops so well on all kinds of sides，and has so many well-known things and people - Nokia, Angry Bird, Santa Claus
and my hero KIMI.
I have a lot of stories I want to share with
you, one and a half month’s life is a quite long time and every minute a bulk of stuff seems to
happen. My eyes seem to be like a digital camera and my
brain seems to be like a USB as well. The paper has limit but the feelings do not….
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| Jyväskylä city church |
That night was cold when I first
came to Finland. After the long flight and the bus trip, finally I found my
friend Talvikki was there, waiting for me….. That moment I realized, unlike leaving for work or studies in my country, everything would be quite different in
another country! The culture, the language, the food, even the hair and skin color of the people... But that moment you just feel like you just gone to another your
home. It is true, I got another family.
When I first came to Finland on that cold
evening, when I first viewed this country - of which I only learnt from in my geography class - through the window of the bus, I told myself this was the real Finland.
Everything was like a fairy tale, the snow everywhere, the white everywhere,
everything is so quiet and peaceful, the residents here are so kind and
warm-hearted, and the trust between people seems to be so solid. All the
landscape is quite different from China, where I lived for 21 years.
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| Kindergarten crew |
At first, it was a bit difficult for me to adapt to life there, but to
tell the truth, I would like to learn that and I quite appreciate it. I am so
grateful to Tytti, she showed me around the kindergartens and the school in Jyväskylä,
which help me get better understand of the education in Finland. Everyone in
the world knows that the education of Finland is excellent, but for most of us,
we don’t know why and even how. This time, I believe in that fact. For most day
care centers, teachers do the same things everywhere in the world; singing,
dancing and playing - but in Finland, all the teachers do their best to take care of every child, give them enough love, and what’s
more, teach them the principles and values of life. At the same time,
although parents and teachers try to give all the best to their kids, they
won’t spoil them; here is an example, which touched me a lot. One morning,
when I came to the kindergarten as usual, and saw one boy of the
Majakkasaari got off the car with his mother. I thought I'd just leave the door open for
them, but the mother told me,” thank you, but he
wants to open the door by himself.” This is such a small thing that everyone would
ignore, however, it is very important to the growth of the kids. As for the preschoolers’ education, I have
learnt a lot from Laura, She told me that the textbooks of kids are not just
distributed to every preschooler, they hide the books in the forest, and when
everyone found that in the forest, they would treasure them. Also, Laura
teaches the kids, not only to use their brain, but also use every
part of the body, which is good to their imagination. I couldn't agree more with the
principle of Majakkasaari; music, dancing and adventures. Every kid in the day
care center is allowed to go outside for at least 2 hours, no matter how cold it is. The benefits of keeping in touch with nature are obvious, but the folk in
the modern times, just overlook it.
Although the ways of education differ in every country, we sometimes can't assess them correctly, just because there
is no criterion for that. The tiger mother -model is still popular in Asia,
especially in China, and after that model, we do develop a lot of talented
pupils. But in my personal opinion, I prefer the model of Finland, giving kids
enough time to play while under the proper pressure of study.
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| Hockey game |
Of course, besides the lessons I have learnt
in Majakkasaari, I also learnt a lot of from my home stay family. Through the
experience of home stay, I have learned how the local residents live as well as
the local custom. It seems that everyone keeps a good balance between work, study and free time, which is so vital, especially in this society, where the pace is
getting increasingly fast. My host father took my ‘little sister’ and I to the local
library to enjoy reading, the sports stadium to watch an ice
hockey match, and the local library, his palace (his company) to see the
working atmosphere there….’Mum’ always prepared so much tasty food and snacks
for us and took the utmost care of me, which made my stay just like in heaven.
Most importantly, my Little sister, she is so sweet just like her name, which
is also the name of the famous ice cream. I have watched her skating lesson, we
would draw together, play the games together, do almost everything together,
oh, my little princess…
I love this city, I love everyone and
everything there. Just like I said, even you just walk along the street, you
will quite enjoy yourself. In the city, I have experienced a lot, all the
warm-hearted teachers and the residents, all the lovely kids, various parties
held in the students village, all kinds of delicious food, of course my visit to see Santa Claus up north…..The list of memories is quite long, I can only say that the paper is
limited, but the feelings and the gratefulness is unlimited…
I try to appreciate everyone for their
kindness, but later I found what I could do for them in return is so little, ‘kiitos’ [thank you] is not enough to represent how grateful I am, words couldn't do that.
But I still want to say thank you for you all, the kids, all the teachers, my
host family, my friends of the students village as well as Sari, and the Santa
Claus of the daycare center, you are the ‘real’ Santa with the modern car as
the transportation.:)) Hopefully, the Earth is not so large that we just call it as ‘an Earth village', so there is no goodbye just SEE YOU.
Finally, if I have to use one to describe
Finland, that is ‘mecca’,This is a mecca, which is full of arts and artists.
This is the unique the place for someone, who loves arts and wants to
experience different cultures.
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