Day in Turku with Comenius students

Day in Turku with Comenius students

   On Tuesday we visited the city of Turku, in south-western Finland. The first thing we saw when we arrived there was Turku's castle, which dates from the 13th century. Once we were divided in two groups, the guided tour around the castle started. We could learn the history of the castle and the most important things that had taken place there, and at the end we had the opportunity to wear some armors and helmets.

    After that we went to the cathedral, where we made a gimkhana in which we had to discover things related to the cathedral by ourselves. We found out that it was first constructed in the late 13th century, but in 1827 there was a big fire which caused huge damage in the cathedral and it had to be rebuilt. Nowadays, it's considered the most important religious building in Finland.

   Once we had visited these two important buildings in Turku, we had some time to go shopping in the centre of the city. Then we went to play megazone, which is similar to paintball but lasers are used instead of paintballs. It's actually a very fun game! Having finished there, we returned to Loimaa.

On Monday afternoon, soon after the guests had arrived, they got to learn a little Finnish.

We Finns thought that as our guests were going to stay with us for a week, it might be nice if they could communicate a little in Finnish, too. So on Monday afternoon they had a short Finnish lesson. All the Finnish hosts were teaching and all the guests were learning how to pronounce and even discuss in one of the most difficult languages in the world. 

The guests were quick learners: it was amazing how well they coped with even the difficult phrases, such as "Mitä kuuluu?" ('How are you?') or "Hyvää yötä!" ('Good night!').

At the end of the lesson the guests prepared little scenes where they demonstrated everyday situations like two people meeting each other for the first time - using only Finnish, of course!