Family facts

Most of the Finns have same kind of vision of ideal family. There are parents, who both go to work and two children, a boy and a girl. Children go to school and get good grades and parents have well-paid job. Golden retrieve and Volvo in the yard are general. They have a detached house in the suburb and a lovely and safety lot. Does this family picture exists or is it just a dream? Most people think that those are requirements for a good life. But if you want a good life it’s not up to your work or money. It’s about how hard you work for it.

For most people marriage is a huge step to take , but by the time the step has got smaller. Earlier generations get first married and then moved together, had children and then live the rest of the life with same the partner. Nowadays is more common to live in a cohabitation and get engaged even if the couple doesn’t have plans to get married. Also divorces are becoming more general in Finland. Pair fall in love and get married with rose-colored glasses on and after few months novelty ends and magazines are also full of  pieces of news how Finnish celebrities get married, divorce and get married again. Blended families are common in Finland, it’s everyday to hear that someone has a stepfather or a stepsister.

The perfect picture is to have two children and the most of Finnish families have 2-3 children. Bigger families are often asked “are you lestadians because you have more than 5 children?”. Under the same roof is living only children and parents and extended families aren’t really common in Finland. We don’t live together with grandparents and we see our aunts and uncles only few times per a year. The nuclear family is the most important, but still sometimes relationships with family members aren’t so close. That might be the reason why teenagers want to move to an own apartment and build an own life as soon as possible.

These days children have more freedom to do what they like. They don’t have to live in a fear that someday they will have to pay back to their parents, what have they spent during the childhood. Even if the family is important, children might not respect their parents: big fights, disobedient children, and no respect for older people. The freedom might be one of the reasons why children don’t respect adults so much. We don’t have such a raising tradition as in some other countries to esteem older people. You can notice it when your own parents get older you prefer placing them to the old people house to take care of them by yourself.

Still every single family is one of their kind and we shouldn’t be generalising.  All of the parents have their own methods to raise their child and every family has own traditions and ways to show how to manage during the life.

– Niina and Veera

Lucky to be a Finn!

Is the Finnish school system seriously as good as people say? Students don’t obey or don’t listen at the lessons. Nobody cares about school or homework. Students have lots of other hobbies so where do they get the time for school? It seems that students have everything else on their mind than school.

Finnish kids don’t appreciate good education or we don’t even realize how good we seriously are. Especially teen boys think that it is cool to be bad at school, and they really try to be bad. One article said that only Estonian and Croatian kids like school less than Finnish kids. When boys grow up they realize that if they want to manage in their lives they have to study. I think even if boys pretend that school doesn’t interest them they still want to compete. Maybe they don’t understand it themselves but they always want to be better than everybody else.

In my opinion the biggest reason why we are good is that for us school is fun. We don’t understand it maybe now, but I have read some articles of other countries’ school system and I was in Thailand in the winter, and now I am really happy for living in Finland. We don’t have corporal punishment or we don’t have to study all day. In Thailand students had to go straight to work after school. They sat on the floor and tried to do their homework. At the same time they have to help mom with housework and babysit their little siblings. In Finland everybody has the opportunity to go to school, no matter how much money they have. And it’s fun because when you are older you can choose what you want to study or if you want to study at all.

We have other life than school, for example sports, reading or playing some instrument. We have time for friends and other free time so our brains have more time to handle things that we have learned at school. Of course too much is too much, so if we have a lot of free time and we don’t do anything for school at home, it is not a good thing. Repetition is good for learning but also rest!

Special day

Sometimes we have special events in our school. Last week we had a wellness day and yesterday we had a debate. It’s fun that we have some extraordinary events during the school day. Every Thursday morning we have one person speaking on the radio. Usually he is a priest. It’s not really necessary, but it is a tradition. In my old school we had a program every morning. There were usually students or teachers telling us some story. Every morning it was interesting to listen what is today’s subject.

School with friends

Between the lessons we have breaks. They last about 15 minutes and during them we can do what we want. Usually I sit on the couches with my friends and talk about everything. It doesn’t matter that I don’t have my best friend with me in every lesson because we have long breaks. Lessons last only 75 minutes, so I can handle it without my friends. But the whole school day and no friends, it’s impossible.

studies

I like the Finnish school system and especially our high school. We can choose what we want to study and when. We make our schedules ourselves so we can make them just the way we want. I hate when somebody tells me what I have to do. So I really like that I can choose how fast I want to study.

I can compare our school to another, because I studied in a different school for a while. And I can say that our school is much better.  It’s much easier and more fun to study here than in my old school. That school was for very similar and fancy people. So it’s really cool that there are a lot of different people in our school. And that’s why you don’t have to think as much what other people might think of you, and that is something I really like.

You are what you know

I think that it is completely true. You need to know things to have your own opinions and make your own decisions. People can fool you if you don’t know what is seriously happening around you. People know different things so they make different decisions. I think that is one reason why we all are so different.

What are words?

This song gave me an ispiration to write about promises and lying. I like this song mostly because of its lyrics. When I heard this song for the first time I stopped to listen these lyrics, what I don’t usually do.

It’s really weird that peoples mind can change so fast. One day you think something and on the next day your opinion is totally different.  It’s so confusing to believe what someone says if after one week everything what she or he has said is changed. So be careful what you say, someone will always remember these words that you have probably already forgotten. Don’t say anything if you really don’t mean it. And remember if you promise something you have to keep your promises! Even one lie or broken promise might ruin everything.

My hobbies

My hobbies are Finnish baseball and golf. I am going to write mostly about my relationship to Finnish baseball. I practice both sports but next summer I will play only golf. I didn’t want to leave Finnish baseball totally, so I thought that I’m not going to play real games but I can still practice it. So if my golf career is a total disaster I can go back to play Finnish baseball.

There is one field in our backyard where we played a lot of baseball when we were younger. I didn’t know anything about that game, even if I was born in Loimaa and that was a really big Finnish baseball city in those days. I think the reason why I got interested in Finnish baseball was that it was so nice to play with friends. And now everybody is so “old” that nobody plays there anymore, and I think it’s a shame.

I was eight years old when I went to Finnish baseball school for the first time. The “School” is in summer holiday and there some Finnish baseball players teach us how to play that game. It takes about two weeks and after that is a big tournament. In my opinion it was the best part of that “school”, there you can play all day against different teams. I was there with my friend in many summers, but then we started playing and training Finnish baseball for real. We are not a good team for playing but our team spirit is the best. We have lost maybe more games than anybody else, but it has never stopped us loving that game.

Even if I started Finnish baseball and we haven’t won lot of games this is still something that I will never regret. I have made a lot of new friendships and rebuilt the old ones. My best friends are all from the team I play or their friends I have learnt to know. It might sound weird that after our practices I still want to hang out with these same people. If someone is your really good friend you won’t get bored with him or her.

Now it’s totally different to practice golf. We are a “competition team” but it’s still not the same as our Finnish baseball team. Our head coach is not going to make us all play as a team. All of the players are boys except me and my friend. The boys watch me like “you are girl, you can’t play” and that’s frustrating. When we have some physical exercise it is fun to watch these boys, when they are wondering why I can for example run such a long time. That’s another good thing about practicing Finnish baseball.

I have practices every day in a week and some days I have more than one practice, so my schedule is quite full. It’s really hard to combine school to that. I would never have enough time for school, golf and Finnish baseball so I think leaving Finnish baseball was right thing to do. But hopefully someday I will have enough time to be a golf or Finnish baseball coach. But now isn’t the right time to neglect school or friends, so coaching… maybe someday.

Not as we planned

Five years ago we were with my family and my friend’s family in Italy. We left from Turku airport. Our stop-overs were in Stockholm and the other was in Copenhagen. We landed at Milan airport and then we started a really long car drive to the Alps. It was my second time there. We skied a lot and we went also to Switzerland. On the last day of our vacation my friend broke her leg. Still she had to ski with us because we didn’t believe that her leg was seriously broken.

We drove back to Milano and our journey home started. We were about 5 am at Milano’s airport. Our flight from Copenhagen wasn’t able to come to Milano, so we didn’t have a flight back home. Some lady came to tell us that now we will got a bus drive to Milano’s other airport, and there would be flight to Tallinn. Because of horrible weather our flight was late, so when we landed we saw one Finnish plane leaving. It was our second flight to Turku and we missed it. Now the parents were really mad and my friend’s dad went to say bad comments to all of the flying company. It was embarrassing. We wondered wether to take a boat to Helsinki, but then we got a free hotel room and tickets to Helsinki for the next morning, so we stayed the night there. It was an awful night. We had one bed for three people. My friend wanted to sleep in the same bed with me and my sister, because she was so scared. In the morning we went back to the airport again. Now our flight left in time. We took the airport taxi from Helsinki to Kaarina. We were at home just a bit over 24 hours late.

Now this is our ¨funny¨ joke. Always is that same question: ¨what will happen this time?¨ Next year we missed our flight, and year after that it happened again.

by filip.farag

Being young

For me being young means, being free and crazy. When we are young we have to have time to do fun things that we’ll remember our whole life. Time to do crazy things! By that crazy I don’t mean anything illegal. I just want some funny memories that I can always remember. I think it’s important that we have memories which are embarrassing, so we can say that we did so because we were young.

For being crazy we need freedom. In my opinion these days freedom is more obvious than it was before but of course not for everybody. Couple years ago everybody thought that kids should help at home. They did housework to earn money and that freedom. Now some parents just pay what their kid wants. I think that is not fair, now children don’t understand that in real life they have to do something for living. I don’t say that every family does that but too many. So if somebody gives us that famous freedom, we have to remember the responsibility which comes with it.

I’m young only for once so I have to enjoy it! Of course it is sometimes difficult but not impossible. Now it’s time to choose wrong things and make bad decisions. We have time to fix our mistakes, so making them won’t matter. If I had tried everything and realized that they are not for me, someday I won’t have to ask myself that irritating question, what if…? We have to remember that it’s not cool that our whole youth goes past like a big train, so fast that we can’t even see it clearly. It’s nice to have some days that I can just be lazy. I don’t have to hurry anywhere, or nobody comes to tell me what I should do now.

I don’t mean that being young is the same as being reckless and stupid. We make choices which are probably not the best, but something that we can fix. We have to try everything new and do such things that we can’t do when we are older. So if you are young, live your life to the fullest, remember to rest, try everything new and make mistakes but don’t ruin your future. Does it sound easy?  …No, I don’t think so.