Day 6, Finland’s day

On Wednesday it was the time for the Finnish day! We Finns started the day by getting dressed in “pitkät kalsarit”, kind of long underpants, and naturally the guys were not wearing a shirt, just a winter hat. With an “excited” Finnish smile on our faces, we went to wake up the people by giving them water and singing a water-related song in Finnish. We kindly asked them to move to the morning sauna so that we wouldn’t have to carry them there. At the breakfast there was the possibility of tasting Finnish porridge and we stole the jam because Finns don’t eat sweet food in the morning.

Warm up

When the people got ready, we took them to the yard for a warm-up that was inspired by Finnish winter activities. We imitated e.g. snowboarding, ice-fishing, “ampumahiihto” that includes skiing and shooting, and also managed to build a snowman by using a little bit of imagination. However, it melted quite fast because the weather was so perfect like on every day of this event by now.

Eukonkanto

After the warm-up the people were ready for moving to the lake, where we organized “The Finnish Olympics”. The idea was to have outdoors activities that taught the people some nice facts about Finland at the same time. We had come up with six games, including e.g. mosquito killing and “eukonkanto” that is about carrying a woman and running. The people also got to make a “saunavasta”, a bunch of birch branches that the Finns use in the sauna for relaxing. Some Southern people desperately tried to climb the big birches even if there were some smaller ones around. There were also many other funny moments, and I think that some new Finnish national sports might have seen the daylight.

Saunavasta

In the afternoon we got the people know more about Finland by telling them about our folklore, history, and ancient sauna traditions as well as the sauna etiquette. In the form of a small play we also had the opportunity to observe a rare moment, Finnish men talking about their emotions. That seemed to be quite touching as the expressions on their faces almost changed. 

Presentation

The evening will continue by a Sitsit party, a table party that is really popular among the Finnish university students, especially in the universities of technology. Shortly, Sitsit is about singing and having a dinner in a good company. Afterwards everybody gets to try how the saunavasta they made feels like as naturally there’s a sauna also in the evening. I’m looking forward to at least as a great evening as the day has been by now!

/Sini, Helsinki, Finland/