Everything turned out to be a learning experience...

 

Experiencing culture through food, music, dressing, routine, households and so forth was important to get the picture of my learning surroundings.

 

My first week in Hämeenlinna was full of good surprises! 

I was lucky to bump into a beautiful and sweet dog.

When I was walking by a park with my friend Giselda, we experienced a funny situation.  I was tired and willing to take a seat  and also take pictures.

As I was taking a seat,  music suddenly started playing and I was frightened by the sound.

 I realized I was at Sibelius Park.  I learned at that time that the benches are equipped with motion sensors which launch music players as people sit. 

That was a beautiful surprise. It wouldn't have been the same if I'd already known about it. I'm glad that happened! After overcoming the initial shock, I relaxed and appreciated the sound.

 

I met my colleagues with whom I will be learning and living  for the following 5 months and also some brilliant lecturers. 

 

Learning Diary

A very meaningful sentence I heard in my first week was that in Education it is important 

 “to be local and global at the same time”. 

I also appreciated learning about the acronym CLIL – Content and Language Integrating Learning, which is basically an approach for learning different contents through a foreign/second or additional language. That made me think of offering some courses on Oral Communication for Academic Purpose, Academic Writing etc. and team work with workmates from different subject areas - using the approach in my classes. 

 

 

Finally, a really relevant learning experience was to attend all my colleagues’ presentation as well as presenting the following topics: where I’m from, my organization, my education background, motivation to come to Finland/to this course, expectations to the program  and how I see myself when I return to Brazil (my learning goals).