Tonight, we are young! -- To vanhat2019

First time seeing Vanhat was a beautiful accident. It happened when I was visiting Pateniemi Koulu. At some point during that day, everyone came and gathered in front of the gym hall and some teacher told me that upper secondary school students were going to dance for us. Indeed, it was an eye-opening performance. My mouth was opening the whole time as well! (I am from Aisa and I didn’t even familiar with the very popular American Prom culture.) I got to know that: this dance is a celebration of when the second-year students become the seniors of the school. The third-year students just left school the day before, on the “penkkarit” day.

Overall, that vanhat thing left an interesting impression on me. Soon after that, I left Finland and didn’t think further about it.

Nevertheless, vanhat became one of the most frequently mentioned topics from the very beginning of our spring semester. I thought that all second-year students learned the dance during their PE lessons when I first watched the vanhat one year ago. After working here, I got a peek into this very sophisticated thing. What do I mean by “sophisticated”?

Reason 1: Principal asked me to leave the vanhat dress advertisements on the school board, but we cleaned many other ads last September. She said students would need those. That surprised me.

Reason 2: Some students won’t participate because the dress is expensive and vanhat is the only situation where you wear it, specifically for girls.

Reason 3: Students plan to find the partner when their upper secondary school day starts. Vanhat is the Princess’s Day to many girls and it is not easy for every one of them to find the Prince.

Reason 4: Students feel “stressed” with the dancing practice and hairdressing before the ball happens, because they want everything to be perfect on that day.

Reason 5: There are some students deciding not to take part in this Princess’s Day.

Here you can also listen to two of our second-year students discussing about how the preparation of vanhat added stress to their life.

With all these “sophisticated” pre-judgement, I came to watch this year’s vanhat. I didn’t enjoy as much as someone who sat next me and have watched vanhat many years and still feels hyper-exciting. (It's William, of course!) I know there must be something wrong with me or my such biased information that I couldn’t focus on the moment. I was thinking too much about those who didn’t take part in the ball.

I decided to watch it again! The last dance of today was meant for participants’ families and friends. The atmosphere of the audience area was already different. When the dance started, I found so many happy faces on the stage. Those Finnish students were smiling! Some of them smiled so hard that I even smiled. They were also interacting with each other! Of course, they would be interacting with or even “falling in love with” their partners because the ball created a special moment where they see the best of their partners. It’s a fairy tale moment and it’s surreal. But life is so monotonous that we need that kind of moment, don’t we? If not here, there must be somewhere else. And those students who didn’t take part in this, they will certainly find that moment somewhere else.

I looked at the happy dancers, suddenly I realized how amazing this whole education system is. I was very much bothered when I first entered one classroom, or later most classrooms in upper secondary schools, that girls and boys were sitting away from each other. I tried to mingle them. How ridiculous I was when I think back now. This system already has the opportunity for their students to mingle with each other: the very elegant dancing party. The moment students decide to attend vanhat, they started “playing the game” with the whole group already. It’s a long-term game. When you finish this game, you are mature enough to be the seniors in school. In Finnish, they called it “kypsä”. “Kypsä” also suits for students who made the decision not to attend the ball; students who made their choices to be a Princess or Prince and the students who I have neglected due to my ignorance.

The highlight of the ball was the last part when participants’ families and friends were invited to dance on the stage. A celebration for all!

To sum up: these two days are very special and extremely important for me to understand Finnish culture, which is embedded in our school life as well. Kalajoki and the people living here, win my heart. Cheers! May your life never end with celebrations! Hilarious or elegant.

I said to my colleagues in the staff room that I wish I was 5 years old so that I could experience the awesome education system. How beautiful it would be. :)

Live a life full of celebrations -- To Abi2019

If you happened to visit Finnish cities, even towns, in middle February, you probably would see several slowly moving trucks on their main streets, which are full of crazy youngsters in funny costumes, yelling and throwing candies to you. Don’t be scared and take the candies! They are not poisoned! You probably will act as curious as I did: what the hell are they doing? If you happened to ask a Finnish person next to you, he or she probably would tell you: It’s penkkarit thing. (Which sounds like: It’s an apple! Don’t you see?) If you still feel puzzled, then you probably will go to Wikipedia to look for the meaning of “penkkarit”. I wasn’t very interested after the first time seeing it. So, I thought “penkkarit = crazy youngster in funny decorated trucks + candies”.

Until I started to work in a Finnish upper secondary school. Things are getting clearer and more interesting, to me.

I don’t work with third year students directly, but they are the group of students, who make a foreigner feel more included and heart-warmed. They ask whether I need help when seeing me struggling in school; they tell me that I should feel confident and professional when I was substituting their English teacher; they allow me to make mistakes… By the way, third year students are called “Abis” in Finnish school. Abis have all the privileges in the school: they occupy all the comfortable sofa or card game areas; they go to lunch room earlier and they are allowed to be late to lessons because of their abis meetings. They are the king. They even walk or sit like the king in school. In addition to these, I barely know them.

So, the “penkkarit thing” is “Abis thing”. Up till this morning, I got to know the “penkkarit ≥ trucks + candies”. It started much earlier and those are all done by Abis themselves.

It is a celebration day! To celebrate Abis are going to leave school today! Although, it doesn’t mean that they have finished studying. Most of them will start to prepare for matriculation exams at home. To celebrate this day, they created a long dark tunnel across the whole school, which is full of mysterious and hilarious decorations, especially to me, who is not familiar with western culture. At every section of the tunnel, you would be stopped and answer the repeated question “kuka on kingi?” Soon you would learn the answer is “Abi on kingi!” When you started to shout, then you started to find it’s so fun and hilarious; oh, at some section, you had to bow to the Queen, or got scared hell shit out of you because of some unexpected ghost.

After everyone moved to auditorium, abis showed the humorous short films of their teachers. They mimic their teachers so well and hilariously. That’s the moment, as a teacher, you start to think: OMG! I thought I am observing them; meanwhile they are observing me! More importantly, they have more eyes than I have; and they see me, which I didn’t even see in myself. In between, they prepared very funny games. They gave prize to the most well-dressed junior student; they gave sweaters to girls who are the least dresses in school; they showed the pictures when they were little; they gave “thank you” gift to their class teachers; they are very amazing!!!

The “truck and candy” thing is indeed the last part of the “penkkarit thing”. After all the juniors and teachers waved them away, they went to streets and threw candies to children and passers-by.

Penkkarit, a celebration of abis’ final day of school, before the start of the matriculation exams. It’s one of the specialties in many Finnish people’s lives. To a Chinese like me, Finns celebrate everything they feel like celebrating and then make it a tradition. More importantly and differently, they celebrate for the present, not celebrate for the future.

Finns have the capability to celebrate the right moment, which I feel extremely jealous of. There are so many traditional celebrations in Chinese culture, but somehow, we are praying when we are celebrating. We pray for a better year. We bless each other earn more money or live longer. Like many people in other part of the world, we think about being a millionaire first, and then do charity. Finns are living in the present, and it is a gift. Maybe that is one of the reasons why socialism works in countries like this.

I heard that Abis will have more heavy and real celebration tonight. Second year students will be the new Abis tomorrow and they will start their day with dancing, which is called “ball of the (new) seniors". You get to see so many surprising things ongoing when working in a Finnish school as an outsider teacher.  Life is not easy, but celebrations make it much lively and lovely.