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.
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