The final blog: EVALUATION

     
The final blog: EVALUATION
First of all I want to thank you all for this wonderful experience that I will never forget.  Those two weeks were really rewarding and instructive to me and I think that I’m not the only one who thinks that way. It was hard working but still lot of fun. I would regret now if I haven’t apply this program.  This experience opened my eyes professionally, culturally and socially. It was nice to meet people from six different countries from Europe. MINE -IP was once in a lifetime experience.

It has been hard to be back in reality life. Going to University and you guys are not there. School days feel so long because with you 12 hours of school felt like half an hour. It is quiet at university and there is no one who gives you a cheek kiss and asks you “how are you?”  the cultural difference.

Before the two weeks I didn’t know what is all about in MINE. My explanation to my friends and family was really poor, but after those two weeks and especially the conference my explanation and thoughts about MINE were very clear.  When I start to think about those two weeks and what all we went through, what I learned and how I improved in two weeks. MINE was amazing opportunity to see what is studying and nursing around the Europe. What I found the most interesting and the surprising that how much there are differences between nursing in Europe. How nurses are valued and what are their roles. What nurses can do and what not. MINE –IP effected strongly to my opinion for going Erasmus exchange. Now I’m 110 percent sure that I’m going to go for exchange. MINE-IP shows the way for those who are considering for the exchange.

Group working was in key role in whole program. It was great to work with six different cultures and see how we all learn, how we behave in a group. I thought that there would be more difficulties with language, timing, different personalities and way to work. But there wasn’t! I think that you can see the student background in his work.  But all went great and we managed to do our student conference successfully before the timeline.

The facebook group was a really good for the beginning. You can see what kind of people you are going to meet and work with. You get information about the project and it clarify thoughts about MINE. Blogs told about more about yourself for the beginning. During those two weeks blogging was stressful. I didn’t have time to do that or maybe I just made the starting of blogging too hard to myself. But I learned about that, just write something little today that you don’t have to write a long post in a same time.

The one brilliant icebreaker was the digital stories.  I’m still having a big smile when I’m thinking about those videos. I would like to watch them again. Every group had done so much work with those. When we were filming we had so much fun, that’s why we didn’t have much of important information about Finland.

Last but not least I want to thank especially Caroline and Mirja to made this all possible and thank you all other group those amazing two weeks that I will never forget. Miss you.

P.s. Again about Airi: She said to me today at university: “You have to be proud of yourself because now you have friends around of the Europe.” – And yes I’m! Thank you!

End of the first week.

Wednesday 08/02/2012
We started our third day with introductions of Maltese, Italian, Danish and Czech (English and Finnish were on Friday) nursing and study as a nurse. The introductions were full of useful information because I'm thinking to go an exchange. It was interesting to see how much we have similarities and differences in nursing between countries. I realized that I should be a bit proud of study as a nurse in Finland because here nurses can do more things than in other countries. I have never thought about that in UK nurses can't cannulate. So these introductions was really rewarding to me.

After lunch we worked with learning theories. We started working in our own groups. We were taught by every group because every group had to present of the learning theories. I think that work was a icebreaker to our group. Learning theory quiz was fun, even though we were really bad in it. :D

After a working day we had trip to Pettu Eerikin hovi in Kankaanpää for a traditional Finnish dinner (hopefully no one thinks that the dessert was traditional Finnish food, because it was far away from it :D). The upper floor of Pettu Eerikin hovi was brilliant. It was nice to see how many of our group was interested about Finnish history.  The food was good and atmosphere of the place and company even better. The whole group feels like a small family. :)

Thursday 09/02/2012
On Thursday we continued our theme about Finnish traditions; sauna, ice swimming, sausage grilling. We went to cabin to Merikarvia. The place was beautiful because the sun was shining and there were a lot of snow. The place was like a little village. We started act like a little children when we saw so much snow. Regardless of age or culture we belonged to the same kindergarten playground. We had so much fun.

At lunch we had kinkkukiusaus (ham and potato casserole), I heard that some of you said that Finnish food is really heavy and you are getting weight in here. Our excuse: We have to keep ourselves warm during the winter.

Time to sauna and ice swimming… I was surprised how many of us tried ice swimming and rolling in the snow. I will never have that kind of experience anymore in my life: six (or even more) different nationalities in the same sauna and every of us were excited about ice swimming. Ice swimming was therapeutic. After relaxing sauna we started grill sausages. It was a good ending to that day.

On our way back to Pori everyone was sleeping. Relaxing day had done its job.

Friday  10/02/2012

Work, work, work….
Finally we started to do our group working. First we gathered as a one group of twelve students (group number 1 and 2). We went through the assignment and what it is all about. We found four questions in our assignment. We talk about are we going to work together or separately. We decided to work as a two groups which was really good idea because then we got our voices heard. One group took two questions and another two. Now our group had two questions which we split to six different parts. Every member of our group had to create a few questions about their own subject. We started to use forum to collect our answers. The forum was perfect idea, so we ended our day to create those few questions to forum. We had a really good start to our group working.

European Market

Food, food, food....
Food marketing was brilliant! Every countries tables had lots of new experiences for me. I tasted almost everything and now I think that I will move to Italy because of the food :D

Digital storiers of six different countries

The video time was great! Watching six different stories of six different cultures. Everyone had done really good work. I got so much new information from those videos. Digital stories were didactic ( expect ours :D ). That's why it's great that you are here.

The first two days

My MINE adventure started on Sunday. I picked Dominic from his appartment and we went to airport. In airport we met Finnish academics, Jonna and Valtteri.
The weather was snowy so the flights weren't on time. After our waiting we met the Italians students and mentors. We drove them to the Hostel Buisto. There we met the Maltese students and we all went to HESBURGER ("the Finnish McDonalds"). We had fun and everyone enjoyed their meals. YAY!
Next was picking the English and the Danish students, mentors and academics from the airport. The arriving time was 00.20 but because of weather the new arriving time was 01.25 am. So we all ( me, Jonna, Dominic, Mirja, Viveka and Tina) were waiting them on the airport. After everything, we got all the students to Hostel Buisto. Next home and SLEEP!
Four hours sleep and back to Hostel Buisto. We all students walked to the University. There we were, all of the MINE 2012 group. The day included a really interesting hospital tour and very funny "naming and gaming".

We had a long day but all and all I really enjoyed it! :)

My first blog post of MINE 2012

Hello all and greetings from Pori!

This is my first blog. I haven't done this before so let's see what's going to happen :D

February is soon here and we all are going to meet. I'm excited! We Finnish students have a lot to do before those two weeks. :)  Filming, editing, thinking of what to do and where to visit in Pori and so on... But we don't have to pack. I'm relieved because I'm a really bad packer.

The weather is snowy and quite warm (+2'C) now but hopefully it will be colder when you are here. I'm excited to see how you react to the snow. :)

The facebook group is very good and it's interesting to read what kind of people are coming and where you all are from. An easy way to get to know you. The introduction was a good idea :) 

Website MINE wiki is handy and interesting. The introductions of countries are well done and it is good to know a little bit about your cultures. Especially for them who are going to be exchange students one day (hopefully me :D ). Visual part of the website is a bit boring.

Looking forward to see you soon!