We decided to meet in Pyynikinharju for our 3rd meeting since I thought Pyynikki observation tower is a good landmark in Tampere to show to Manuel. Since winter and christmas is coming, I wanted him to taste Glögi in the cafeteria before sightseeing.
Since our first two meeting were mostly about the language, I thought this was good opportunity to know more about each other and our cultures. While we were drinking Glögi I told Manuel about our traditions in Finland and my own experiences about Christmas. I was pleased to learn that in Spain you actually eat lunch and dinner a lot later than in Finland. Manuel told they eat lunch at 3PM and dinner at 9PM which was something I didn’t know before. I started to think about this fact after I went home. When I travelled to Spain, I did notice restaurants were usually empty when I went to eat and realized it was because I ate lunch and dinner like Finnish people do, around 12PM and 6PM. Restaurants must have been emptier since locals ate lot later than I did.
After drinking Glögi and talking, we went up to the observation tower. The weather wasn’t the best but I was able to show Tampere for Manuel from the top of the tower. While taking elevator and checking the view, we also taught each other some things we saw in our languages, which was very nice and unexpected. Since Manuel said my pronunciation was good I was wondering out loud why and we realized that Spanish and Finnish enunciate alphabets in very similar ways. After this I felt more confident about learning Spanish and suddenly the language didn’t seem so hard.
I felt like I learned more now than the other day when we were just studying at UTA. Since I have visual memory I think I learn best by having the subject or target in front of me and learning the word while looking at it or doing something with it. I’d like to do something similar next time as well.
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