During the hike, we shared experiences about seeing wild animals, getting lost in the forest and our hiking experiences so far. We also exchanged some new vocabulary about nature, animals, hiking and outdoor activities. I learned that day, that when you ask questions in Finnish, your voice does not get higher, as for example in German. Instead, you put the syllable “ko” in the end, to mark a question. Our Finnish friend told us, that Finnish is a very consistent language in its tonality and has no ups and downs.
When we reached the shore of the lake, luckily some guys already started a fire, so we could share it with them and started to grill our sausages and marshmallows, which we also shared with the people there.
On our way back to the parking lot, we reflected our learning a bit and came to the conclusion, that although we learned a lot of new vocabulary, the meetings were more about cultural exchange and sharing storys of our experienced national traditions or personal habits, which was even nicer. Every meeting was always very funny, I learned a lot about Finnish culture and places in Tampere. I’m very happy of having participated in this project and leave with many good memories. We decided to keep on meeting, although the official meetings have ended but all of us really seemed to enjoy this language exchange.
Finnish appeared like a hard language for me to learn after all and I think I overestimated my learning goals in the beginning a bit. I was more happy, when I could understand some words and numbers in Finnish.
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