This time we met at Hui’s apartment. Hui had cooked some traditional Korean food for us. She had used some products from home, so the dinner was really tasty! We ate at the common kitchen, which they have in the student house.
During the dinner, we discussed a lot of different kind of things. One main conversation was studying and education. Here in Finland things are great, because we can study for free and everyone has the same possibility to study. In USA things aren’t that simple.
First of all, the high school is included to the compulsory studies, classes 1-12. After that you can go to college or university. But it’s not free, it’s actually REALLY expensive. People need to have a lot of saving, take loan and maybe still they need scholarship. In USA it’s very common that people get scholarships. Of course they need to be really good in something, like for example in sports. It’s hard for me to understand, that in USA the educatin system is so much more different from finnish way. And mostly the costs of studying!
In Korean the thing is pretty much same as in USA, but it’s not quite that expensive. In Finland the basic studies takes nine years. After that no one forces you to study. You can decide if you rather want to go to college or to high school or just not to study at all. It is really hard to know what do you want to do with your life when you’re 15 years old. That’s why many people go to high school first and after that, when they are little bit older, they might already know what to study next.
Then we talked about pets and animals. In Korean many people live in apartment houses, and that’s why they don’t have any big pets. It’s pretty rare to see some big dogs in the streets. Most of the dogs are little ones. And also cats are easier to keep than dogs, if the apartment is really small. In Finland, people have maybe more bigger dogs than small ones. Of course, that depends of people.
Now when it is autumn, we have the hunting season here. In Korean, they don’t hunt. That was a huge surprise for me! There isn’t the kind of animal, which should be hunted etc. Cause Finland is the country of forests and lakes, we have a lot of animals in the forests. And some animal populations are so huge, that they need to be hunted, so their living areas don’t get too crowded. And e.g. moose is the kind of animal, which goes to the road and causes a lot of car accidents. Especially if their living are is too small.
After eating and chatting in the kitchen, we went to Hui’s room. Hui gave us some candy and cookies from Korean. That was really kind and it was nice to taste her traditional things. It was a really nice evening and we had very good conversations!
Here is some words:
Finnnish English Korean
hirvi moose mooso
siili hedgehog
kerrostalo townhouse
omakotitalo (detached) house
rivitalo townhouse
aita fence wooltari
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