The History of Nummela

Monday 24.5 We came to school at 8.00 am, because we had to take the instruments to the gymhall, where the opening seremony took place. Some groups were practising their shows. The cermony should have should have started at 9 am, but it started at 9.20. Every country performed something. The Russians and the Latvians wore "national" dresses. The Swedish gave a tree where everyone should hang up their own leavs. The cermony was over at 12 am.

Then we had lunch and some free time. After that we went outside and our artteacher took some group fotos. Then we were devided into groups. The foreign students made their own groups and the hosts and the hostesses made their own groups. The Lithuanians, the Russians, the Germans and the rest of the groups and the Finnish groups went to Highschool auditorium. There was a videofilm about Finnish forests which we watched about ten minutes.

Then the rest of the forign groups left for the woods: Estonia, Latvia and Åland. In the wood there were seven control points. We had to follow blue ribbons from one control point to another. Luckily, it didn´t rain when we were in the wood. Our group started at control point one. Then we went to different control points in order, exept after controlpoint number five we went to see the horse pulling a wagon with logs. Then we went to control points number six and seven. Unfortunately the machine on control point nuber seven was broken and we left for the school. There we waited for mr Antikainen and when we had found him we left home. And luckily, the sun was shining. We left for Kemira at 8.50. We were divided into three groups in busses.

We were at Kemira in Kotkaniemi about 9.30 and there was welcomespeech and some refreshments. Then we went to our busses and went to the first topic by bus. My group started with topic number one. There were two men telling about the fertilizing trails of forest. They had some fertilizer in boxes and then they sowed how Finns manure forest. At 11.00 we went back to Kotikaniemi and had lunch wich was delicious meatsoup. Then we had some freetime. At 12 am we went back to our busses and left for the second topic (number two to our group). The topic number two was a work demonstration on of biologial control of root and butt rot. There was a big machine which was cutting down trees. After that we went to the third topic. We had to walk to the topic number three long way from the road. It was litle wet there, but luckily it didn´t rain because i didn´t have an umbrella with me. The Topic number three was also work demonstration. There was also a big machine which was prepering the soil.

At 14.00 we went back to Kotkaniemi and had some refreshments. The Latvians took some lemonade with them (we broke the lemonaderecord). After eating we came back to Nummela and we could go whereever we wanted. On Tuesday-morning we met again at tha school and the guest - and hostgroups left for a Metsä-Serla- or Kemira- Kotkaniemi-tour. The day started at different times depending on the group, because there were so many people there. On the Metsä-Serla-tour we first went to lumberingspot near-by VIHTI SKI center, we watched foresters and a cuttingmachine at work. We were also told about biological pesticide. Next we went to Lohja and watched a video about Metsä-Serla´s functions and after that we went Lohja´s centre and visited St. Laurentius Church.

At Kirkniemi papemilols we were demonstrated a modern papermachine and mechanic paperpacking. On our way home people seemed to be very tired and some of them fell asleep. The program for the evening started with a meeting in the auditorium concerning about creating Baltic Week-web-sites i guess they will come true some day… At 8 pm we had the BW-disco in a Nummela youth community center. First we danced to live music by some local band and after an hour Harri & Co started to play disco- music.

Everybody seemed to have a great time and some of the teatchers dared to come to the dancefloor partying with us like "Mr Balticainen". Helsinki day: On May, 26 the other group left for Helsinki. The bustrip began at nine o'clock am. After arriving in Helsinki we went by ferry to Suomenlinna. It was very foggy, windy and cold in Suomenlinna, but anyway we started our walkabout. Finni9sh students had made a couple of questions about Finland for the foreign students. For Finnish pupils there were questions about the other Baltic Week countries. When every country had answered every question we had time to do what we wanted, because the ferry back to Helsinki left a little bit later. So, we had about half an hour time to get to know the most interesting places of Suomenlinna.

When everyone had come to the ferry we started the trip back to Helsinki. During the trip we had lunch. In other words: two sandwiches and an apple. When we were back in Helsinki, the weather was great. The sun was shining and it was quite warm. In Helsinki we had time about two hours: some students were shopping and others just wandered about in Helsinki. In the afternoon we had to go back to Nummela. Sports day, May 27: The day began at 9 am with a beautiful sunshine. We all gathered in the school yard where the flag delivery from Finland to Poland took place After that we were ready to start orienteering.

We took the maps and headed to the forest in small groups. A couple of tasks were easy to find but the rest were a bit more difficult. The tasks were about Finnish nature but they were not easy for the Finnish students either. It took over an hour to solve the tasks and luckily everyone found their way back to the school. After having lunch we started practising Finnish tunnelball. Unfortunately it started raining a little. But that did not bother our game. For most foreigners this was the first time they played Finnish tunnelball. However some of them were surprisingly good at it.

A great teamspirit reigned in all teams. It was a pleasure for the Finns to play with the foreigners. The two teams in the final game were both from Latvia. After an exiting game the other team proved to be a bit better. At 3 o'clock the whole Latvian group and some other foreigners went to Serena water park and spent the evening there. In our opinion the week was very nice and interesting. We hope that other students and teachers got good memories too.