Ivalo upper secondary school has had a special autumn. First of all, two of our students have been as exchange students in Italy and in Germany. We have also had a great opportunity to host an Italian exchange student, Maria Rita Marsala. This is what she tells us about the experience.

It was a little exciting but very joyful to travel to Finland and settle down to a Finnish family, the Keskitalo-Pyykkönen family. Since coming here, Maria Rita has got new friends and familiarized herself with new hobbies, like fishing and taking a sauna bath. She has also learnt some Finnish and had a good chance to improve her English. Maria Rita loves Finnish nature, for example the northern lights, and salmiakki, of course. (Salmiakki is Finnish salty liquorice.) By the way, she likes Nightwish and has of course heard about mr. Lordi but she didn’t know that he’s Finnish.

One big difference between Palermo and Ivalo is that Palermo is full of life but here you have absolutely nothing to do. In Palermo there’s always noise and people are laughing and screaming all the time, but here in Ivalo everybody is in silence and guys even listen to music in a very low volume.

What has been best in Finland? Well, Maria Rita thinks that hospitality was very great and she will never forget these experiences and people in Ivalo. There are also some plans about Aino’s visit to Palermo in summer. About other activities in Lapland Maria Rita tells as follows:
"I went to Oulu, Utsjoki and Rajajooseppi. Also, we made a little picnic with my host family near Inari lake. I went to Utsjoki because my tutor lives there. I spent a weekend in a family which went to Italy.

I went to Oulu because I had a meeting with other exchange students from the central and northern part of Finland. I met many students from Germany, France, Norway, Turkey, Austria, the USA, Columbia and many other Italian people, too. We shared our first experiences of Finland. I enjoyed the trip very much and now I’m keeping in touch with them.

The school here is amazing. It’s beautiful. You can choose some of the subjects that you study, and then, you have different periods during the year. In Italy we have the same timetable for the whole year. And, you study only the grammar in the languages, but we have to study the literature of each language, too. We also connect the subjects very much. And about the tests, here you have only a written test in different subjects but we also have oral exams. We don’t change classrooms either, the teacher changes. And we don’t use teachers’ first names at all, only the last names. And about the exam week, we have it only in the last year in June and we have three days for written exams and one for oral exams."

31.10.2007
Pauli ja Niina