The new school year began with big expectations. The first Learning, teaching, training - mobility (i.e. the first visit from our partner schools) would be organised in February in Finland, if the situation would allow it. We had high hopes all autumn and prepared for the meet, but still February seems to come too soon and once again it has to be postponed or even changed into a virtual mobility. 

On the bright side the project continues, and the students are eager to see their foreign friends online and discuss different topics. In the autumn we got six more students to join our project in Finland. Due to the postponed start of the project we needed also younger students who would be able to conclude the project during the autumn term in 2022. 

The first online meet 29.9.2021
After the summer holidays, the students were keen to talk to each other in September. During the first meet the students talked about their summer and the start of their school year. New students joined groups and presented themselves.

In Finland we had weekly meetings to check if all the necessary tasks from the previous school year had been done. We also decided to order hoodies for the Erasmus students and teachers in our school. The hoodie has the logo of the project on the back and the name of the school and the student on the front side. The hoodies are funded by the project, so they were free of charge for everyone in the project. 

The second online meet 25.11.2021
The students had got a task to prepare an exercise diary for the meet. They wrote about their execising: what, where, when, for long etc. and then presented them to their groups. This task was to stir up the students interest in exercising and making them realise how much time they use for sports on a weekly basis.

The third online meet 16.12.2021
The last meet for the year was held in December. This time too the Finnish students were responsible for creating Google Meet links and sending them to the members of their respective groups. Each time some single email adress has caused problems and every time the problem has been overcome, often with a little help from the teachers. The students have become very handy what comes to for instance creating a link, sending email, creating presentations and sharing screen for showing presentations. 
The topics for the meet were both to talk freely about the upcoming Christmas holiday and also see a presentation that the Finnish students had done. The ninth grade students on Virtaa luonnosta Goes Internation -course made a day hike in Orinoro, Leppävirta and showed the beauty of the Finnish winter and nature to our partners. It had been snowing heavily the day before so it was quite an experience also for the Finns to walk in deep snow and cook outdoors. 

Parents' evening 30.11.2021
At the end of November the parents were invited to school (or to join online) to talk about the project. We presented the whole project briefly and pondered together the difficult questions around covid-19. Still we don't give up hope and trust that we will be able to host our new friends from Europe. In January we will know more and have to decide how to tackle the situation.

Even if the virus is making travelling, if not impossible, at least difficult, and the youngsters are longing to see their friends live, we have to consider us lucky as we nowadays are to be able to hear and see each other via new technology. It is making our lives richer and more interesting! Facetime phine calls, Google Meet, Instagram, the old people's Facebook and Snapchat make it possible for our students to keep in touch with their friends at any time. Let's enjoy the possibility as long as we are forced to stay in our home countries!