Comparing traditional food at the last day

Today is already my last day at my last placement. I enjoyed my time here so much, even though it was very tough sometimes. Almost none of the patients here speak English, because they are all older then 70, so most of the time I was just sitting by myself and trying to follow some of what was going on. But my coworkers did their very best to make me feel comfortable and tried to let me join as many as possible. Huge shootout to them. And hey, some credits for myself (it's okay to do that sometimes) I passed all of my three clinical practices!


Every morning the costumers get breakfast here, and they eat the porridge.
It has to happen one day, I had to try it.... And well, let me say it was ... Interesting...
(read disgusting, I'm so sorry Finns). The way to eat it is to add some extra milk, some jam, butter, sugar or salt. I ate it with the butter, but no, it will not be my new favorite thing in the world.

After the tasting I had a chat with my supervisor and told her about all kinds of traditional Dutch food. The pancakes, 'poffertjes', 'oliebollen', 'stroopwafels', ' kroketten and frikadellen', ' hagelslag' and much more. We also talked about the price differences here in the supermarkets and what some groceries cost in the Netherlands.


Even though I couldn't speak with the patients here, I learned a lot. When you can't communicate with someone by speaking, you have to figure out other ways to make it work.
Some of the patients could speak English, and with them I organized a activity yesterday. We had so much fun, playing games, chatting and learning some Dutch words. When you speak your own language it's hard to understand that it's so difficult for the people that don't speak it. We laughed so much when they tried to pronounce the words. But it also was a good reminder that I must sound way more stupid when I try to speak Finnish... oops.


So the time has come that my clinical practice has come to an end, it's time to get back to the real student life. School is calling again!
And for once in my life I'm looking forward to it. Looking forward to learning no things, talk about new subjects and see how teaching is done in an other country then the Netherlands.
Will it be very different? How will the teachers be? How will the interaction between teacher and student be? How will the Finnish students behave towards us 'strangers'?


I'm ready for this next part of my exchange, bring it on!


Nähdään!


Aniek