Archived

International encounters

^{Video by: Janne Salo.}

Before MY Camp the youth were asked to be prepared to tell something about their home country, to sing, dance, or in other ways present some aspect of their culture to their fellow campers. The international evening was held on 9 June. The night was an interesting, intriguing, and hilarious mixture of cultures from all over the world. Many of the campers had even brought little mementos from their home country to give away to their new friends.

The evening began with popular Finnish (or Italian, really) song Mombasa, which was taught to the campers. After that was the host country’s turn to present itself.

^{Robbing of the Sampo.}

The Finns, Kati Venho, Paula Hietala, Oskari Vinko, Menna Sirola, Elina Nissilä, Jarkko Etula, Juho Kuisma, Reetta Repo had prepared a rather untraditional play version of the Karelian folklore, Kalevala. All the central characters were there, and the audience’s reaction was undoubtedly the expected one, everyone was out of breath from laughing.

^{The mighty smith Ilmarinen (Reetta Repo). Peter Major presenting Hungary.}

The Hungarian camper, Peter Major, had brought with him a book about Hungarian cities and sights. He told about the capital city, Budapest, The Pearl of the Danube, for example.

Matej Franco from Slovenia held a little quiz regarding his country. “Where is Slovenia?” he asked. “It’s located on earth!” Matthew shouted from the audience. “That’s good for an American,” the host of the camp Veli-Matti Vesterinen jokingly added.

Nishida Jun from Japan showed some photos and post cards from Kioto, and of the national sport, sumo. He also passed around a traditional Japanese game.

^{The Romanian campers presenting their culture.}

The Romanians Andra Oranasu, Adina Nedelcu, Bianca Teodora Iordache, and Elena-Lavinia Balan told a about Romanian culture and folklore, e.g. Impaler Vlad III, also known as Dracula, the 15th Century ruler who later inspired the legend of Lord Dracula, by Bram Stoker. Also, Adina was dressed in traditional Romanian dress, which is usually worn in dances.

Cathryn Karr and John Chen come from New Zealand. The told facts about the nations geography, demography, and sheepograhy of the island as someone from the audience asked whether it is true that New Zealand has more sheep than people. And it is, the New Zealanders told that in the country of 4 000 000 people, there are some 43 000 000 sheep. “Do you play the didgeridoo?” “Do you make jokes about the Australians”, the audience wanted to know.

^{Kathryn and Maori necklace.}

Nkosikhona Bulana from South-Africa had brought with him a horn to celebrate the 2010 Football World Championships. The other campers wanted to know how Nkosikhona though his country will succeed in the games. “We might reach semifinals, and go even further”, he estimated. Nkosikhona told about the South-African communities that are very united. “Everyone knows everyone. We don’t do things alone.” He also told that after the camp dozens of people are waiting for him, and he gets to meet the president. Nkosikhona ended his presentation by teaching an African dance which combined stomping and clapping to create different rhythms (see the video on top of the page).

^{Thai and South African campers presenting their home countries.}

Thais Chanikarn Khanutwong and Papon Muangsanit presented the their country’s map, and taught the Campers the Thai way to greet people: “Sawasdee.” They also performed Thai dancing (see the video on top of the page).

Luka Manola from Croatia was surprised by how many people knew about his country. “I read from my Spanish text book that we eat dogs in Croatia,” Luka said. He presented some Croatian inventions, such as parachute, fingerprinting, pen, and the tie.

Santiago Rouco from Argentina presented his home country by a slide show, background of which he played Argentinian tango.

^{The typical Americans.}

Matthew McAteer and Georgiy Lomsadze from the USA came, as they put it, “dressed like typical Americans”, except without the pony logo: “Nobody plays polo in America, put if you wear Ralph Lauren, you can get girls.” They told about the American History, briefly, and then moved on to American stereotypes. With Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama on the background, it was made clear that: “White boys can’t dance.” Or play football, American version, that is, or play basketball. “So what do you white guys do over there”, was shouted from the audience. Matthew from the north, and Georgiy from the South also told about the differences between Northern and Southern people. “Everything fun is southern, everything in north is about money,” Georgiy summed up. Luka Manola wanted to know how to protect oneself from talkative New Yorkers in the plane, for instance. He told that on his way to MY Camp he had to listen to the entire life story of a New Yorker. The final answer after some contemplating was that you can’t.

Jorge Araya comes from the small country of Costa Rica. He told funny details from his home country, for example about the bullfights, that anyone can participate in, because the bulls have been made more harmless by cutting off their horns. Some of the bulls are very famous and old. The fights are not so violent as their equivalents in Spain. The bulls are not killed, and lead otherwise quite a relaxed life.

Muhammad Samad Zeeshan teached five volunteers a traditional Indian game, the game was hilarious and the chant “Kabaddi” was on everyone’s lips after the demonstration (see the video on top of the page).

^{Matthew participating in the guessing game from the Philippines}

Janella Salamania from the Philippines presented a popular Filipino pastime. It was a guessing game. Kati and Matthew demonstrated how the game was played. Matthew tried to guess what Kati wrote on a piece of paper by asking questions that could answered simply by yes or no. The name Matthew had to guess was Maija Aksela, the ‘mother’ of MY Camp, Janella also spoke about typhoons and floods that have caused problems this year as well. “Are you afraid of typhoons?” was asked from the audience. “I think that the Filipino people are quite traumatised by the recent one, but otherwise I’m quite used to them,” Janella answered.

Last but not least Wenlei Dai who is from Finland, but of Chinese descent explained the typical Finnish character. According to him, the Finns are quite shy, and don’t talk unless you talk to them, Nokia phones were created so they could communicate with each other. Wenlei also had some nice and quite touching words to say: “I have never really fit in anywhere, even though I was born in Finland, people don’t see as a Finn because my parents are from China. And in China I’m different too. But in this camp I fit in, because all of you are quite nerdy, too,” Wenlei said.

Pictures from international evening and Millennium Prize award ceremony

Elisa Lautala works as web editor for University of Helsinki's Faculty of Science. Elisa likes all kinds of cultural events, good books, warm weather, and aqua-jogging.