Elephant-Horses and the Mysterious Alarm

I am just back home after our first English discussion groups which were held this evening in Kiiruun Tila in the middle of town. Kiiruun Tila is really great facility in Somero - a centre which is open to the whole community for different cultural events and meetings. I have been able to rent it at a very reasonable price to hold our English groups.

I was worried before this evening that we would have too many in one group and not enough in the other, but in fact it all worked out really well. Eight came to the earlier group and eleven to the second one so it was a really good turn out. Of course the real test is to see whether any of them come back next week!

In the more advanced group we talked about our ambitions for 2012 and they were very varied. The great thing about a good conversation class is that you learn all sorts of interesting facts about the people you are in a class with. Things that you would never learn in another setting. (I promised not to reveal anything too personal on here...)  Kari wants to lower his golf handicap, Katri wants to pass her cello exams, Anne plans to get fit ("I want to get fit" was one of our new expressions this evening...don't we all...) several people are planning trips abroad and Kirsi wants to do well in competitive cross country riding. Good luck on Saturday Kirsi! 

As I did not know prior to the classes what everyone's standard of English was, we played a word description game in which each person had to describe a word to the others in the group so that they could guess it. The following is an extract. "It's an animal. Like a horse..." "Elephant?" came the response. Images came to mind of Kirsi going cross country riding on an elephant, which apparently in Somero is an animal akin to a horse. Weird.

Another clue. "It's a place where we like spending time. We all like being there together"  "Bed!" was the first suggestion. I started to realise that there are many things about Somero that I have yet to learn...

Still, the evening was good fun, made even more lively by the fact that in the middle of it an alarm started going off and nobody knew what to do about it or where it was coming from. "Never mind," I said, trying to be brave about it. "Let's carry on anyway. Give me a sentence in Finnish that you would like to translate into English.  Something that you could use in a real situation."  "Here's one," said someone in Finnish. "How do you say "I don't know how to turn off the alarm?""

  

I learnt several things this evening. Firstly, I have two lovely classes and would like to get to know them better. I hope they come back. I also learnt that next week I need to take teaspoons and paper cups so there is no washing up afterwards (thank you Soila for all your help!), that the little chalk board I had with me was completely inadequate and that the alarm came from the disabled toilet. I hope those who came this evening learnt a few new words but more importantly, left with a smile on their faces. In my experience you have much more chance of learning a language if you can have a laugh while you are doing it. I look forward to seeing our new classes again next week.