Laughter is Good for the Soul

Kiiruun Tila in Somero

There is a funny thing which seems to happen to people once they stop being children. They stop laughing. I only have to stick out my tongue at Minttu to make her laugh. Niko (2) and Luca (3) laugh when we pretend we are monsters and chase them round the house. To them laughing is natural. But then all of a sudden we become adults and somehow it does not seem appropriate to laugh anymore, so we stop doing it. Well we shouldn't. Laughing is a more powerful medicine than anything you can buy in a chemist's shop, and tonight in both our English groups we laughed a lot.



Jorma wonders why everyone assumes he is hiding a toolset



It started off innocently enough. I had asked people to bring in small items which we could use in a guessing game. The idea is that the item is hidden, and everyone has to ask questions to try and find out what it is. The person holding the object is only allowed to respond by saying "yes" or "no".  Let us just say that the items that were brought in were obscure...to say the least. It was the first time in any English class I have taught that I was forced to teach the English word for "dough cutter" (taikina leikkuri.... thanks to Kirsti for that one.) And then it was Jorma's turn to answer questions about his item. Many suggestions were put forward, including "hammer, drill, saw...." do you see the theme? The assumption  was of course that because he was a man, the only thing he could possibly have brought to the class was something from his toolkit. In fact it was nothing of the sort. He had brought a handcrafted vase made by his daughter - but it took a long time before we guessed the right answer. The class had him firmly identified as a builder of some description and they were not going to be dissuaded from this at any cost!



Vase made by Jorma's daughter



And then, somehow, we got onto the subject of wood. We discussed, trees, logs, hacksaws, motor saws, axes and then finally the difference between cutting, chopping and shopping. Wood and trees remained a prominent theme as Juha asked what a "woodpecker" was (I couldn't remember the Finnish so I just pretended to be one. They all understood).  It was Marja-Leena who managed to rescue the situation by moving on to the subject of family trees. Clever. At one point the vocabulary became so obscure, and so tightly related to wood-chopping that Hannele was almost crying with laughter. I am not certain that she will be asking in English for a hacksaw any time soon, but at least she now knows how to do so should the occasion arise. 

In the second class we played the same game and it took a surprisingly long time to guess the identity of the screwdriver brought in by Heikki (who interestingly admitted that in fact it belonged to his wife), although we managed to examine the vocabulary of various bottle openers and corkscrews along the way. Kari produced an item that I did not recognise at all, and he eventually explained that it was a metal device used to practice golf indoors. I still have no idea what one of those is in English. 

Two new people joined us this evening, Antti and Kirsti, both of whom, in typical Finnish style, introduced themselves by saying that they spoke very little English and then turning out to speak very well indeed.  My personal highlight was being presented by Kari with a magnificent book of arial photographs of Somero which he has taken himself. It was a lovely present and shows the whole town from the air. 

Three things emerged from tonight. The first is that there is now a group of people wandering around Somero who can discuss all elements of cutting wood in English without any difficulty, whether they need to or not. The second is that if you meet someone with a hidden object made of plastic and metal which shares the name of a drink...then the answer is screwdriver.  Heikki uses it sometimes. The final thing I learned was that these two groups are a really special set of people and that even after only two evenings it has become very easy to laugh with them. They are amused at being the focus of so much attention through this blog...but all have said that they will be quite happy to accept any interesting offers from Hollywood. If you are reading this from far away please come and join us some time. I don't know how much English you will learn, but if nothing else, I can guarantee you will spend a lot of the evening laughing...and there are very few things that are better in life than that.