Mrs Georgia Andreadi-English teacher ,Mrs Katia Tatsi -Drama teacher,Mr Aggelos Stamoulis -Chemistry teacher , our pupils and I will show you our island.

Autumn came and went, and now everything here in Finland is covered by a thin layer of snow. The temperature, however, seems to have BPD and I struggle picking out which coat to wear to school every morning.

At least my shoes are warm.

I might ramble again, but until then bye,

Laura.

P.S. This was last week. The temperature climbed up to a whopping +7℃ and things went icy, and it’s wet and gray now. :(

Hello! This is crowberry and we call it variksenmarja in Finland. The harvest season of crowberries is long. It lasts from July until the snow comes. The leaves are needle-like and the berries are dark blue. Mild crowberry goes well with pastries and porridge. 

I once ate a crowberry in the forest, because I thought it was a blueberry and it tasted bad.

• Aada

This cloudberry is called lakka in Finland. Usually we, people in Lapland, call it Hilla. 

Cloudberry blooms in June-July and after that Finns pick them in the marshland near their villages. Cloudberry is eaten plain, for example, or with pie or porridge. It is also used in jams, creams and soaps.

I have been picking cloudberries several times. Usually a marshland is packed with mosquitos in the summer. They are annoying and usually whine

at the base of the ear.

• Viivi

This is arctic raspberry, which is mesimarja in Finnish. It’s a little bit rarer berry in Finland and you can’t find it everywhere. It grows in meadows and at the edge of forests. Sometimes also in the middle of forests. You can find it all summer because it grows from July to August. It looks a little like a cloudberry but it’s just a different color and slightly different leaves. I have eaten this many times because it grows near us. This is one of my favorite berries!  

• Viia

Hello! This is Jutta from Finland. In the picture you can see the yellow flowers of a tansy. Tansies are quite common in Finland and I read that they grow almost everywhere in Europe so you all might have seen them, too. Besides the fact that they look pretty, tansies can be used for many different purposes. For example, tansies are believed to have many medical qualities like the ability to heal joint pain and many other conditions. However, there is no proof for that. Another thing that you can use tansy for is dying clothes. Tansy has even been used as an insect repellant in medieval times. 

We have lots of tansies where I live. There are some growing in our school yard and even near my home so I’m quite familiar with the flower. I think they are really beautiful but sadly you can only see them in the summer when they are not covered in snow. 

-Jutta

-Mira from Finland

- Oona from Finland

This beautiful flower is a documented prehistoric plant of the Mediterranean and appears in wall paintings in Knossos, Crete. It has medicinal uses described by Dioscorides and Theophrastos. The name pancratium is derived from Greek and means "all-strength", maritimum means "of the sea" and refers to the plant's strength to grow in dry, sandy areas. It is also believed that this plant was given to Odysseus by Hermes to protect him against Circe's magic spells. The witch-goddess Circe turns half of his men into swine after feeding them wine and cheese. Hermes (great-grandfather of Odysseus and an Olympian god) warns Odysseus about Circe and gives him the flower, which aids him in resisting Circe’s magic.

The hibiscus is also the symbol of our school.

Thank you for your attention!

Rosemary is a shrub with fragrant, evergreen, needle-like leaves and white, pink, purple, or blue flowers. It is native to the Mediterranean region as well as Portugal and Spain. Rosemary was considered sacred to ancient Egyptians, Romans, and Greeks. You can see plenty rosemary shrubs in the fields in Rhodes and it is common to use rosemary in cooking.

For thousands of years, Chinese, Indian Ayurvedic, Greek, and other European styles of medicine have incorporated it into the treatment of a range of conditions.

In Rhodes there are many eucalyptus trees that are dozens of years old!

It is an endangered species protected by both Greek and European legislation. The main reason for extinction is the summer drought and the scarce water that remains in the streams of Rhodes during the summer months.

Hello everyone!!Today we will talk about the soothing ingredients of aloe vera.

Aloe Vera is a natural ingredient that helps with soothing and healing effects it has on the skin.

As one of the earliest recorded healing botanicals, Aloe Vera has played an important role in our history for thousands of years. It originally comes from the Arabian Peninsula and flourishes in tropical and subtropical regions where Aloe is one of the main exports, and it has long been used in Chinese and Indian medicine as a health elixir, wound healer, and gastrointestinal treatment. The Aloe plant stores water in its juicy leaves in the form of a gel and it’s this which contains most of the bioactive compounds found in the plant, including vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and antioxidants.In Rhodes you can see aloe plants near the seashores ,in dry places.

We love this place and we are sure that you will too if you get a chance of visiting .

-  Roosa

I would really like to get to know you. How are you? How is it going in school?

I don’t know Ireland very well. However, as we heard that you’re going to join our Padlet project, we studied some Irish traditions at school. We made a slide-show on St. Patrik. I already knew a little about him. 

I’d like to know how you celebrate St. Patrick’s day. 

Can you tell us a little more about Ireland? 

Have a nice day! 

-Viivi from Finland

I have a couple of questions about Ireland.

What language do you speak there? Do you speak Gaelic? And also, is it true that Gaelic is the oldest vernacular in Western Europe?

• Viia from Finland

The weather here in Ireland is not the best. It can be very cold and it can reach below freezing temperature sometimes (0). The last couple weeks have been terrible. My hands have been frosted everytime after training. I would always need to stick my hnads on the heater. I would like to know if its the same over at Finland.

What sports do ye play over at Finland. We have traditional sports here. They are very rough though

I would love to visit Finland one day. Pls let me know.

This picture was taken last weekend. It was really beautiful scenery!

-Viivi

I just wanted to say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. It's the last lesson of this course, but I will be posting here. I look forward to getting to know y'all better.

-Laura

This was our last Kielipolku-lesson. We want to thank you all for a nice autumn term. Be nice, folks, Santa Claus is about to start his journey!

Its common name is Alexandrian or Star of Bethlehem, it is a perennial shrub, whose leaves turn red in winter. There are varieties in white, pink and red. It blooms  during the Christmas season .There are a lot of Alexandrina plants  in Rhodes and some grow into big trees.

Hello our friends we are happy to see you

We are gonna talk about the carnival

Apokries, the term for Carnival season in Greece, is a major celebration throughout the country, and one of the most colorful. With roots in both paganism and Christianity, traditions can look quite different from one region to the next!