Visitors to The Arla Institute
On Sunday, the 20th of April 2008, a group of eight persons from the Südbayerische Wohn- und Werkstätten für Blinde und Sehbehinderte gGmbH in Germany, came to the Arla Institute. The trip, which included the workers Felix, Vanessa, Manfred, Brigitte and four members of the staff, was part of the student exchange in the MDVI-Active project. Three students together with three staff members from The Arla Institute visited in the fall 2007 the Südbayerische Wohn- und Werkstätten für Blinde und Sehbehinderte gGmbH. So the Germans´ trip was a return visit to the Fnnish visit to Germany.
During the visit German visitors joined classes according to curriculum. The classes which they attented were sports, social skills, daily living skills and hand craft. Also together we visited the Finnish Federation of the Visually Impaired and a sheltered workshop for visually impaired people and did a sightseeing tour in Helsinki. At the beginning of the visit we had a welcoming dinner at a thai restaurant. Before the visit the students of prepatory 2 planned a goodbye menu and the idea was to cook it together. The menu included traditional Finnish food, like sauteed reindeer and mashed potatoes.
The students of prepatory 2 were very excited to have visitors from a different country. The students took part in actively planning the visit. They wanted to know more about Germany and the German language. The students wanted to welcome the visitors to Finland in the visitors´ own language, so they practised simple German word like welcome, my name is and so on. After our visitors went back home we looked back at the visit and enjoyed German traditional food, which we got from our visitors. We all were very happy to have visitors from Germany and look back at this visit with warm thoughts!
