Study Tour

Hei!

I hope you had a nice week!

My class and I had this week our Study Tour. Usually, the Study Tour is a trip in Europe, that the whole class plans together, and besides having some fun activities you get to visit some interesting companies and present Haaga-Helia university to other schools. We however, stayed in Uusima (the region Porvoo and Helsinki are in), due to the well-known reason: corona virus.

On Wednesday we only had one school visit and one business visit, which in times of Covid19 happened of course online. From 9am to 10am we got to listen to a presentation by Joel Kettula from Sure ry. He talked about how hard the corona virus hit the tourism industry and how studying is the best thing we could be doing right now, as we are with that having a stable income. He also explained to us, why so many people don´t succeed in the hospitality industry. The reason for that is The Golden Circle. The Golden Circle is made out of three questions:

1. What? - That is a question most people ask themselves (e.g. What do I want to become?)

2. How? - That is a question that still quite a lot of people ask themselves, but not as many as the first (e.g. How can I become that?)

3. Why? - Rarely people ask themselves this question, although it is the most important one (Why do I want to become that?)

Afterwards we had the opportunity to present Haaga-Helia (and especially Porvoo campus) to Oulunkylän yhteiskoulu, a school from Helsinki.

On Thursday we got to present our university to the International School of Helsinki and afterwards got a virtual tour through Valo Hotel, a hotel in Helsinki, with the unique concept of combining hotel with a working space. 

After a lunch break, we had time for some fun activities. The activities group (which I am part of) organized a little Halloween party for the rest of the class. We started with a small and fun scavenger hunt through Porvoo’s city center and when they came back, they got to enjoy some food and drinks in a nicely decorated room at campus. After everyone was fed it was time for some more games. In the same teams that they also competed in, in the scavenger hunt. Now they had to guess some songs and then got the opportunity to carve their own pumpkins. And of course, after all these games, we also gave some prizes to the winning team. 

It was a nice bonding afternoon for the whole class.

On Friday we all went to Helsinki to go on the Foxtrail adventure. Foxtrail is a company that organizes scavenger hunts in cities. You get some hints, have to find clues and solve riddles to catch the fox. It is

a fun two-hour game that takes you through the center of Helsinki.

With that our official Study Tour was over, but most of us stayed in the city to enjoy some food and some drinks together. So, even though it was a very different Study Tour than in the other years, we all had a great time, learned a lot and bonded as a class, which will benefit us in our future projects.

I wish I had never gone traveling.

Said no one ever.

-Lotte