International tutoring – memories for a lifetime!

Sanna with her new friends

Each semester TAMK receives about 150 new exchange students. To welcome the students the International Services rely on the help of the students union Tamko and its sub-organization Club International Tampere (CLINT). The student tutors are the ones who meet new exchange students at the airport, show them around their new neighborhood, and help with all the questions related to the way of life in Tampere.

But what else is international tutoring? And why would you want to be one?

Sanna Hosike, Business Administration student and Survival Kit Coordinator at CLINT, explains: “it’s all true what they say about making new friends from all over the world, brushing up your language skills, and having the time of your life! For me, the best times have not been the parties but the time spent hanging out together just getting to know each other, making good food together etc. The only bad thing about tutoring is having to say goodbye to your exchange students – I’ve never cried as much as I did the last time I took my tutorees to the airport.”

Karolina and her tutorees celebrating vappu

Annika Dillenburger, a second year Tourism student, adds that most of her closest friends are other international tutors who she got to know when she became one last year. Annika, too, still keeps in contact with the exchange students she tutored and has even been to Hungary to visit one of them since. “I would say becoming an international tutor was the best decision I ever made and I really mean that!” 

“The funniest thing is observing the exchange students’ first reactions to the Finnish ways”, says Karolina Cichacz, Chairman of CLINT and an International Business student, and continues “for example the first time we take the students to sauna and they realize that people actually go there naked!”

Karolina is excited about the global network of friends she has made. Last summer she travelled to France and Malta to meet some of the former exchange students and there are still so many more friends to be visited! “There’s nothing more heart melting  than a “thank you” from the exchange students. They really appreciate this unique service that we offer them”, Karolina concludes.

If you want to become an International Tutor, enroll to Tamko by 31 October 2011. More information: http://www.tamko.fi/pages/posts/international-tutor-training1097.php

Text: Emma Roinila, International Services
Photos: Sanna Hosike, Karolina Cichacz