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The last gathering. The mock exams have just ended and I feel drained. However, the countdown to the final frontier has just started. We gathered together with the teachers one last time to discuss stuff to do with IB, how have we felt about it and what suggestions do we have for the future. I guess it is part of the new school policy that wants to include students in the decision-making processes and make them feel as good in Lyseo and IB as possible. We gave our honest opinions, praises and criticism and the teachers really took it in and it was interesting to notice that they shared some of the same opinions with us as well. It was also nice to see them all before the finals and for them to wish us luck in the forthcoming struggles ahead. It gave me the extra motivation to push through and make them proud.

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During high school I've developed a passion for football: I follow all the biggest leagues, I'm a football official and lately I've been kicking the ball and practicing myself as well. I've been doing this a lot to be honest and it makes up the bulk of my total quantity of exercise. I kick the ball around on our yard on a daily basis and lately I've been going to the field near our house too, at my previous elementary school to be exact. It's new and in good condition, so it is really nice to train there because of the proximity as well. We have an upcoming amature tournament we are taking part in with the junior referees and I want to train myself to the level that I can contribute as much as I can to the team's efforts, especially after our weak campaign last year. It doesn't feel like work to me as I enjoy it really much and I guess that is the key to anything we do in life: the goal is to find a job or something to do that you enjoy doing, so that it contributes to the community and to you as well.

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Penkkarit 2017!! What a great day that was🎉🎉One of the reasons I visited my fencing gym was to borrow eye-coloring contact lenses, which was to go with my costume, Avatar the Last Airbender. The costume idea was super hard to accomplish (shoutout to my mom for making this possible) and really hard to maintain with the bald cap and all the makeup + the contacts really hurt my eyes and worsened my vision😂😂But in the end I was glad and proud I wore it and I got so much positive feedback for it as well👏I was pleased to notice that my classmates all rose to the occasion as well with fantastic costumes of their own, like Parsa as Jack Sparrow. We decorated our class with a sports theme and added some self-made posters of our teachers as famous athletes, like Ari in the top-left corner knocking me out as Mohammad Ari. These were hilarious and overall the entire day was well worth all the planning and decoration work we went through to accomplish it as we had a load of fun visiting schools and throwing candy to the kids and later riding on the trucks around town and shouting crazy chants😂This surely is one of the best traditions in the Finnish educational system.

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The return of the King. I returned to my previous fencing training ground to see my friends and was swept away by all the memories of my fencing career. I started when I was on 1st grade of elementary school and quit shortly after starting high school, which fits over 9 years of fencing into my life. I was at my prime in an early age, around 10 I guess, when I finished the season as the 3rd best in Finland in my age group. After that I competed less and it really became more of a hobby to me, although I always finished high in our own club's championships winning it several times. I was also praised for my excellent footwork which was showed to other fencers who were of lesser experience than I and once I put my suit on again I noticed that talent really doesn't wear off. My footwork and stepping was still as great as ever and my fencing skills seemed like I hadn't missed a training ever, despite hanging up the sword nearly three years ago. Oh, and the reason my eyes look so weird in this picture was because I was already preparing for something else on the horizon....

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This is a picture of me looking absolutely petrified whilst staring at the screen of a tabletop computer. The reason I look so appalling is that in this picture I was moments away from presenting my EE topic and work process to the 2nd IB students and I was freaking out. I hadn't done nearly as much work as the rest of my class and to be honest my EE situation was quite messy at best. It didn't help at all that my subject was history and Antti was sitting in the audience staring at me. In the end the presentation went alright and I was also able to answer the students' questions in an orderly fashion. Antti's presence changed from menacing to supportive as I went on and in the end he actually gave me some good advice and pointers on my EE and how I should continue with it. This was also our last job as tutors to the 2nd IB with Aleksi and Parsa. I wish that we have been of some help to them during these two years and that they have what it takes to take on 3IB and all the challenges it presents and get their diplomas.

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Tried out some downhill skiing this past winter and I was suprised to see that I did not feel out of place on the slopes despite not doing it since I was in elementary school. I live for the kind of things that get my pulse up and invigorate me and this sure was one of those things. There is nothing better than speeding down the snowy slopes at breakneck speed and I was really proud to realise that I had some touch in what I was doing and that given the chance I could see myself doing it many times in the future as well.

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After returning from Italy I had a one night rest at home before we took off to the IB cruise to Stockholm with Aleksi, Sara, Darius, Veronica, Laura and Parsa. We were joined by a few Imatra students there as well. It went really smoothly and it was crazy that the whole ship was filled with IB students from all over Finland. We talked to a bunch of them, some from Espoo and others from Kuopio etc. It was interesting to be surrounded by so many people who share the same burdens and worries that people in our school from the national side usually fail to relate with. We did some of the CAS seminars and upon arrival to Stockholm did some sightseeing and cultural explorations with the help of a friend of Darius'. Overall it was a really fun and useful cruise that brought our group closer together and helped us strengthen our belief in the bigger IB community.

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Another exchange, another trip to another country and more wonderful memories made. This time the exchange happened with a school in Florence and a class from that school visited Lappeenranta where we, the IB students of Lyseo, had to host them in our families here. For us it was hard but rewarding work and we made some new Italian friends along the way, who we in turn visited in October when we travelled to Florence. It was much more enjoyable, perhaps because Italy brought with it some fantastic new experiences and we got engulfed in the culture as well. We had tons of fun amid all the work we had to do in groups to make presentations on Finland and the Renaissance era Italy. It's experiences like these that stay with us for the rest of our lives and I hope it's not the last one I get to make.

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We got the idea of sports club from our IB predecessors, the already graduated class of '97. It started out alright and we actually had people coming there in decent numbers. However, soon the numbers started to fall and we were quite few in the end participating. This might've been because of the increasing workload of the 2nd and 3rd IB at this part of the semester. In the end we decided to cancel sports club, but not stop using the school gym hall. We would come there during recess and lunch breaks to play ping pong, basketball or indoors football and have plenty of fun between classes. It was calming and took our mind off things for a while, something you really need on 3rd IB with all the assignments flying around and finals fast approaching. We did this type of exercise for the best part of the year and it was interesting to notice that more and more people started following our example and nowadays the gym is always in full use during breaktime. As if we started a movement of sorts.

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After two full years of service it is time to say goodbye to Vapsu, the leisure time and activity organizing body in our school, which is a really official way of saying we throw parties to the students outside of school. It has been quite the journey with this bunch, we have had our ups and downs as each party is usually either a hero or a zero and is remembered accordingly. We have faced many challenges with these parties along the way, but still always managed to pull through as a unit, wether it was keeping the party people in check or handling the police or anything in between. The amount of work each party demands is staggering and if anything else this experience has taught me the equilibrium of working hard to play hard and the necessity of teamwork in projects like these parties. I hope the new Vapsu can make us proud and retain the good reputation of Lyseo as the fun and exciting high school in Lappeenranta.

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OPKH, it's been an honour. I've been a member of Lyseo's student body council (OPKH) for a full year now and it's finally time to make room for a new council as we prepare for the final months of our high school and the upcoming final examinations. We have accomplished a lot with this group and our president Siiri (in the bottom picture) has been instrumental in our success. During the year we organized events like the Christmas week, the Vappu gala, the Abi gala and many others which gained much fanfare and brought people together in our school. We had a good chemistry and atmosphere in our council and I hope the next one can carry on our legacy with pride.

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Our trip to London, where do I start....It's hard to note much CASworthy from the trip, save for the museums and monuments we went to see on each day and doing our fair share of learning. However the trip really did teach us all new things and it was an amazing experience for us IB 2nd and 1st graders, both in boosting our group spirit and our togetherness between the Imatra and Lappeenranta people. On our freetime we went sightseeing as well, visiting the Emirates Stadium and Westminster Abbey as well as actually participating in a protest that went on on the streets, joining the crowd with their chants and shouts😂(even though at first we had no idea what it was about, that's GOT TO BE activity and creativity). Overall, the trip was really worth all the planning that had preceded it and gave us all new memories and experiences that we can look back at with joy.

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Bienvenue au France! This is a picture of me from the Republique square in Rennes, which is in the North of France. It was where we had the first workshop of the Erasmus+ international project. This year's theme was cyber security and our objective for the week-long exchange was to come up with different mediums for information on the project as a whole and the theme as well. Our group organized an online newspaper and we included all kinds of creative content there from pictures and videos to journals, which we presented to the school at the end of the week. Overall the trip was a success and we got to meet many other students from France, Austria and Germany and it was a positive note to also bond with the other Finnish people on the trip.

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Only available to post this now, since my phone has been broken for almost 2 weeks now😂but boy oh boy what a day that was!💃🎉Im of course talking about the Lyseo Old dances, a day which turned about to be sensationally fun and enjoyable☺The day included a lot of transportation and timidness, but at the end of the day it was all worthwhile. The dances went brilliantly, despite a few individual errors along the way😅The whole gang felt uplifted and energetic and especially the ending was just beyond words, something purely magical....In the picture is me alongside my beautiful partner Ronja performing our own dance. I would like to thank her for making the day such wonderful and memorable for me and I hope I made her feel the same way. This will surely go to my books as something that I'll always remember❤

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First official meeting of the new student body council!😌✌The actual secretary was sick at the time, which was sad, but in the end good news for me as I got to try out the secretary gig. Too bad tho that I fell in love with it🙈😂It is honestly tonns of fun, you get to write down everything that goes on in the meeting down to the most hilarious details. I showed the records later to the chairwoman who is a good friend of mine and even she said she laughed her ass off😂I asked the actual secretary if she'd like to swap jobs with me, but sadly she declined😧But we agreed that I would get to be the first alternative, sort of a vice secretary. I hope I do get to spend some more time with the accords in the future as well, I had a real blast👍

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Bienvenue à la Club Internacional!🌐👋This pic is from last week's Thursday when Sara showed her presentation on Belgium. I found it very interesting and informative and she was able to vivicate it with her insightful experiences from her exchange year. I really enjoyed it as I am interested in travelling and learning new stuff constantly! I also have high hopes for the future of the International club, with the planning of the International day already taking place👌I think this group has the necessary enthusiasm and potential to accomplish many more fun and great things and I will happily stick around and contribute to these things as best as I can!😌👏

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Counting days to the Old dances....🙈 Immortalized in this picture is the grand finale of the Lyseo students' own dance for the Old dances, completely choreographed by a group of 2nd grade students. Despite some struggles early on, the dance is actually really good in my opinion and people have been training it to near perfection💎It is really energetic, enjoyable and fun and in my opinion it won't be overshadowed by Kimpinen this year, we got our own good thing going on💃I won't say anything else, the rest will be on show for the upcoming event, so see you there👉