Finnish volunteers From the last two projects we already knew some of the local residents in Juuka and surroundings. Real friendly and helpful people, willing to show their culture and habitat and truly interesting in the ice projects. This year it was great to meet so many new faces. Not only during the seven weeks building period, but also in the preparation weeks we had before. They learned us Ice-Hockey, Ice Fishing, riding a Finish sledge. We even got invited to eat typical fi nish reindeer. The cultural exchange went also the other way around. We learned them English, showed them the Dutch culture and invite them to our really good party’s. They had never seen dress up parties like the Dutch Carnival. Due to the all these kind of activities we build up a good relationship. And that was very useful for a project like this in an rather isolated place like Juuka. They helped us during the whole building period with all kind of things. The local residents have a lot of building skills from which we have learned a lot. Whereas, they copied our method to build a church out of ice. It’s hard to sum up all the names of the people that have helped us to reach our goals. Some of them left a little quote about how their experience was during this winter time. And like one of the local volunteers told us. “You guys are not only build an ice bridge but surely also between two diff erent cultures”. We can see without the help of all the local residents it would not have been such a great success. A big thank you to all the people who have supported us. 40
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