Proakatemia is called the school of dreams. For me, that means that during the studies you can achieve the things that you have always dreamed about. I have always been interested in traveling and different cultures. One of my goals is to work someday abroad or in the job where I am able to travel to different countries. During Proakatemia I have been working a lot to achieve that goal and that is why I applied to the international team in Proakatemia and later I was decided to be the Head of International Relations of this unit.

Last November I got the chance to take the next step towards my goal when I was taking care of the Brazilian visitors. After they had spent the week in Proakatemia, President Stefano and Chief Operations Officer Felipe from the university called UNIS asked if I would be interested to do some kind of project with them. Of course, I was really interested in doing co-operation with them, and together we discuss that I would visit their university from 1^stof March until the end of April 2018.

So now I have been a little bit over a month in Brazil in a city called Varginha. During my stay here I have met a lot of new interesting people from many different countries. Also, I have had a chance to visit different cities and create a lot of new contacts. My project here is to work in this university`s international office and help them to make their unit more international. I also visit different campuses with the international team and tell to the students about the importance of internationalization and exchange. I have also visited different cities and talked about Finland, entrepreneurship, and Proakatemia to the people in high schools and universities. Experience has been really good so far and I have learned a little bit Portuguese and also a lot about Brazilian culture in life and business. I think it is really important to learn about new cultures first before starting to make business in different countries.

I am also doing my final thesis here in Brazil. My job is to do research about opportunities to export Finnish education into Brazil. Because of that, I have interviewed education experts here in Varginha and also in Sao Paulo and Uberaba cities. So, right now I have a lot of contacts from different parts of Brazil and also from South-America because here in Varginha, I live in a hotel with exchange students all over South-America and also from Africa, the United States and Hungary. So far, the trip has been successful and I think that Finnish people could learn a lot from Brazilians. Anywhere you go here people are friendly and really make their best to help you with anything you need. Also for Finnish people, there could be a lot of opportunities to make business in the education sector. Everyone here knows the reputation of Finnish education and the whole country wants to improve their education a lot in following years.

I will travel to Finland at the beginning of May so that I will be ready to be part of our Academic Adventures international week in Proakatemia. I will tell more about my trip and share my experience during that week for the participants. I hope, I will see many people from different countries participating that week!

Aleksi Orenius, Head of International Relations, Proakatemia

Will be published in Academic Adventures blog: http://academicadventures.fi/blog/