Bookbag Tours Q&A & Finland Haul

[Music] hey everybody welcome back to my channel my name is Latonya I am a new middle school teacher in Southern California I'm getting ready to head into my 15th year of teaching but I say I'm a new middle school teacher because I am in the process of transitioning from elementary teaching to middle school teaching so if you are watching this video you are doing so either a because you are contemplating taking a trip through book back tours or you're just curious to hear my experience as a teacher who has taken one of those trips so as of me filming this video I've been home from my trip to Finland through book back tours for about a week and I thought since I know I've had so many questions from people that follow me on Instagram and YouTube about just different aspects of my experience I thought it would be a great idea to do a just quick sit-down video where I kind of answer some of those questions and then give you some final thoughts on my trip as a whole if you haven't checked them out at this point I know they've all been uploaded but I did also vlog my entire experience in Finland and if you're interested in seeing any of those videos I will be sure to link them somehow in this video whether it be through a card that pops up or as links in the description box so with that being said we're going to get into it I'm gonna give a very brief introduction as to why I even went on this trip and then some of my just general experiences there then I will transition to answering some of the questions that I got through people on Instagram and then at the very end just for the fun of it I will show you the goodies that I brought back with me from Finland so let's get started so again like I said my name is Latonya I'm a teacher in Southern California and what brought me to take a book back tourist trip is the fact that I am a single person I'm not married I've never been married I don't have kids but I was always interested in traveling but I never really had a travel partner I have brothers and sisters but they're not quite at a place where they can travel internationally it's not really something my parents are ready to do at this point and then all my friends are married and they're traveling with their families and I definitely didn't want to travel and be all by myself so luckily for me over a year ago I happen to see just different teachers talking about these trips they were taking to places like London and Paris through a company called book back tours so I decided to look them up I went on my computer typed in book back tours calm and that is where I found all the information that I needed to know to go ahead and make the decision to book this trip so one thing I do want to say in the very beginning is that if you're someone in a similar situation such as I am you want to travel but you're single but you want to be able to travel in a group setting and feel relatively safe then book back tours is the perfect opportunity for you that was why I booked through them I knew okay I'm going to be traveling in a group with people and this group of people at least have a very common or I have a huge thing in common and that is the fact that they're all teachers or they're in education or they're related to someone in education because you don't necessarily have to be a teacher to go on these trips meaning that if you are a teacher and your spouse wants to join you or one of your children want to join you that is perfectly fine as well so I decided to sign up for a trip I had a lot of different trips to choose from I ultimately chose to go to Finland because I knew just after researching the company a little bit that a big part of the trip was going to be professional development and if you're a teacher I'm sure you've heard that Finland is internationally known for their students performance just generally in terms of their academics so I thought well I want to go to the source of where all the great things seem to be happening not only that honestly it sounds bad but the truth is Finland is probably a place I would have never planned to take a trip to I definitely would have a plan to take a trip to somewhere like London or Paris or Ireland but I would have never really thought let me go ahead and plan a vacation to Finland and that is how I came to the conclusion that that was the place that I wanted to go to through book back tours so just off the bat when people are interested or the questions that I had especially those of us that are on a teacher's salary and maybe we're on a very tight budget I know being single and being the sole income for my household of one and two dogs I can't just haphazardly make a decision to travel internationally so a lot of people want to know what is the cost now when you go to the website and I'll be sure to link the website there the cost is showing on the website is the cost not including your airfare so for me the total costs including just booking through book back tours in terms of my hotel the activities they have planned and all of that plus my airline ticket cost was a total of three thousand ninety-two dollars so it is pricey and it's definitely something that you're going to want to plan for but that being said the nice thing about book back tours and what really helped me is that you are able to pay as you see fit in other words if you are in a position to book a trip and then pay all at once you can do that if you're in a position where maybe you want to pay fifty percent now and then 50 percent later or 24 25 percent now and then paying 25 percent increments you are more than welcome to do that as well if you want to wait all the way into the very last minute because there's a deadline date where you have to have everything paid in full you can do that also I was in none of those positions I knew that once I booked this trip I was going to have to make very small payments throughout the course of the year so I booked this trip last summer and had about a year to pay for it in full and so what I did is I paid about $100 a week I do make youtube videos and I do generate a little bit of income from that so any of the income that I got from YouTube a lot of times was just allotted to my trip if I picked up an extra check at work because I volunteered or not volunteered because I signed up to do something that was compensated any extra money like that I knew I was doing it for the purpose of paying on my trip so I literally paid on average about a hundred dollars a week and then when it came time for everything to be paid in full I did need to make a relatively large payment but I had money saved up for that and that is how I was able to afford it so the one thing not the one thing one of the many things are one of the many messages that I want to get across in this video is that if you plan accordingly and if you can find ways to generate some extra income for yourself it's totally doable I by no stretch of the imagination am rich I have bills just like everybody else I have a mortgage I have student loan payments I have a car payment car insurance utilities all of that but this was something that I knew I really wanted to do so I had to really be focused and disciplined about how I was allotting some of the money that I may have done things like go to Starbucks with or buy clothes with and just tell myself I need to make sure I'm using that money so that my trip is paid for and so that's what I was able to do the cost of your trip is going to depend on where you go and whether or not you choose to add additional excursions to your trip or you choose to extend your trip in any way those will all affect the cost the other great thing about it is that once I booked it I left all the responsibilities of booking everything else in the hands or the people at bookbag tours so I didn't want to deal with booking the flight because I knew I wouldn't have time to really sit down and adequately research it so they handled all of that for me and just told me here's the flight information here's the cost and adit that cost into my account and I knew I had to pay for that if you want to book your own flight if you have miles and you have all these other options and you have the time to do that you can do that as well so it is very flexible they are really good about communicating to you about things that you want to keep in mind deadlines that you need to be aware of getting your passport together giving you receipts every time you pay giving you reminders as to when final payments are due so I had a very smooth experience in terms of making sure I handled everything I needed to do logistically as well as financially now if you have other questions that are in relationship to booking a trip decide where to go please make sure that you click on the link for book back tours that I have linked in the description box because there's a ton of information there all the most frequently asked questions are listed with the very clear answer that's what I did to help me kind of figure out what I was going to do so please make sure you check that out now that we've talked about just kind of the logistics of that generally speaking my experience go to Finland was absolutely positively amazing life-changing fulfilling inspiring like every positive adjective I can think to say is what I would use on a personal note it was just fulfilling because this was my first big international trip I've been to Canada I've been to Mexico but those are relatively close to where I'm at it's not very hard to get to those locations but for this one I this was a big one for me I flew from Los Angeles California all the way to Finland on the other side of the world and that was huge for me I you know and so on that level that was just fulfilling to just be able to go to a place see another part of the world experience another culture so I would not change that for the world and I think just traveling and seeing as many places as you can it's only going to enrich you as a person make you into a better person make you appreciate the world that you you live in in terms of like where you come from and then appreciate the world that someone else is living in whether it's like yours or not so that part amazing the professional development was also amazing the person that hosted us and let these sessions for us his name is pet 30 and he's an educator in Finland and is very focused on pedagogy and just really putting forth your best foot width working with students and making sure you have a student-led classroom and really just being the best that you can be in the classroom he was just great he was great in terms of the per the information he was providing his method of delivery he had a great sense of humor he was very personable we had three days of PD and we got to do a lot of different things in those short three days we got to talk to Finnish teachers Finnish students we visited a preschool we picked up some tips and strategies that we can take back into our classroom so each day I left that professional development I left with something concrete that I could take back to help me improve my skill set as a teacher a friend of mine Liza if you've been watching on YouTube videos you know who she is she was saying to me the other day that she wondered how fun was the trip or was it just like going to work to professional development and I was telling her it didn't feel like work at all because we were all so interested in what information he had to share you're surrounded by teachers that are all like-minded you all came there for a reason everyone's motivated so I really didn't mind it and after the first day of PD a lot of us were sad that it ended because we were just so into it and we weren't there all day these sessions were a few hours at a time so the professional development aspect of it amazing then you also have a lot of free time while you're in these locations to kind of break off into small groups you'll find that as soon as you get there you make friends really easily so we did shopping we did a lot of sightseeing we went out to dinner I went to karaoke for the first time so I have no regrets and I am so happy that I decided to do this that I'm a huge advocate of anyone who's thinking about doing it I don't I don't think you'll have any regrets I think you'll just come out of it feeling enriched as a person as well as a teacher so now that I've done that now I'm going to go over the questions that I've gotten from you guys through Instagram and so these are on my phone so I am going to be looking down for them most of you were asking the same type of question so if you don't hear me mention your name or your question specifically it's because it was very similar to someone else's or just in the interest of time I couldn't answer all of them so the first one says would you recommend this for pre-service teachers or college students studying education and I would say yes it would be amazing to be able to go to another country and see their system and hear their point of view and education and intermingle with other educators from different parts of the country before you even taught your first day that's only going to give you a stronger foundation a broader sense of what education is so if you can afford it I definitely would suggest it suggest it to you even if you are a pre-service teacher that question was from I think it's Jayla underscore 1008 the next question is from Jai's mom T's wife 22 how long is the actual trip so I was in Finland from June 22nd until July 3rd I actually ended up going there a little bit early just because it worked out with my flight but the rest of the group arrived June 24th and was there until July 3rd there were little pockets of people that were extending their stay in Europe but that was the official timeframe of the trip June 24th through July 3rd next question is from k dot y dot a I'm not sure this one's interesting and I get why she's asking and now touch on it in my response so she said do black people live there meaning Finland were you treated different differently or did you get any stares so honestly going there I was not sure what to expect obviously I'm a black female and in my mind Finland was going to be filled with very fair-skinned blond people and I wasn't sure how many or how frequently they see someone that is black we stayed in Helsinki which is the capital of Finland Helsinki from what I saw was very diverse so it definitely wasn't just a homogeneous group of people that all look the same you could tell there were people from several different cultural backgrounds there were black people there but they were I think the vast majority of the people that I were seeing that one would call black I think they were Somalian there were not a lot of black people there that looked like me if that makes sense I think I still stood out because I think when you look at me and the other black people that were in the country it's clear that I'm Americanized or that I'm not Somalian so and and we talked to some high school students and I did ask her that very specific question because I was very curious myself because she was I believe she was Somalian and so I asked her if she felt that she was accepted at her school and if she felt like she was discriminated against and she said that she had lived her all her all her life and she never felt that she was treated any differently however she did say she not sure she would have felt so welcomed if she had maybe immigrated to that country and was like 5 years old or so but since she was born there and had always lived there she never had that sense of feeling like she wasn't being accepted or didn't belong so I mean it is more diverse but that is something that I thought about I did get stares I think I got stairs again because I just didn't look like the black people that maybe they were accustomed to seeing plus my hair is in braids and then I was in this very diverse group of people so I think they weren't quite sure like how we all fit together but if I got a stare I just smiled and waved like Hello so yeah next is from Gigi Marie underscore Simpson can high school teachers go yes absolutely and it would be great if you did come because I think most of us were elementary teachers yeah I think all of us were elementary teachers and then myself and another teacher are about to start teaching middle school the next person said why Finland I know you said there were other options of countries you could have chosen that's from mrs. Shelton to 26 so I kind of touched on that already just because it's a place I would not have gone otherwise and Finland is often not often I'm gonna say always talked about in terms of being at the high end of educational performance for their students so I wanted to hear from the horse's mouth as to what it was they were doing that was so different from us and if you're interested in hearing what that is then you got to watch the blogs that I've already uploaded because I kind of touch on some of the things that I think make the difference in Finland next is from stem fantastic I am trying to figure out how I can afford it all so again you got a look at where you want to go figure out what the price is going to be and then just sit down and ask yourself is there a way for you to make small payments throughout the course of time that you will have before you have to make that final payment but don't be discouraged like don't be discouraged if you if you think you might be able to swing it next is from Jay underscore Bruce did you get some souvenirs for your classroom if so what are they I'm going to show you in just a second when I do my little haul and next is from a underscore caffeinated underscore teacher what surprised you the most about the experience that's a good question I think just what surprised me the most about the experience it's just a when we as a group of teachers all came together it was like we knew each other we instantaneously like bonded got along there was never that moment of like awkwardness that I don't know anybody I'm a lot of people have asked me do people go not knowing anyone and most of us went and didn't know anyone really there I knew the person I came with Shamika but I had never physically met her before I only knew her through social media if you follow me on Instagram you know I spent a lot of time with Jill I had never met Jill before but by the end of that trip we were like besties everybody in the group was just her into this situation where you either know no one or you really only know one person and a lot of the people that came knowing someone it was only because they knew that person because they met them on a book back towards trip that they had taken the year prior so if your apprehension is to say I don't want to go because I don't know anybody I I would just beg you to let go of that anxiety because you're gonna go there with the group of people that have teaching as a common thread and if you put teachers in a room you will find a way to get along because you guys all have this thing in common so by the time you leave like me I left there with 25 new friends that I feel like I know them well we had great laughs we took trips together have meals together so do it sometimes we got to jump out of our comfort zone to grow in life next question is this is from my cousin mrs. Miss six-foot-two because she's 6 foot 2 this for my cousin crystal how are the accommodations yeah I will say when I opened the hotel room door I was like oh my god and then I had to calm down because it was not it wasn't like the risk carbs at carleton excuse me wasn't even the Embassy Suites it was a very basic small hotel room it had everything I needed in it beds bathroom sinks things like that it just wasn't like luxurious it was small but you got to remember you're not going to this country to spend all your time in that room so as soon as I had a moment of clarity and said Latonya this room is strictly meant for you to come in here sleep shower wash your face brush your teeth and leave then I got over it it was clean everything else was fine it just it just wasn't like I mean and not like the Embassy Suites is super fancy but that's like the like basic level hotel stays and I'm looking for him when I go anywhere so that was my experience with the hotel the staff was super friendly breakfast was provided there are some trips where you go and they do set you up with the host family Jill went with the host family and her first book back to his trip and she loved it I've heard other people that have stayed with host families and they look they loved it that just wasn't an option for us on this particular trip so the accommodations were fine and some people call me high maintenance and I feel like if I was able to handle it and I was okay with it then anybody really would be and again if you want to see what my hotel room look like you can kind of see some of that on the vlogs so those were all the questions the next thing I'm going to do is just do a little Finland haul to show you what I got and then we'll wrap up this video all right now to the fun stuff so these are the things that I bought and I've been storing it in here for you guys in my cute little bag that they gave us from book back tours so I'm just gonna pull things out of the bag and I'll show it to you as I go I'm gonna start with the smaller things well we'll see I'll try and do the smaller things first so while I was there that's just gonna be too hard so I'm just gonna take the things out as they come and I'll tell you what it is so this first item is a brand that I found out about while I was in Finland it is a Finnish brand called Mari mecco and during this trip I was lucky enough to find out that I was going to be would be a trip leader on the South Africa trip that is going to be next summer and so I thought I would like to get a nicer makeup bag so what I wanted to do with souvenirs I wanted to buy things that would be long-lasting and durable so that every time I looked at it or used it I thought about my time in Finland and I didn't want to get like little like junky things that would just get lost in the shuffle and thrown away so I bought this bag to put my makeup items in it if you follow me on Instagram yesterday I posted a picture of this bag because I ended up buying two I was really feeling myself and this one will be for my toiletries so again this is upside down this is a finished brand so now every time I travel when I use these things it will remind me of my trip to Finland I got them in black and white because I have some away suitcases that are black and white and these will match perfectly so that is what I got there next one of the most amazing parts of this trip that was unexpected is I knew because we had an itinerary they do send you an itinerary and let you know what the plan is and all that when you get closer to the trip and that was really nice I knew we were going to Estonia and I knew Estonia was another country but I don't think my mind was really registering the fact that I was going to a second country and I had like no expectations of it I've never really talked about Estonia it just I was like oh yeah we're going to Estonia if you go on the Finland trip do not skip the Estonia part of the trip because everybody on that Finland trip was just blown away by how beautiful place Estonia was we went to Tallinn Estonia we took a very nice cruise ship there and it was just it was just beautiful like all the pictures I took look like I had put some amazing filter on it but I hadn't it was just that beautiful we've got a tour from a tour guide had some time to shop and so I bought this very lovely handmade leather purse so that I have something from Estonia that that I will be able to remember the trip by what I like about this purse is that it's small it's perfect for traveling I carried a backpack with me pretty much the whole trip but there were definitely times where I wish I just had like a small crossbody bag that I could carry and so I bought this I tried to bargain but I couldn't I ended up paying I think 50 dollars for this it was originally $65 I made sure my things could fit in it and so yeah I love it it's so cute and it'll remind me of Estonia next I bought some socks that say Estonia as a teacher there's always Dave's like crazy soft day and I thought this would be a fun pair of socks to wear I especially want my kids to know that I am making an effort to see different parts of the world so hopefully those socks will be like a conversation starter one of the things I learned in Finland is that there's a very popular cartoon character that we or I have never heard of and his name is Moomin so this is specifically one of the things that I bought for my classroom so I want to get magnets from every place that I go and have them on display on my classroom so I bought this one because it says Finland on it and then it also has a very popular cartoon character on it which I thought would be great for the classroom so I bought that I also bought a magnet from Estonia so this will go in my classroom board as well just a little Estonian girl next I bought one of the people on this trip had a great idea and anytime she travels she buys an ornament from that place so that she has it her travels displayed on her Christmas tree and I love that idea so I stole it so I bought a hand-painted ornament that says Finland on it I don't know if you can see it maybe I'll take it out of the bag there it is so it says Finland right there and then I also bought one from Estonia so this says Tallinn and you guys see that I don't know if that worked but it says Tallinn Estonia on it so those are my two christmas ornaments from each country then I bought this little nesting doll and my plan is to do a lesson with this I need to find a book about nesting dolls and somehow incorporate that into a lesson so I don't want to I don't want to hurt her because I had a hard time getting this open before so there's little okay so there's like little smaller dolls on the inside hence nesting dolls so I bought that while I was in Estonia as well and then I bought this so I wanted a book for my classroom and this is not the first one I picked up I had a different book at first and then someone found this and then I exchanged the book that I have for this one what I like about this is that it can open up a conversation about what I picked up on and what I was told about Finnish culture so when we talked to our hosts and the teachers that we got to meet and even some of the students we learned that in Finland they're not really super big on like small talk chitchat whereas Americans like sometimes it's just like an illness like we're just constantly talking there's a constant need to have small talk chitchat and I definitely saw that when Jill and I were out about town and like trying to be overly friendly and chatty with people they just kind of are like you know I calm down ladies we don't we don't need all of that so this book is called finished nightmares a different kind of social guide to Finland and it just kind of talks about the things that are like quote unquote Finnish nightmares like just awkward moments where they'd rather like not be talking to you and someone's speaking to them and I can't remember the one that I saw let me see if I can find a good one so like for example a Finnish nightmare is sharing an elevator with a stranger because now they're in this confined space and it's like do be talk do we not talk so and I'm not saying that as an assumption I was told that repeatedly by the Finns like we're not really big into small talk and chitchat and like useless banter and sometimes Americans we just really thrive on like a lot of chitchat so we probably could learn a little from them and just kind of be quiet every now and then now this last purchase is my big purchase I was tempted to do a little bit more sorry I'm trying to pick it up here there are no taxes in Finland so I felt like it was my duty as a participating member of international economy to make a purchase like this myself a new bag it is a long chump bag it's relatively inexpensive in terms of bags that I bought before especially if you've seen the fact that I bought myself a Louis Vuitton for my birthday but I've been looking at these bags for a couple of years I just like the fact that they're pretty inexpensive and they're just good like tote bags so this is like a nylon color I just got it in like a slate grey and so again when I carry this when I put my things in it it's just gonna remind me of this amazing experience that I've had taking this trip to Finland and going to this country and meeting other teachers and just growing as a person as an educator so I made that purchase and I feel really good about it so those are all the things that I bought I obviously bought some things for my family members as well and I've since given it to them but yeah so hopefully this video has helped you understand book back tours a little bit better or helped you if you're just kind of on the fence about what you want to do or kind of ease your mind about maybe some of the anxieties that you had I had nothing but an absolutely positively positive experience I felt safe I felt comfortable I felt welcomed I have nothing negative to say about my experience now with that being said when this video goes up as of right now I am leading a trip to South Africa next year if you'd like to join me make sure you sign up with book back tours there are only three spots left as of the filming of this video if you don't want to go to South Africa but you want to go somewhere else make sure you check out their website I did get a message from one of the leaders of the company telling me the stats on some of these trips so I will share that with you right now so there are seven spots open for France there are ten spots open for Finland you know I highly recommend one three spots left for South Africa 15 spots left for Kenya 14 spots left for New Zealand and they just opened a spot for alumni to Jamaica meaning that you've already been on a trip before and there's 20 spots left for that because that one just opened up so if you're interested in any of those trips click on the link that I will put in the description box on for book back tours sign up and please do make sure you let them know that you are signing up because I sent you over there that would really help me out so they can see that I'm really working hard to make sure more teachers find out about this amazing opportunity I totally believe and what they're doing I think it's a great opportunities sign up for wherever it is you want to go I know that you have a positive experience no matter where you go but it would help me out a great deal if you let them know that I'm the one that sent you their way so if you have any additional questions that I didn't answer or you need some clarification make sure to leave that in the comment section and I will answer those questions to the best of my ability if you're interested in seeing how I spent my time in Finland once again all those vaults are up and live as we speak if you haven't subscribed to my channel please make sure you do so and if you don't follow me on Instagram please follow me there as well because I do share some information there as well and I do have some highlights from my Finland trip aside from that I hope you guys are having an amazing day I hope to see some of you in South Africa or I hope to hear that some of you have booked a trip to somewhere in the world I hope you guys have a great day and I will talk to you in the next video thanks for watching [Applause] [Music]

Channel: SmartieStyle

Views: 4,975

Rating: 4.9180326 out of 5

Keywords: bookbag tours, teacher vlog, travel vlog, finland, finland schools, travel, edutravel, travel groups

Id: 5EhkFKxXz4U

Length: 32min 38sec (1958 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 13 2019