Myself and Fiona O’Leary, Dunmanway Macra and Carbery national council representative, jetted from Dublin Airport to Esspo in Finland last month.

Two planes, two trains and a bus later, we arrived at Solvalla Sports Institute.

The topic for the autumn seminar this year was media crossroads, looking at how young people interact with the media.

It examined how we can be influenced by media and how we can utilise it for our benefit while always being aware of potential risks it may cause.

For the week-long course, we teamed up with members from other countries where we discussed issues such as visibility in social media, and were challenged with learning about one another through a digital footprint.

We also learned about hate speech and discussed how your culture can influence your approach to the subject.

The days were broken up with energisers to hold everyone’s attention – this included an international night.

We did what every self-respecting Irish person does for international night and put on our county jerseys.

Accompanied by Ballymaloe Relish, Tayto crisps and Tanora in hand, we displayed the flavours of Ireland.

In return, we enjoyed Swiss chocolate, Haribo from Germany, Finnish mouse meat and Welsh shortbread, as well as many other countries’ dishes.

Friday was the final day so we wrapped up what we had learned and evaluated the week.

We received certificates as well as envelopes filled with kind thoughts from people we had met during the week. We learned dancing traditions from many of the countries present and taught the group the Siege of Ennis.

However, Latvian dancing was our favourite. Lively does not begin to describe the height to which you have to jump to, to perform the moves.

Experience

We are very grateful to Macra na Feirme for giving us the opportunity to experience a Rural Youth Europe event.

We are also grateful to the Rural Youth Europe prep team who worked so hard to ensure we enjoyed the week.

We made new friends from across Europe and learned a lot.

It is an experience we will never forget and we encourage as many Macra members as possible to do it by getting in touch with Audrey McDonnell in the national office.