1. Prisma (a grocery store). A couple of my students work there and I see them from time to time. Other times they're shopping there, just like me. One time I saw three students in one visit. Three!
2. Lidl (another grocery store).
3. The main library downtown. One time I saw a student there who was literally, at that moment, working on an assignment for my class.
4. Rauma. My student was dressed up in old-timey clothes working at a historical site.
5. Moominworld. My student was dressed up as Snufkin and was playing the guitar and all the children were enchanted by him, including my own. I went up to say hi and he was super cool and didn't even break character. (For those of you who don't know what the heck Moominworld is, this experience was like if you went to Disneyland and you noticed that the employee dressed up as, like, Christof from Frozen was your student.)
6. The bus. I don't really like seeing my students on the bus. I'm always in full-on public transport mode there, trying to manage the kids and blend in and not fall over while managing the stroller in the stroller area. It destroys the illusion of a competent, put-together language instructor who doesn't ever have to snap at disobedient children.
7. MY DAUGHTER'S GYMNASTICS DAY CAMP. I discovered this one today - BOTH of her camp counselors are former students of mine. Now I can't drop her off there while wearing sweats. :( (Seriously though, I am secretly pleased that she is in the hands of two awesome women while she's at gymnastics day camp.)
Basically nowhere is safe. I see more of my students around Turku (and Rauma, I guess) than I ever did at AUS, even though at AUS, I literally lived on campus. I really don't mind, except that I feel like someone could always be watching me when I'm out and about, even more than they already are since I'm a bumbling foreigner. And I confess it's not my favorite thing for students to see me in Mom mode on my own time. I feel like maybe this is anti-progressive of me, but it's true.
One place I did NOT see my students was at the gynecologist's office several months ago. Before the routine exam, they asked if a med student could come in and observe. I am all for learning by doing (or observing), but before they let him in I had to ask a few very specific questions about which university this med student was studying at and what language courses he had and had not taken yet to make absolutely sure that "friendly observing med student at my gyno exam" would not someday be "student sitting in a desk in my classroom." Because WOAH. Can you imagine? Let's not.
