Gdansk, Poland, 17-21 october 2011
The first year of Comensius project ended, but we still have many things to discover, learn, share…Here we are, again, at the third project meeting, students and teachers, this time in Poland, School no.50 in Gdansk. This week has begun by meeting the Polish and Turkish team with a short remember of our previous meeting in Romania, May 2011.
After the welcoming speech addressed to the partners by Lucyna, the manager of the Polish school and by Ewelina, the teacher who coordinates the Comenius project in this school, the teachers and the students greeted each other and met the new ones.Together we sang "Why Can not We Be friends?" discovering again that there are actually no reasons for this to happen.
Ewelina , our 12 Romanian students, the Polish and Turkish ones had disappeared in the virtual world, working for their personal blogs. Their blogs were presented to all of us at the end of the day. The teachers from Romania and Turkey saw a presentation of the city of Gdansk, both virtual and "live". We were impressed by the history of these places, geography, personalities of the city given to mankind, the people’s love for each place, buildings, historical facts, the pride of this people who live here results also from the way they presented everything, you could see it in their eyes. This results from many projects carried out in school with the theme of promoting local history and local personalities, especially those who fought for democracy.
Students and teachers gathered at the "school tour", meeting teachers of history, religion, mathematics, German, music, English, physical education and elementary school teachers. Participated in lesson sequences were joyfully welcomed by students, they found the same milk received by them in school, the crowd responded to questions from the Polish students. They found out that their favourite subjects are sports and computers but math is a little difficult.
We visited class '' 0'', something new, but we will also have in Romania. "This is Narnia!" The students and teachers said, surrounded by games, toys and small eyes but willing to learn.
The first day of the meeting ended with a visit to Municipality of Gdansk, where among other things, we found out that in 2012 the city will be the European Cultural Capital , more reasons for them to be proud of their culture .
The second day of the meeting project was dedicated to visiting the old city, the Amber Museum, the Center "Hewelianum" arranged in an old camp of Napoleon himself, the exhibition called "Solidarity".
During this day, students and teachers, discovered features of human life in a port city, ship building history, of fishing, trade in water. We also found that art blended perfectly with the ancient occupations, amber is valued and properly highlighted in this community .We felt "royal" sightseeing the historic royal route of Gdansk, admiring their homes in the royal court residence and trying to untie the mysteries Land Rolls (carefully restored) on the frontispieces of typical houses.
Physics and chemistry have suddenly become interesting for all of us , fun and easy to understand, in the interactive Hewelianum Center, where we turned all the children who wanted to play and thus discover the wonders of science and technology. I was amazed how all physics and chemistry was not hard to understand even in English! Exhibition "Solidarity" reminded us about the fight anti shipyard workers in Gdansk, by their sacrifices and their achievements, those who were opened to the road of freedom and democracy in Europe in the '70s. We also remembered about the workers in Brasov in the '80s ...
The third day in Gdansk began with an exhibition of products of the activities in the partner schools. The Romanian stand brought the lovely colours of the autumn from the mountain and our specific and traditional folk. There were exposed puppets, models, popular handmade items, magazines, brochures, covering the whole range of issues included in the project plan.
What followed nex? Our traditional show ....The Turkish Team presented a song entitled "Waka-waka", accompanied by an exotic dance and musical and kinesthetic body skills demonstrated of the students. Romanian team presented a musical entitled "Leaving your childhood is fun!". Singing and dancing songs were inspired by classic musicals such as "Mary Poppins", "The Sound of Music", and international songs such as "We are the world ". Although cold and wind of previous days "stole" the voices of our children, the 12 small players have once again demonstrated that dedication, desire, training, perseverance always brings us great satisfaction. Spectators cheered, standing for our students performance. Finally we all sang the song "We Are the World" as an anthem of our meeting. Polish team presented the musical inspired by the theme of friendship in the story "The Little Prince" by Saint Exupery, implying the importance of extracurricular activities in addition to performing rhythmic gymnastics, balls and ribbons dances, ballet, modern dance. The whole School no.50 was there to support their team and their parents anxiously eyes in tears, but received with amazement and pride, our enthusiastic applauded their children's performance.
After such an effort, we were rewarded by our hosts with a walk in Gdynia and Sopot, known as great and important European cities, cities which, together with Gdansk, form what Polish call "Tricity"-three cities in one. In Gdynia admired historic vessels but we also visited the Aquarium. There we competed in each of the stories we know of encyclopedias on marine fish species which swam around us, but this we did after we attended a presentation on the Baltic Sea and a laboratory lesson where we turned into marine researchers, using microscopes and a multitude of questions revealing more about flora and fauna of the sea.In Sopot, in the evening, we walked on the bank of the sea, on the largest pier from Europe. We admired swans, ducks and seagulls in the sunset. We felt privileged to walk through palatial buildings and beautiful alleys of one of the most famous spa in Europe.Because we come from the mountains, to return to Gdansk, our host city, we wanted a walk on the seashore, we can say now that it was great .... by tram!
The fourth day meant to us one day of Teutonic life. Place in which we, Romanians arrived, Barsa Country, has to do with the Teutonic knights, so we knew a lot about them, but we had the opportunity to discover Malbork Castle, the largest Teutonic castle in Europe, "command center" as the students called it. We had knights and damsels, buffoons and cooks. From our guide we learned a lot about the life of the castle, we had a great precision craftsmanship, the bright red of the bricks of the castle built for durability over the years, but also the great work to restore it.
In the evening there was a party! Students had a disco evening, sharing their favorite music and dance styles, crowned night of friendship and joy. Teachers had a Polish evening with Polish food and traditional songs of Gdansk, in the company of teachers and parents of the school board who cooked, sang and danced to the delight of the guests.
Our Last day in Poland ... was again a nice marathon. Students visited the British Council Library feeling that "Narnia" including books and films, making a virtual tour of London. Teachers visited the Kindergarten no.32, "nursery" school no.50. A nursery where the gym was not missing and they were having small gym equipment ! We have seen maths activities, sports and art education. We discussed with the manager of the kindergarten about preschool education system, finding many similarities. We were amazed by the exhibition of dolls made of vegetables and fruits, in teams of parents-childrens, and the exhibition of diplomas, concluding that participation in various contests and competitions is a very pleasant activity.
On the second part of the day, heading with quick steps to the end of the project meeting, students have visited the Palace Mlodziezy-Student’s Club/Palace , took part in extracurricular activities, being part of a dance , music and theater, but also a pottery workshop seasoned with traditional Romanian music …the instructor’s favourite from this activity. The students reminded the workshop on the same theme of Kapadokya, Turkey and the fact that in Romania they participate in this activity, concluding once again that they are not so different after all!
Teachers have concluded the past and planned for the future. There are still many other activities conducted to achieve the project objectives. If in the first year we focused more on "arts and crafts, musicals and dances", this year we have more activities ITC (blogs, e-magazines, video conferencing ..). We think to the fourth project meeting in Schumen-Bulgaria. So ... we'll keep in touch!
All meetings of the project were completed by soccer or basketball, bowling meetings, visits to the stadium built for the European Championships, the activity of the Scout Club , visits to Aqua Park, all offered to students by the host families.
We were completely in love with drożdżówka, a delicious dessert, a sort of cake of yeast dough, as we were very surprised and puzzled because of the "zur \", a specific gravity cold weather soup, served with boiled egg, sausage and a variety of mashed potatoes.
We concluded all, the 16 Romanians, this project meeting helped to fulfill the objective of our project very well-developed skills to use English, relying on multiple intelligences, owing to the many places visited, a variety of topics addressed and the novelty of where we were… both students and teachers.
On the way home we could help in not visiting Auschwitz! For several hours we entered the history of those places, those times ...... We promised , never to forget that we are humans, even if sometimes bad or good, but we never beyond the humanity!
After such an experience, we have left to say:
Dziękujemy, Polska! Multumim, Polonia! Thank you, Poland!
Mihaela DAN
Project ManagerSchool No. 2 Codlea
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