Erasmus + in Moratalla

Not so long ago, Moratalla had the pleasure to host an Erasmus + Project (“Rethink the Future: Sustainable Thinking”).

On Saturday 27th of March, students from Poland and Germany arrived in our town and were picked up by the families they were going to stay with during the week. As they arrived in the afternoon, the host students had enough time to show them the town meanwhile they got to meet new people.

The next day, the foreign students did a tour around the town while their hosts had to go to school. In the afternoon, the Italians kids finally arrived and the last ones to arrive were the Hungarians, who came to Moratalla around 2am! For the Polish and the Germans the evening was free of activities, so the hosts were the ones in charge of deciding what to do with them. What my friends and I did was take them to see the castle of Moratalla, which at first sounded like a good activity but then it turned out that doing that visit was planned for the next day!

On Tuesday morning, all the students from all the countries reunited in the assembly hall and each country put on the screen a video of their school and their respectives towns. It was nice to see the differences between each country, and after that we were given free food for a snack and we had the chance to meet the people from other countries. Right after that, we were taken to the computer’s room and we were divided into groups in which there were 2 people from each country. We watched a video about the pollution in the Mar Menor and then we did an opinion essay about it, saying what were the problems and giving some solutions that might help to solve them. Right when we had finished, we went to the town hall, we watched a video of Moratalla, the mayor gave some presents to the foreign students and, finally, we went to see the castle, but this time we had a person that explained to us its history and it was more fun to see it with all the other kids.

In the afternoon we all decided to go to the Casa Cristo to visit the museum of the cave paintings. The students were divided in two groups but there was a big problem, the explanation video was in Spanish, and there weren’t any teachers to translate it! Thankfully, a student was able to translate the explanation the guide did before and after the video, when the teenagers entered the museum, but the video was impossible to translate. Hopefully, the next time the video will have subtitles or something so that the non Spanish speakers can understand it.

In the evening, the Spanish students decided to take all the foreign students to a local pub to have fun together and continue meeting each other. It was really fun!

The next day we had an excursion to Mar Menor and Cartagena. We saw the sea, we watched the salinas and we had a snack near the Mar Menor. After that, we visited a Lonja where the sailors explained to us how they fished and the consequences of the pollution of the sea. When we finished, we travelled to Cartagena, we had lunch at a shopping centre and, to end the trip, we went to see the Roman Theatre and the museum.

Thursday was the last day for the Polish, the Germans and the Italians as they had to fly back home early the next day. In the morning the foreign students were taken to see the Campsite of “La Puerta”. Unfortunately, on the bus there wasn’t enough space for everyone, so the oldest Spanish student had to go on their own using their motorbikes.

The afternoon was used for buying as many souvenirs as possible, which was really hard because there aren’t many shops in this town. Finally, at night, we organised a dinner at the pizzeria with all the families and the students to say goodbye and the teenagers went out partying together to a local pub.

Friday morning was full of tears, hugs and goodbyes. We were all really sad that we had to separate from our new friends and we said thank you to the teachers for organising all the activities and for bringing all of us together. A couple of minutes later, they went on the bus and left us hoping to see them again sometime in September or some years later.

The Hungarians were left alone in the town. That morning they went to a trip to Caravaca and had lunch with some teachers in Moratalla. They spent the rest of the evening in the town and they left the next day at 7:30.

This was an amazing experience no one is going to forget about, all the memories and all the friends we made are going to stay in our hearts forever.