Daily progress reports

The Czechs were waiting for the Belgian students at the train station in Ostrava.

They Belgian students where tired after 24 hours of travelling by train.

They had a nice stop over in Vienna in Austria where they visited the Hundertwasser Haus of the famous artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser.

Hundertwasser considered himself as the "doctor of architecture". He wanted to cure architecture from square forms and boring designs by making buildings more organic, colourful and closer to nature.

They arrived in the evening and all of them were looking forward for the hosting families in Ostrava.

Today was the first day of the project work.

At the beginning of the morning. We started with Belgian and Czech traditional Steiner morning verses from both schools.

After this welcoming process, We started to get to know each other by an introduction game.

After a short break our journalist group has distributed the tasks and we had a Czech language lesson afterwards.

There was a lunch break at noon and then we completed an art lesson of observational drawing with charkcoal.

In the afternoon we played a 4000 years old Indian game called Kabaddi all together.

At the end of the day we upgraded our instagram account and the other group started with the first design suggestions of the tiny house.

The cooperation between the guys and teachers as well was really enriching and we are looking forward to a new day.

The second day started off again with the traditional speeches of the schools.

After that we had a clay workshop where we made surfaces that combined a sphere and a cube. Then we had a short break.

After the break both groups started working on their projects. Group 1 presented sketches. The sketches were about how they want to use the little space of a tiny house in the best possible way. They also learned how to work with Autodesk fusion 360.

Group 2 started working on the website and the movie. We also made another story and post for instagram.

After lunch we had again the clay workshop. And then the 2 groups split up again and worked further on their own projects.

Everybody worked really hard and did their tasks.

The third day started again with the morning speech in two languages

Then we had another clay modelling class where we now could make wathever we wanted according our imagination.

After a short break the 2 separate groups started working again on their own projects. Group 1 worked further on their sketches and drawings. On this day they finished the first wall of the tiny house.

Group 2 further worked on the website starting with making a page about the history of Ostrava. They also started at making the daily reports and improved the website with a logo and some more pictures.

After the lunch break in the afternoon the groups worked further on their project.

To conclude the day we visited the expostion of architect Steven Holl who has made a design for a new concert hall in Ostrava.

This forth and the day before the last day on the school where we have to prepare for the public presentation.

We started with the morning speeches. We didn´t have any clay modelling today because there was still to much work.

So the 2 groups started immediately to work on their own projects.
On this day group 1 finished the basic wood construction design of the tiny house.

They also looked into the different kind of patterns we could use for the tiny house walls. They were talking then about the finished outside walls of the tiny house.

Group 2 polished the website a bit more. They also started to make the presentation for the next day. Everybody had one slide each to present. So each one of us had to make their own slide on their own. The presentation explains what we did the past 2 weeks.

After that we went together with the headmaster and some students of our class to the old steel factory in Vítkovitce Famous runner Usain Bolt actually opened one of the towers there by signing it with his signature on the wall. A part of the factory is still working but the other part is a museum.

We didn´t do anything else because there was still a lot of work.

This is the last day of the program.

First we did for the last last time together the 2 speeches. The one from Belgium but also the one from Czech Republic.

We also didnt have any clay working again today because of the presentation.

The groups just finished the projects they were working on. We could not start anything new because then we maybe would have had some unfinished things.

So group 1 made the whole sketch and like finished the walls so that it wasnt just the skeleton of the tiny house. They added the isolation and stuff.

Group 2 finished the presentation and the film. They also put everything on the website they could and then published it.

After this group 2 practised the presentation.

And then it was almost time for the public presentation in the cultural house of Ostrava. It was with a big screen, micro's and the students had to present what they have done. We also braodcasted a live stream of it on Instagram and showed the movie that was made. Afterwards Diederick made a presentation about Tiny Houses.

And this was the end for the belgium school in Czech Republic.

We will see each other again back in March when the Czech students come to Belgium.

The Belgian students and their families are waiting for the Czech students to arrive at the Gent-Sint-Pieters train station.

Czech Students were flying from the Prague to the Brussels. For lot of them, this was their first flight, so they were already very excited for the upcoming events.

From the Brussels airport, they traveled by train to the center of Gent. Czech students arrived around 11PM. Despite the fatigue of the long trip, they were looking forward to met their host families.

The first day of the project started in front of the school building with greeting cermony around fire.

After singing and reciting of the Steiners morning verse, we had a small intruduction game, so we could meet eachother.
After short introduction of the tiny house project and it's goals, we were devided into three seperate groups with different tasks.

The first group works directly on the constrction of the tiny house.

The second group is making the window frames in the woodfactory.

And the third group are the journalist; they are documentating the whole project, posting daily activities on the social media and also contributing on the project websites.

Then we were send to our workplaces. The tiny house group was finishing the insolation in the tiny house. In the woodfactory there wasn't time to start working, so they were only informed about the safety instructions and procedure of making the window frames. The journalists used their time to meet eachother properly and to discuss their opinion on social media.

In the afternoon we had an presentation from member of the European Council for Steiner Waldorf Education. We were informed about the details of the log book and portfolio, which are one of the conditions of finishing the Erasmus project.

Half of the students went to Wood Factory, an atelier where you can use wood machines. They worked on the frames of the windows. They made the necessary grooves in the beams, learning to use the milling machine.

The other group prepared the window sills at school at the tiny house. They learned to use the circular saw safely.

The journalists got a workshop on photography, using manual settings and then going out to portray the other groups and nice details of the school and the tiny house.

In the afternoon, there was an art workshop. The students could choose if the want to have lesson metalworking or linocut. The first group made their own copper bowls using the hammer and fire to soften the copper. The linocut group made original designs, which were then printed on paper.

The journalists' topic today was videography. After the class, they split up to make different videos at school and at the Wood Factory.

The tiny house group worked on the exterior walls around the windows.

In the afternoon, all students followed a music workshop in which they linked the rhythm of music to drawing.

Afterwards, we visited a cohousing project in Gent called 'Tuin van Padua'. The people there live in small sustainable houses and share a common garden and a common living area with library.

On Friday the 100 days celebration took place. The 12th class celebrates 100 days to the graduation. This was a whole new expirience for the Czech students, since they have no similar celebrations in their country.

Yesterday, the 12th class stayed in school to move and mix the chairs and tables around the school. They also made a baricade in front of the school.

Today, we arrived to school in 7:30 to have breakfest and also because of the preparation of the whole celebration.

Students used the free time to dress up as medical workers and doing fake COVID-19 tests to the arriving students from the other classes.

Thereafter was show from the 12th class students.

Monday we started the day with the morning verse in Czech and Dutch. Then everyone went to his own group. The journalists did a workshop on social media, the tiny house group started the facade cladding and were also finishing the osb plates on the inside. Then we had lunch together, and in the afternoon we did a workshop on percussion. We played together with drums, shakers, bass drums and cajons.

On Tuesday we biked 15km to the village of Munte. There we spent the whole day at the Christoforus community and did dynamic exercises about boosting your self-confidence, moving your boundaries and better focus. We made fire together and had an outdoor picknick with soup and bread. At the end we walked on fire!

On Wednesday the journalist finished the videos and fhotos. The other group of the tiny house making the exterior wall. The group of the windows finished the window frames. In the afternoon we did guided tour in the city of Gent. And we tried some local specialties. We went to a brewery, a chocolate shop and we learned about graffiti. In the evening, some of the students went to the cinema together.

Thursday we worked on our European Portfolio Certificate the whole day. Miss Greet helped us to create this addition to our CV.

Our last day! The tiny house and the window group worked together to put the windows in the house. The journalists finished up all their photos, videos and this website. Different teams prepared a presentation to give at the end of the day about the entire project in a beautiful location: Duivelsteen, one of the oldest buildings in Gent.