Exchange in Spain
Sunday, 11th November.
We had to wake up really early because we had to leave for the airport at half past six, so half-asleep we waited for the bus with our suitcases and the food for the meal. We stopped to have breakfast halfway to Madrid. When we finished we continued the trip. Then, when we were arriving at the airport we could see las “Cuatro Torres” of Madrid and Wanda Metropolitano stadium. Finally we arrived at Barajas airport and waited for our visitors at the arrivals hall. The first ones were the Italians, then the Hungarians and finally the Fins. We took the bus again and took a group photo in front of Bernabeu stadium, then we headed to the hostel, where we had lunch. We ate some typical Spanish food like empanadas, croquetas and of course Spanish omelette. The Slovenian group checked into the hostel right after lunch. Then they gave us our room key so we could relax a little because we had a tour afterwards. We started at La Puerta del Sol, and we continued walking. We saw beautiful buildings such as the Royal Palace, La Almudena Cathedral and the Main Square “Plaza Mayor”. Madrid is so beautiful at night. Well, after the tour we had some free time before we went to the hostel. We were tired but we were all so happy.
DAY 1
From Madrid to Almendralejo via Trujilo
First, we had churros with hot chocolate for breakfast. Then, we got on the bus to return to Almendralejo and travelled for two hours. We made a stop in Trujillo. Trujillo is a historic city built on a hill with a moorish castle at the top. There was born Francisco Pizarro, the conqueror of Perú. We had a tour around the old part of the town. A guide explained the visit in English. We started at the Main Square of Trujillo, where the statue of Pizarro stands out. We also visited the house-museum of Francisco Pizarro. After that, we went up to the castle, where the popular series “Game of Thrones” was filmed. We really liked the visit in Trujillo and, finally, we took a picture all together next to the statue of Pizarro. Later, we had lunch in a restaurant and, after that, we returned to Almendralejo.
We arrived at 5 o’clock. Some of us met in a friend’s house at half past seven. We played some games and had a lot of fun. We had dinner in Burger King and, lastly, we came back home. This day was so exciting because we started to know each other, make new friends and we visited an important and beautiful city in Extremadura.
DAY 2
On Tuesday students and teachers visited the host school: I.E.S Santiago Apóstol. The choir of young students opened a session during which all nationalities introduced themselves. All the groups provided useful data and interesting facts about their countries and hometowns. All of them also had the chance to take a short tour at the local school- even to try out some practical activities- shared by local vocational school students.
Though students have already familiarised themselves with their host families, it was high time to get to know all the people and names from the group; so with some funny and challenging icebrakers- conducted by the Spanish students- they managed to get tuned for some project related work.
Following the warm up morning a guest speaker from the Open Educational Resources informed the participants about some legal issues related to the usage of materials from the internet. At the same time she shared some useful practices with the help of which legal problems can be avoided. At the end of the presentation students proved that they have acquired a useful amount of new information with the help of a kahoot game.
As the second workshop Spanish students taught all the others how to create amd make their own app for their mobile; it was an amazing oppotunity to have a glimps into the world of programming.
Hard work was awarded with some free time: students could enjoy a nice dinner with their host families.
Late afternoon eveybody gathered again to get to know the city, its historical as well as cultural treasures: international groups of pupils took part at a foto scravenger hunt.
At the evening tired but motivated students returned to their hosts.
By students:
Yesterday we played a game called icebreakers. It was a lot of fun because we learned each other’s name. We made a circle and somebody was in the middle and threw the ball all around. If you got the ball you have to say the person’s name who threw the ball. It was really funny and I think it was useful too we learned each other’s name pretty quick and I think this is really good.
Nagy Kolos
On Tuesday we started the day with the presentations. Kids did a very adorable performance for us and the Spanish teachers welcomed us with a speech. Then the presentations started. We were very nervous at the begining. The Spanish students told their experience about visiting the other countries and showed videos about them. Finland, Slovenia, Italy and Hungary showed a video about their school and talked about their city. The Finnish students also brought special Finnish food and one person from each country tried it.
Bajcz Gréta
Yesterday we had an interesting workshop, which was explained and presented by two Spanish students. Our task was to create an app, using a website on the internet. We all worked in pairs with our hosts, so it was a good program to practise working together. The site is called AppInventor and it is free to use for everyone, so it could be useful for everyone in the future.
Szabó Balázs
On Tuesday we decided to visit a local football field at the afternoon in order to play some soccer. We organized the event trough Instagram with a few Spanish and Hungarian pupils. We left the house with my host and walked up to the football field just to see that the court was already being used by local teenagers. We hesitated a bit, but after a while we decided to play in front of the field as there was a lot of space. We splat ourselves into two groups and we played a match. It was extremely tight, yet we managed to win.
Darabos Bence
In the evening after the football we played scavanger hunt to explore the city. We formed 6 member groups and we started in the Piedad Park. We had to do different activites with strangers on the street and take funny pictures. The last task was under The Church Of The Purification. After the Spanish guide showed us the city’s football team’s stadium.
Bohács Bence
DAY 3
CACERES AND MERIDA 14 NOVEMBER 2018
The day spent in Caceres and Merida was amazing.During the morning we stayed at school only for one hour and we learned some spanish sentences with all our friends, a few hours later we caught the bus and we went to Caceres where we visited the "Vostell Museum". It's a modern museum where you can find modern artworks like the car with hammers, sickles and dishes. According to the artist they represent some World problems, like the "communism" and the hunger in the poor countries. There are also some other artworks and paintings which contain important messages for mankind. Then we went to the center of Caceres by bus and we visited the historical center of the city, it was really interesting. After having lunch, we arrived to Merida and we visited the Roman amphitheatre. It was so fantastic and it reminded us a little bit of our beautiful Rome. Also we went to Diana's Temple which was really beautiful. Later on, we went with our spanish friends to the main street of the city where we bought some souvenirs for our friends and families. Finally , once we got to Almendralejo, we had dinner with our Spanish friends and we enjoyed the night
3rd day in Mérida
DAY 4
All the students attended different lessons with their hosts during the first two hours: philosophy, biology, English… Then, Javier, the Spanish coordinator, conducted a hands-on workshop called “Can I use that?” based on the quiz about copyright issues that we had done in September. It turned out to be really interesting as the workshop answered many questions that had remained unanswered after the quiz. Therefore, we became familiar with respecting copyrighted material on the Internet and how to use it appropriately without infringing the law. We learned how to do a search through Creative Commons, to reuse pictures legally giving credit to the author or when to use them without the author’s permission and how to avoid plagiarism and appropriation.
We had a coffee break and had time to sing our favourite songs together. After that we were split into teams and each group had to discuss and brainstorm ideas to create a sort of set of rules or guidelines for appropriate use of digital content. Then the best ideas that each team had come up with were written on sticky notes and two representatives of each team selected and voted for the best ten tips or rules, which were displayed on the wall. These were the ten most voted ideas:
1. Before editing someone’s work ask for permission to the copyright owner
2. Make sure you give credit before you publish digital media
3. Don’t share inappropriate content
4. Don’t present a work as new when it has been made up already
5. Respect creators and their work. Cite your sources.
6. Share your knowledge, experiences and ideas…
7. Download music and images on pages that show you that this content is not protected by copyright
8. Search for free content and open resources
9. Use creative commons instead of the first photo you find on google
10. If you find interesting content, do quote it. Do not just copy.
To round off the morning the same teams were invited to take part in a workshop where younger students showed us their creations based on Arduino, basically little robots and machines programmed by the students. It was a nice experience.
Then the evening programme started at about 5 pm. We headed for the Youth Zone Centre in Almendralejo. We were introduced to the person in charge of that place and some Spanish students told us that it is meant to develop young people’s artistic skills in terms of music, art, audiovisual communication, performing arts and so on. Then each country performed different games, dances, quizzes and games related to their culture and traditions. Eventually we sang and danced to our favourite songs and tasted some delicious Spanish tapas and sweets. We had a brilliant time and it was all great fun.
DAY 5
On Friday we went to school at 8.15 am. Most of us went to English class with our hosts. We had the chance to mingle with a lot of students from other classes. The students were divided into different groups and each one of us together with our hosts rotated from group to group to interact with the Spanish students and talk about our school life, our culture and customs. We asked each other a lot of questions and the hour passed really fast. After that, we went to the conference hall, where the Netty awards were given to the students who had participated in the making of the films created in Slovenia about cyberbullying scenarios. Then, we started the last activity of the day, a scavenger hunt named Time Travellers with different challenges. The activity took place outdoors, but first some Spanish students played the roles of Spanish conquerors, introduced themselves, told us about the lands they had conquered and asked us to help them recover their memory and identity, which they had lost in different ways, so basically we had to travel back in time and overcome various challenges. Once the hunt was finished we met in the conference hall again and took a quiz about the challenges and tasks that we had completed. It was a nice experience as we played a variety of Spanish traditional games
In the evening we hung out and had fun together chatting, chilling out and dancing to our favourite songs.
