Meetings start

On the monday the real work started. We all met at the school and after having left our things in our main room we all went down to meet Jan the director of the school. He made a short speech, ably translated by Dominika, and then graciously accepted the presents that everyone had brought him from their respective countries.











We had brought him some ceramic "pagessos", representative of the traditional costumes worn in the past in the Terres de l'Ebre. We had to explain briefly the history of the figures and this prompted Jan to ask the question, "are all women in Spain like this?" He was of course joking.











Once this reception was over, coffee and biscuits, we all went back to the classroom that was to be our working home for the rest of the week.










After some brief comments we then started our tour of the school. We visited all the areas of the school, even the gym and the snack area. In each classroom we all went in and then one person from each country made a brief presentation of the people from that country.










In the computer room the students were actually looking at some of the pages that we had made. When I asked one group of girls which Spanish boy they liked the only one they could remember, apart from saying they were all disappointing, was Ferran... because he had posed in his swimming shorts.










The other thing that made me smile was that they said that the boys were disappointing but also that all the Spanish girls were really attractive and that this made them nervous!







We noticed various things that stood out as being different but perhaps the two things that were most obvious were for me firstly the way in which the students all stood up in silence when we came into their classrooms. Their respectful way of speaking and answering questions was a great contrast for us the Spanish. Secondly I also noticed how a lot of the students seemed to spend a lot of the time sitting around in the corridors, normally on the floor. Despite this casual attitude at first glance they were never a nuisance or a problem.

















Once we had finised the tour we went back to our room and then... to lunch.









Every day of the week we had lunch in the primary school that is opposite the school. It was interesting to go there every day and eat in a normal school canteen. The food we were given was really very good and we even found time to have some fun before lunch.

Meeting the Polish Students

We had meet the Polish Comenius students in passing when we went on our tour of the school. We had also run into them in the corridors of the school, and also when I was handing out Garrofetes del Papa to them outside the classroom where we held our meetings. But now finally we got a chance to talk to them.

We were sat in groups according to our country and the Polish students were also divided into groups and had a short time in which they could talk to us. The students had all prepared questions about each countrty which they asked us. Of course the questions they had prepared were common so we actually were asked the same questions several times but their English was so good that many of the meetings were informal and involved spontaneous questions and even singing.









One of the questions that we were asked and amused us a lot was about whether we knew how to dance Sevillanas. We had to tell the truth, that the only one who knew how was Guillem (he is an expert dancer). We were also asked about if we were fans of Barcelona F.C. Which for us was an interesting question, Salomè doesn't like football, I am English and Guillem is from Valencia... so we had to say no normally. Of course the obvious question we asked was if they were, not many were but we did find one boy who said he was a fan of Real Madrid!! (It's a plague!)

Guillem and body percussion

On the day we were to meet the students we had asked if Guillem could do a short demonstration of Body Percussion. This is a form of music that we both learned when we took the school orchestra to a festival in Vendrell. In the morning there were a series of workshops and we went with our students to the one on body percussion that was being given by some Brazilians. As you can see Guillem liked it a lot and since then has done it with many groups here in IES Roquetes.

You can see him doing this in this video from our YouTube channel. Some of you will possibly recognise the routine.




Though he only had a short time to teach the Polish students I think they did very well.

Though perhaps the teachers really needed more practice.









Fernando made a lot of friends with the girls in his group.









One of the parts that was a little difficult was getting the students to shout. They needed a lot of encouragement.





























Most of the teachers in the project took part in the body percussion, though some of them were hiding outside the classroom! Certain teachers participated with a lot of enthusiasm though seemed to be a little confused between body percussion and another game called Bunnies.















In the end it was a great success.

Our visit to Auschwitz

The final celebration at Dominika's house

As almost the end of our week in Poland we all were invited to Dominika's house for a meal and a celebration. Dominika is of course the Polish teacher who is the main coordinator for the project. As such she was kind enough to invite us all to her house where we met her husband Wotjek and her son Miki.








They had prepared an excellent buffet meal for us with some excellent homemade horseradish sauce and mustard. Both I enjoyed a lot as they were really quite hot.









Drinks were offered and accepted and we all had a good evening even if at first people were sitting around a little nervously































Wotjek decided that we all had to try some typical Polish vodka and brought out a wonderful collection of small vodka glasses. So he poured out the vodka and handed them around and advised us all to take a deep breath and then drink it all at once.





















Towards the end of the evening all the different groups gave Dominika and Ewa the presents we had brought for them in apprecation of all the work they had done in setting up the Poland trip.









Miki liked some of them a lot too.









All in all we had a really good evening with even dancing and singing. Though the pictures of that remain top secret!