Comenius

OUR STRANGE TRIP

Do you know when a trip starts in a strange way and you start to think: <<Oh my God! and now? what will happen this week?!>>.

Well, you’ll now understand what a funny day we spent!!!
Our travels started on 05-11-2006 when not just two, but three airplanes took us from Palermo to Cracow via Rome - Milan-Linate - Milan-Malpensa. Only three adjectives can describe our feelings, mine and that of my travelling companions: Excited, happy and curious to visit a state about who we knew very little:

Poland

.
It was the “Comenius project” that gave us the possibility to spend one pleasant week in company of teenagers coming from different parts of Europe, that ’s to say: Romania, Spain, Turkey ,Czech Republic, Finland, Germany and, of course, Italy.
It was very good to stay all together without any prejudice and talking about lots of things, expressing our thoughts, comparing our uses and customs, enjoying ourselves, thanks to the use of an only language: English!.
We spent our week having parties, going out shopping, singing our typical songs, going out for walks through very big and green parks and learning and dancing typical Polish dances, but we also worked on the project: “Our spare time”, trying to compare our lives and our free time.
We had the possibility to go to the Cracow, a very wonderful city rich of magnificent monuments and very large plazas, and visiting: “Wawel” a castle with enormous rooms that was the residence of Polish rulers from the mid XI to the early XVII centuries, a structure that incorporates Romansesque fragments and considerable Gothic parts, that acquired its present form during the reign of the kings Alexander and Sigismund I the Old of the Jogiellonian dynasty. It was great know a state about we knew very little!.
To spend this week in

Poland

was very good because it’s a very good place: not only for its for all we saw but also for its typical dishes but above all for the people that live there!.
They were very hospitable and very nice with us, hosting us in a warm way or organizing deilightful evenings with the families and in the company of the teachers Besides all, personally, I had a great experience with the family who hosted me!.
…One month has already passed but it’s still good to continue to remember the days spent there and continue to have news from all the guys that we knew there, Yes! because this experiences gave us the possibility to start new friendships.

In the second week of November I went to Poland with my school-mate Floriana Russo the headmistress and with the teachers who looked after the comenius project.

Our trip was very tiring because it lasted all day and we arrived in Semianowiceslaskie very late: it was about 1:00 a.m.

When we arrived in the city, the guest families picked us up and we went to their flat.

Every morning we went to school to work for the comenius project: the central theme was “free time”.
With Polish guys we made some posters about free time and we showed them in the last meeting-day.

We also danced a typical Polish dance! It was really funny!! in the afternoon we generally stayed all together or we visited the city. We also went to Krakow which is a very beautiful city.

The girl who gave me hospitality is called Aga. She’s a very nice girl and her family was also very nice. I considered her like a little sister because we were always together and we enjoyed ourselves very much!

Thanks to this project I met a lot of people about of all European countries. The only thing that I didn’t like was the weather which was too cold for me!

My trip to Segesta

Friday 23th of November 2007, was a beautiful sunny day and we decided to go on a trip to Segesta. The trip was organized by our English teacher, Prof. Macaluso in honor of our Finnish friend Antti.
We were about forty students and two teachers. We left in the morning at half past eight from Piazza Indipendenza and we went by coach. During the journey everybody tried not to get bored, so somebody sang, some played guitar and some also slept.
At about 10 o'clock we arrived in a little town called Erice. Unfortunately it was very cloudy and windy but it did not get us disheartened and we took Antti to visit the little town. Erice was deserted, there wasn't anyone around and it was like a "ghost town" and we had a great idea, we decided to shoot a filmstrip with Antti and it was really funny.
After visiting "the ghost town" we went to Segesta. It was about midday and we were very hungry so we decided to stop in a beautiful area, where we had lunch. Everybody ate what they found in their bags, chips, sandwiches, bread, chocolates coke and I only ate bread with cheese (it was disgusting). After the lunch break we bought tickets to visit the beautiful temple of Segesta at the top of the mountains. When we arrived there, it was a big surprise, because I have never seen anything like that in my whole life, a big amphitheatre in the middle of the mountains.
At about 3 o'clock we started preparing to come back home. Everybody was exhausted because we had to walk a long way.
While we were returning we were very tired so we slept for the whole journey.
Finally at 5 o'clock we arrived in Palermo.

It was a wonderful trip, everybody enjoyed it very much, also Antti enjoyed it a lot. He said we are his Italian best friends and I am his "Indian brother". We have to thank Antti for this trip.
I think we should take trips like that more often, but unfortunately without Antti because he has left for Finland. We all hope to meet him again in a near future......................


                                                                                              A. Rahim

From the 16^th to 22^ndof April, Liliana, Valerio and I went to Ivalo , Finland with our Comenius teacher Grace Macaluso and our headmaster Concetta Guagenti thanks to the COMENIUS project. In reality, at the beginning, I was afraid because I didn’t know much about the village, the family who should host me or the other guys of Comenius group, but when I meet them and my host family, I understood it should be a fantastic week. We meet the Polish students: Patruk, Seweryn, Aleksandra, Oliwia, Patrycia and Piotr; the finish: Mira and Tiia (who came to Palermo last May, when the meeting took place at our school), Isa, Anne, Jaune, Jari, Niina, Riina, Anna, Maria, Ville, Pauli, Emmi, Paula, Sampo and Taru; the German students: Niko and Miriam; the Spanish: Fatima, Cristina, Marcos and Mercedes; the Turkish girls: Kubra and Ebru and the girls from the Czech Republic: Marketa and Pavlina.

This was a fantastic week: we got to know a new culture like Finnish, or should I say the Lappish culture. It is very different from our culture and there are a lot of differences. For example in Ivalo there aren’t any big buildings or condominiums like in Palermo but they have individual houses like the cottages. In Ivalo there was snow, even in spring, when we are already going to the beach. Another difference is that they have a sauna in every house. Another difference we could notice was that they have lunch at 11 am and dinner at 6 p.m. but in Italy we have lunch at 1-2pm and dinner at 8-9 pm.

During this week I learnt a lot of things: for the first thing, I think I have improved my English, in fact, staying in a family that speaks only English, gives you no other choice if you must make yourself understood, and secondly, I knew a new culture. That is the best part of this project: every time girls or boys can meet and exchange knowledge of their culture and things, I met new friends and I visited Ivalo, that in my opinion, is a fantastic village.

Our school takes part to “Comenius” project and this year has put up Judit Hölze,a German assistant linguistic. Judit, a few months ago came to Palermo to study Italian and now she’s studying at an Italian University to learn teaching Italian, art and German.

“Because I take part to European Comenius project as linguistic assistant”

“I studied Italian for five years in Germany and now I’m studying it at an Italian university”

“At first it was very difficult because everything is different but in the end I got used to stay here”

“ Palermo is chaotic , there’s much traffic and this school has a bad organization but with the Macaluso teacher the situation improved”

“In this school I do German conversation to seven classes a hour a week and I attend four courses in the afternoon ,three of languages and one of Palermo’s tourism that also talks about art and German”

“I’m going to spend my Christmas holiday in Germany ,in fact I’m leaving tomorrow for Germany ”

Antti is a Finish boy. He is seventeen years old. He came to Italy in 2007. He lived here for two months and he studied in our class and he is a very calm and sincere boy. He likes studying foreign languages. After school he did some Italian courses and he learnt the Italian language in a few months. When he was with us he talked about his school and he said that he studied many languages such as French, Spanish, German, Italian and English. He speaks English fluently and he helped our class to speak English. One day we went on a trip with the school to Segesta and Erice. He was very happy and he had a great time with us. The day before departing we went to a pizzeria together as a surprise. All of my classmates got along with him very well. We didn’t have any problems in those days because he was very friendly with everyone.