Erasmus+ 5th International meeting - CARTAGENA
The last international meeting within our project Erasmus+ Involve me and I learn took place in Spain.
7 students and our English teacher hit the road on Tuesday, 2nd May 2016. The first day was dedicated mainly to travelling to Cartagena and we got there by van and two flights - one from Venice to Barcelona and a connecting flight to Alicante from where another van took us to Cartagena. At the airport in Barcelona we had 4 hours of free time, which we used for shopping and resting. We arrived at the homes of our hosts at 2 am.
After a short sleep of about 5 hours we saw their school for the first time and listened to a short presentation about their school as well as the Spanish education system and Cartagena as a city. That was followed by a few games designed for students from different countries to get to know each other. There were also 5 students from Greece, 2 students from Finland and 30 students from Italy. While we were getting to know each other the teachers were having a meeting to discuss the end of this project. In the afternoon we visited a famous beach called La Manga, where we first climbed a small hill to see the lighthouse and then spent the rest of the time bathing in the sea. We spent the evening with our hosts.
On Thursday, 4th May 2016, we had a tour of the Town Hall, where we saw the ink holder given to them by Queen of England. After the visit it started to rain, which is really rare for this particular area - the locals told us it only rains approximately 4 days a year. After a light shower we visited the Naval Museum, which proudly owns one of the first submarines that ran on electricity (made by Isaac Peral). That was followed by a walking tour of the city and a boat trip where we ate lunch and saw Cartagena from the sea. Back on land we went sight-seeing and visited the Roman Theatre.
After a good night's sleep we danced flamenco and played with swords at their school. Some of us also joined the Spanish students for an hour of class. In the afternoon our hosts took us to a charity concert which is organized every year by their grammar school. It was about 3 hours long and after it we went out for dinner with everyone participating in the exchange.
The next day we left for Alicante at 7 am and flew to Madrid. At the airport we did some last minute shopping and then had a connecting flight to Venice, where a van was ready to take us home.
We really liked our trip to Spain because we learnt a lot about life and education in Cartagena. We also spent a lot of time with our Spanish hosts and other students from Finland, Greece and Italy, and consequently got to know different cultures. Our hosts and their families were really nice and took good care of us.
If you want to get more information on our project, visit our blog.
by Tanja Šmid, 2. D