Institut Jaume Callís - Erasmus+ 2015-17

Thursday 30th I woke up at 6:45 after that I had a shower and I went to have breakfast. In my hosting house they always eat apple with yogurt and toppings for breakfast I think it's delicious. After having breakfast Vera (my partner) and I went to school where we had "reflections" for half an hour. The first activity that we did was getting in a bus and going to the beach. It was amazing, their beaches are really different from ours and it was so cold!!!!. The second thing that we had to visit was Malmö so we got again in the bus and it took us to this beautiful city. There, we had lunch in a shopping centre in the city because it was raining outdoors, then we walked through Malmö looking at its buildings and streets. A bit after that we arrived in the Natural Science Museum where there were lots of living animals and also dead ones. It was amazing. We also saw “The Turning Torso”, the highest building in Sweden which was designed by a Spanish architect. ...

Hard work at school and Cooking Show This day was a really long day. We were at school all the day. In the morning we worked with the Erasmus+ Project, especially with the app. Firstly, we discussed the questions of the app with our national groups. At eleven o’clock we had lunch. I ate rice with a Swedish sauce. The sauce was good and I found it delicious. After having lunch we continued working with the app for about one hour and a half approximately; but this time we did it with students from other countries. I worked with two Swedish girls and one Italian girl. They were very nice. At about half past one some Swedish girls presented us the different kind of councils that we can find at the school and which ar part of the students’ democracy project.  At 14:00 we went to the home economics room to cook our dinner. The Catalan students cooked two potato omelettes, one with onion and the other one without onion, but with a kind of meat called chorizo . The Italian...

This is a photo with the Major Today we met all together at the assembly hall at 8:15. First of all Helen , The Swedish teacher, explained us that we are all cultural detectives because between the counties that are in the project there are some cultural differences which we sometimes perceive, so they gave us    a small piece of paper where we had to write some of any cultural differences we had come across. Afterwards we collected all the papers and we read them. It was really interesting! After this activity two guys explained to us how the app of the project works and a while later we divided into several groups and I went to the group for the “Talk Show” with 4 Swedish students, 2 Italians and 2 Bulgarians. We discussed same cultural topics such as the food, for example, and each country has written some questions with three options about their school, food and words. Then we went to the canteen to have lunch and we ate fish with potatoes, grated ca...

Monday:  First day at school. Everybody was nervous. Before we had the real presentation in front of everyone at school we had arrived with our partners and we had a lot of presentations with a lot of people.  Then it got more serious, there was the real presentation and then we had to work in the expectations that we had got at first about the project. When we finished all the assembly thing we had to go with our partners to their respective lessons. Arola, Laura and me went to Geography class and it was really cool. There were people who were very curious about us and they just wanted to try their Spanish with us and it was nice.  Next I had to go to German. I have to say that in that class I just sat there and did nothing but wondering what was going on. After classes we had lunch and it was not that bad. Then we had Swedish lesson in groups with the different nationalities and it was great but a little bit difficult, more for Catalans and Italians than fo...

On our way to Sweden, we left Barcelona We crossed the Pyrenees Öresund from the plane At 7 o’clock in the morning we met each other at the school to go to the airport to catch the plane to Denmark. As soon as we got there we checked in the baggage. Then we had breakfast and we looked in some shops in the airport while we were waiting for the plane The plane was leaving at 10:30 from Barcelona and we arrived in Denmark at 13:30. During the flight we were listening to music, reading and looking through the window. At the airport in Copenhagen we converted our money to Swedish Krona and then we went to collect our luggage. At the same airport, three Swedish students came and guided us to the train that goes from Denmark to Sweden. At Lund we got off the train and we waited for our partners to pick us up because we were early. When we met our partners we went to their house and stayed there. Angie

FOOD Pyramid ACTIVITY 1 http://www.nourishinteractive.com/kids/5-food-group-games I found a link that presents a lot of different games to learn the food pyramid. First, they are about food  and how it is classified. Then, there are puzzels or questions and games to practise what they have taught you about it.  I think it could be very useful for the students of first of ESO because it's a practical and a funny way to learn. ACTIVITY 2 Here there is the link to a game where you have to classify some foodstuff in their respective group for example fruit, grain, diary, protein... I think it could be useful  for students in first and second of eso because you can learn names of different food and how to classify them. http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/nutritionforkids/games/foodgroupsgame.html ACTIVITY 3 This is a link of a website that explains what the food pyramid and its components consist on. You can also learn about how our diet is cons...

TRAFFIC LIGHTS When I went to Sicily, I was really excited about it. However, I found various misunderstandings related to traffic rules: The first day I went there, my partner’s family took me from the airport to their house, and I was really surprised because they didn’t had sitbells on their cars. I asked my partner what about the sitbell, and she looked so surprised too. Also in that first trip, when my partner’s parents were driving us home, I discovered they went really fast. It really surprised me, but I didn’t say anything. All the days after this were the same, they went really fast, even if they were going inside the city. One day, when we were hanging out with the catalans and the italians, there was a zebra crossing, and the traffic light was red for the pedestrians. Almost everybody crossed it, but I didn’t because I was used to wait until the light was green. Then I felt like if I was different from the others. What happemed in the first paragraph? ...

Wait, what time is it? During the time I was in Italy I noticed that punctuality there was perceived differently than in Spain. It took me a few days to realize that so the first day we had to meet someone at a certain time I was pretty surprised. What happened was that we had to meet some of my classmates and their Italian partners; by the time we were supposed to set off from my partner’s house I was ready to leave but she wasn’t. I was starting to get worried that we were going to be too late so I asked if they had changed the meeting time or something. The answer was no, the meeting time was still the same, I decided to wait and hope we weren’t too late but when we got to the restaurant we were almost the first people to be there. As the situation got repeated more than once I started thinking this could be because: It was mere coincidence that during the week we were there people were unusually late. The concept of punctuality changes depending on the country you are at....

Is Italy a green country? in November I travelled to Italy and one of the things I noticed is that they do not recycle at all. They only have one bin in the whole house –my travel companions noticed that too- and the streets were really dirty. I tried to come to some hypothesis of what could be the reason this was so shocking even though we are such similar countries in other aspects. My first thought is that they did not recycle but when I asked my partner she answered that they indeed have been recycling since 2014. Actually, I did some research and in a Swedish guy blog I found out that they even get a tax relief calculated by the quality of their recycling for the ones that do recycle, which is an amazing way to get people to start doing it. So maybe it was me that only saw one bin and they did have several for different products. In my country for example the average Spanish  home has at least four different bins: the organic one for food and kitchen paper, the trash, ...

CRITICAL INCIDENT An uncomfortable time In November 2016, I went a week to Italy with my classmates for an English project. The fifth day, my host partner and I went to her aunt’s house to spend the afternoon because in the evening we had a dinner. While we were at her aunt’s house, my partner said she had to go to the bathroom, so she left me with her aunt and her cousin alone. They didn’t speak Catalan, Spanish or English, they only spoke Italian and I didn’t understand them. I told them, gesturing, that I couldn’t speak with them because I didn’t speak Italian but they started talking in Italian and telling me things (that I couldn’t understand) and I was answering using “Yes” and “No” although I didn’t know what they were saying. My partner, who was at the bathroom and I don’t know what she was doing there, took half an hour there and when she came into the living room I thought: “Finally!” It was a really uncomfortable time and I was dying of shame and nerves. What sh...