Week 19 - Cultural

Even though there are many different cultures in our Erasmus group there is one event that we all like to celebrate and that brings us together and that is our birthday.  Everybody likes to celebrate their birthday and have people celebrating with them and as Darren was turning the big 21 we decided that we would have a birthday party for him.  The theme was a jungle theme so we decorated our kitchen to look like the jungle and everyone got dressed up as something that you would find in the jungle.  We had people dressed as tigers, monkeys, a snake, a butterfly, lions and a parrot and I can honestly say it was a night to definitely remember. 

The jungle

After a crazy night on Thursday for Darren’s birthday we were all very excited for Saturday because we would be going to Bordeaux to visit our friend Dojo.  On Friday we got up early and set off on our adventure to Bordeaux.  We were so excited to see Dojo and to have a glimpse of her life outside of Erasmus.  We began to think about what we thought her apartment would be like, what Bordeaux would be like and if we would have a “culture shock” when we saw the way the French people lived compared to the Dutch and the Irish. 

Reunited with Dojo

When we got to Bordeaux we were amazed at its beauty and we began to think about the French stereotypes that we had coming over.  The first thing we thought about when we knew we were going to be visiting Bordeaux were vineyards.  Dojo had told us that Bordeaux is famous for its wine and that we would see a lot of vineyards in the countryside.  I really could not believe the amount of vineyards we seen when we were travelling through the French countryside.  It literally was a sea of green so this was one stereotype that the French people definitely lived up to. 

Dojo had told us that during our visit we would be spending time in her beach house just outside Bordeaux.  She told us that most people living in Bordeaux would own a beach house and when we told her that hardly any one back home in Ireland would own a beach house she was in complete shock.  She asked us what we did during the summer to which we replied “what summer?”

The beach in Bordeaux

 We also had the opportunity to meet Dojo’s family.  This was also quite a shock to us because we had to remember that the French greet each other by giving air kisses.  We didn’t know if Dojo had told her family that we don’t greet like that so the first time we seen them there was some awkward handshake and air kisses happening but it did provide us with some laughs.

During our time in Bordeaux we got to see how a different culture lived.  From wine tasting to beach houses this culture seemed a million miles away from my own culture of potatoes and farms but I was so glad that I had the chance to experience it and see Dojo again.  

Week 18 – Personal

This week was filled with different emotions for me.   I was excited because two of my best friends were coming to visit but I was also feeling very sad because this week was my last week in my placement school.  On my last day of placement I got to spend the full day having fun with my class.  I got to take part in their physical education lesson and help them practice for their upcoming musical.  For the last hour of the day Olli and I got to throw a party for our children and just as we were about to leave our class presented us with a pillow case that they had all decorated and signed.  To be honest I was so sad to be leaving my class , I had tears in my eyes but was doing a good job of holding them back until I seen some of the children crying and then I just let it all out.  Even though there was a language barrier at the beginning I think my relationship with the children grew stronger because we did have to try and use different methods to communicate.  Although it was my “last day” I am planning to go and return to see my class again when they are doing their musical so I will get to see them for one last time before I go home.

After an emotional beginning to the week it eventually came to the day for me to travel to Eindhoven to collect Rukaya and Shonagh from the airport.   I cannot explain to you how excited I was to see them again.  On the train every minute felt like an hour and I couldn’t even sit still because I was filled with so much excitement.  I eventually got to Eindhoven and waited very impatiently for them to arrive.  I then received the long awaited phone call to tell me that they had arrived in the train station and I set off to find them.  When I first seen them I couldn’t do anything else but laugh because it was so weird to see them two of them here in The Netherlands after not seeing them for four months.  During the week Darren, Sarah and I had started to plan some activities for the girls to do while they were here and I don’t think they even got time to speak

Rukaya and Shonagh hanging with Bob

before I was filling them in on all the plans.  When we returned back to Vossenveld the rest of the evening was spent introducing them to our new friends and translating Shonagh’s Derry accent into understandable English (I never realised it but that girl can talk so fast) Rukaya on the other hand had taken on our advice of speaking slowly and everyone could understand her. On Saturday we brought them to Amsterdam where we visited Madame Tussauds, The Ice bar, The Heineken Experience, The Flower Market and Anne Frank’s house.  It was a busy day but filled with fun and laughter. 

In the Rainforest

The day I was looking forward to the most was Sunday.  For my birthday one of the girl’s here on Erasmus bought me a ticket to go to Burger’s zoo in Arnhem and Sunday was the day that I would eventually get to go.  I could not believe how amazing the zoo was, it was like no other zoo I had ever been to.  The zoo was split into many different areas including the rainforest, the bush, the desert, the ocean and the safari.  We all were literally like a group of kids running from one animal to the next in compete awe of what we were seeing.  it was an experience I will never forget and it was spent with the best type of company, my friends. 

After our fun filled weekend we went to the lake on Monday to sit and relax. I couldn’t believe that on Tuesday that the girls would be returning back home to Ireland and I wish they could have stayed for a few more days because they fitted right in with all our Erasmus gang.  It really was a weekend to remember and I am so thankful for Rukaya and Shonagh for coming over and visiting us.  As Chares Swindon (2013) states “I cannot even imagine where I would be today were it not for those friends who have given me a heart full of joy. Let's face it; friends make life a lot more fun”

At the Shark tank

References

Charles Swindon (2013) Charles Swindon Quotes Available at : http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5139.Charles_R_Swindoll

Week 17 – Professional

During our university classes this week we dealt with some very interesting topics.  They were the topics of diversity and distribution.

In our classroom of diversity module we were following on from the previous week where we had looked at the topic of diversity and began to watch the movie “Freedom Writers”.  This movie is about a newly qualified teacher who enters a class of teenagers that are completely segregated due to diversity because of gang violence.  The teacher tries a variety of different techniques to try and get her class to become “a family” but then realises that the only way she encourage her class to get along is to show them that even though they may have many differences they are similar in more ways than they think.  Our class was based around the discussion of how we thought the teacher was doing and if we were in her shoes would we tackle the situation in a different way.  It was through this discussion that I began to think about the different ways I could teach about diversity through a PDMU lesson.  The Northern Ireland Curriculum (2007, p. 40) states that children at foundation stage should “be enabled to explore similarities and differences between groups of people” and that children at Key Stage 2 (p.97) should explore “valuing and celebrating difference and diversity”.   This movie highlighted to me the importance of educating children about the different types of people and about informing children that diversity does exist in the world.  Through this lesson I also got to see how an appropriate movie can be so effective when it directly relates to the topic that you are teaching.  Previously we had only watched 15 minutes of the movie but then during the weekend we had sat watched the rest of the movie because the lecturer had helped us develop a keen interest on the subject of diversity.

 

Freedom Writers 

 

             Marcus: No, that don't fly Ma.

             Erin Gruwell: First of all I'm not anybody's

             mother.

             Andre: No, that's not what it means.

             Eva: It's a sign of respect... for you

 (a scene in the movie which shows that the teenagers are now beginning to respect not only each other but also the teacher) 

               

Wealth distribution in America 

In our Global citizen class we looked at the topic of distribution.  We began the lesson by looking at the Millennium Development Goals and we had an in depth discussion about if we thought that these goals were achievable or not.  This then lead into having a conversation about the distribution of wealth in a variety of different countries.  We watched a very interesting clip about Wealth Inequality in America and found out http://padlet.com/wall/h83r54bo9o ) This class was very interesting and as a group we began a discussion about if we could teach this to an upper Key Stage 2 class.  We then looked at the Northern Ireland Curriculum (2007, p.88) and saw that it stated that children at key stage 2 should be enabled to explore “features of, and variations in places, including physical, human, climatic and vegetation”.   We thought that we could teach this type of lesson to a primary seven class but that we would have to be sure of what we wanted our learning goals to be. 

that the richest 1% of adults alone owned 40% of the global assets in the year 2000.  We were then divided into three groups in which we had to prepare a presentation about either  combating poverty, child mortality or food shortage/ rising prices using a website called Padlet which allowed us to create a wall of information to show the rest of the class (our presentation available at

All in all we had an interesting week of class this week and it really made us think about different ways and ideas of teaching lessons when we get back home to Ireland.