Starting a new school year

Hello everybody!

It's been a long time since the last time I wrote here! Time goes by so fast...

We have already started with new activities for our eTwinning project: the first one is a short video presenting yourselves, and the Spanish students have created some very original presentations. They are already on our Twinspace, and I encourage you to watch them and leave a comment with your opinions.

I hope you will like them!!!

Warm regards from Vinaròs

Retezat

We went on a trip to the Retezat Mountains, the most beautiful and amazing in the Southern Carpathians. Retezat is also called "the blue-eyed mountain", as there are about 80 glacier lakes. The largest of them are Bucura and Zănoaga. We spent three days in the Retezat National Park, taking part in different activities like: hiking, tourist orientation, rope activities(tiroliana), outdoor games, teambuilding, firecamp, guitar songs, etc. Although this place is very close to our town, it seems so far away. You've got the feeling that time has stopped.

Enjoy the video!

Best of Poland (our trip to the south - west of Poland)

Hello European friends,
We would like to drop some lines about our 3 days trip to one of the most beautiful part of our country called Kotlina Kłodzka, on the border with Czech Republic. We spent there 3 days, we stayed in an old hotel 2 nights. The sun were shining all 3 days. It was very hot. We were climbing to the top in the mountains, we were going down to the Golden mine in Złoty Stok (złoty means golden), we were drinking water on the oldest Polish spa. What is interesting Lower Silesia was part of Prussia, Austria and Czech Kingdom. We prayed in the  sanctuary Wambierzyce (ALbendorf). We didn't sleep a lot at night. It was exciting we had fun and enjoyed very much. Greeting from Poland
Let's have a look at some pictures in "Holidays in our countries"
Polish students from Rybnik

Day of Europe!

Last Monday, 9th May, was the Day of Europe. All through the countries which belong to the European Union, a lot of activities were held in schools and high schools to celebrate that we are all European. Our union, based on peace, solidarity and respect, is a very special bond between us.

In our school we also celebrated the Day of Europe, as you can see in these photos.

Our students worked on groups the characteristics of each country belonging to the European Union. They also created some big posters with the European flag, motto (United in diversity), the Euro symbol... of course they drawed a big map with the European countries and sticked to the corresponding countries their national flags.

We enjoyed our first celebration of the Day of Europe and had a good time. 

Did you celebrate the Day of Europe in your school?

Easter eggs from Poland

We have still people colouring the eggs before Easter as a traditional custom. Let's have a look.

Pictures comes from nowiny.pl
Happy Easter to every member of our project!

WET MONDAY at EASTER in POLAND

Smigus Dyngus and other Polish old Easter Traditions

Smigus Dyngus (shming-oos-ding-oos) is an unusual tradition of Easter Monday. This day (Monday after Easter Sunday) is called also in Polish "Wet Monday", in Polish: "Mokry Poniedzialek" or "Lany Poniedzialek". Easter Monday is also a holiday in Poland. It was traditionally the day when boys tried to drench girls with squirt guns or buckets of water. "Smigus" comes from the word smigac meaning swish with a cane since men tap the ankles and legs of the girls. Dyngus comes probably from German word dingen which means to come to an agreement since the girls needed to give men money to stop being swish and splash. The more a girl is sprayed with water, the higher are her chances to get married. Usually groups of young boys are waiting for accidental passerby near the farmer markets or in the corners of the streets. Older men behave like gentlemen spraying their wives with cologne water rather than with the regular one. The girls got their chances for revenge the following day. They can spray boys with water as much as they wanted on Tuesday.


Dousing may have pagan roots, or it may reflect Christian rebirth and baptism. It may hark back to the baptism of Poland's Mieszko I and his court on Easter Monday in 966. Whether the tradition is historic or religious in origin, Smigus-Dyngus remains a significant, well-loved Polish tradition.
American Polonia descendants of the 1890s-1930s immigration often celebrate Dyngus Day with a polka dance.
http://culture.polishsite.us/articles/art31fr.htm

Happy Easter from Spain!!

Hello everybody!

As Luisa and Marika have already shown their typical traditions during Easter. I am going to show you some of our traditions here in the Valencian Community.


First, we have the "mona de Pascua". It is similar to your "Titola" in Trieste and the "Tsoureki" in Corinth, but our "mona" is usually round, with one or two boiled eggs. It has also some dried fruit and anised tiny colour balls to decorate. Another typical decoration is a chick figure or a feather on it. They are typically made at home, for example, my mum always makes them for all the family in several shapes, for example, as frogs. The "monas" can be filled with chocolate, they are delicious!!!

Another typical food is the "farinosa". It is made with the same dough but it is filled with "confitura de cabello de ángel", which is a sort of pumpkin jam. They are rolled and without eggs.

And finally, we have also the typical chocolate eggs, or the chocolate figures: hens, rabbits... but also other fashioned figures. This year, I suppose that the most sold chocolate "monas" will be Hello Kittys and Bob Esponjas.


The tradition here is that the godfather or the godmother gives their grandson or granddaughter the "mona" to be eaten during the Easter Sunday with the family or friends. As Easter usually at the beginning of the spring, everybody goes to eat the "mona" to the country, and flying a kite is also a typical tradition.

It is thought that the word "mona" comes from the Arabic word "munna" which means "gift or present". And I have discovered that the eggs and the chicks represent the renewal and the rebirth, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I hope you will like all this information about Easter in our region!

Happy Easter!

Sorry...my comments option doesn't work!

Happy Easter to you!
Also in Trieste we have similar traditions: we paint the eggs (not as beautiful as your, Marika!) and your Tsoureki is like our sweet leavened bread we call "Titola". It symbolizes the nail of the cross of Jesus. I suppose this similarities are due to the presence of a big Greek comunity in Trieste since 1700. But we have also the chocolate eggs!













And yes, we were in Munich (Germany) with 43 students of the third year of middle school. They are 14 and they study two foreign languages: english and german. And Germany is the nearest country for us! Other classes were in Graz and Wien (Austria) and in Nice and Principality of Monaco (France) because they study French as third language.

Happy Easter

Hello friends,

we wish you

"Happy Easter"

for you and for your families!!!

Our traditions are

Tsoureki and red eggs!!!

Hello to everybody!

Hello! Finally I'm at home again!
I've had a hard period at school. First of all I was in Munchen with my oldest students for a 5-days trip, and it was really tiring week. We are back home on Friday night and on Monday I left again for a 5-days trip in Torino and Aosta with the middle students. Now I have only two days at school before the Easter holidays but I'm really KO!
And in this period, from March to Easter, all students are involved in theate projects with rehearsal and construction of sets and I've to manage all their movements.
I hope that my students prepare a slide-show of their trips before Easter to share with European friends their findings and feelings.
Ciao
Luisa

School trip to Italy

School trip to Italy

An unforgettable experience

This last week was so incredible! We went to Italy with our classmates! It was a 4 days trip while we visited Pisa, Florence and Rome. It was such a funny trip that we won’t forget it!

In this trip we used almost all the transports that exist! First we trevelled from Girona to Pisa by plane. We saw the Pisa’s tower and we took some pictures of it. After a pair of hours there we took a bus and went to Florence, a really enjoyable city in the north of Italy. We stayed there for one night in a really good hotel. Although we didn’t sleep much this day we visited the David in the museum of Florence and some other monuments in the city.

In the afternoon we took a train that brought us to Rome, where we were going to spend a couple of days. Although the hotel wasn’t very good we spent a really good time there, but not much because we were all day walking in Rome. The first day we visited the Vatican City, the Fontana di Trevi and some other places that I don’t remember now. For me the most beatiful thing we visited was the Fontana di Trevi. The second day we visited the Spain’s Square, the Coliseum, the Foros and the Mouth of the Truth.

The food was really good in all the Italian cities we visited, but specially in Rome. Although the good quality of the food the price was in line with what we expected, only a bit more than the restaurants we frequent here in Vinaròs, Casa Pocho and these places, you know…

And to top the travel we returned to Spain with a ferry, we sailed from Civitavecchia to Barcelona in only 22 hours, so we hadn’t much time to do anything in the return trip.

In general we spent a really good time together among friends, like I said on the top, an unforgettable experience!

Written by: Josep Queralt (4th ESO)

Greece-Spring is here!

Spring is here again!

Gardens and farms are full of beautiful flowers!

Colors many colors everywhere!

What about you?

What do you think of this logo?

By my students, Marcin Przesdzienk, called 15 years old.

Women's Day

The 8th of March is a celebration of both Mother’s Day and Women’s Day in Romania. On this special day, I wish you "comfort on difficult days, smiles when sadness intrudes, rainbows to follow the clouds, love to complete your life!"

Happy Women’s Day and a bunch of flowers via this video!

Carnival 2011!

The Carnival parade in our town ...

12/3/2011...Greece

Carnaval de Vinaròs

We are in the middle of the Carnival of Vinaròs, and I would like to show you the official poster announcing the Carnival.

And, if you want to see it, here you are a brief promo of the Carnival of Vinaròs.




We have Carnival holidays from tomorrow, Friday 4th March until next Monday 7th March. I hope my students will show you some pictures of the Carnival events next week.

“Mărţişor”

There is an old tradition in Romania to celebrate the 1^st of March by offering a tiny gift, called “mărţişor”, as a symbol of the spring to come, to people we care about. It also symbolizes the rebirth of nature. Literally, the word means little March. Nowadays, men offer women such a talisman object, also consisting of a jewel or a small decoration like a flower, an animal or a heart, tied to a red and white string. It is believed that the one who wears the red and white string will be powerful and healthy all year round.

Greece - Caves

In Greece there are many impressive Caves.

In some of them stalactites and stalagmites

have beautiful colors.

Also in some of them it is neccesary a boat.

The best of Poland

I live nearby. In this forest there was the biggest fire in 1992. My region - Silesia seems to be dirty and industrial but let's have a look at this picture.

The first picture represents the european bizon called ŻUBR in Polish. In the coat of Romani you can see the bizon. We have a lot of bizons especially in the forest on the eastern border. But to tell you the truth the european bizons survived in Europe thanks to these animals living in Silesian forests.

Greece - Mycenae

Mycenae is 50km to the South of Corinth.

Mycenae was one of the major centres of Greek Civilization,

from 1600BC to about 1100BC.
The Lion Gate is the entrance of the Palace of Mycenae.

This is a lady (fresco) from the Palace of Mycenae-Peloponnesus-Greece.

It is about 3000 years old!

Greetings from Italy

Greetings from Italy

Hello from Trieste!

Trieste is a multicultural town, since from the government of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We have several different community with their own church, and also in the schools we have students from every part of Europe and World.

In the picture you can see our main square: Unity Square of Italy (Piazza Unità d’Italia). It’s a wonderful square, with the main public buildings on three sides and in front of them the sea. Today we have some wind, the “bora”, and you can see the flags waving.

Our map

See Opening our windows to European friends in a bigger map


When I see this map, words like "dreams", "plans", "share", "together", "excitement", "smiles"...  come to my mind.


And you?

What do you see? What do you feel?

Greetings from Romania!

Our town, Vulcan, situated in the west of Romania, is surrounded by the Parâng and Retezat Mountains. Containing more than 60 peaks and over 100 glacier lakes, the Retezat Mountains are some of the most beautiful in the Carpathians and include Romania’s first national park. It is an attractive region for those who love adventure and nature.

Korinth-Greece

The Canal of Corinth.

This is our "window" to you,

our European friends.

Have you ever seen it?

It is about 6km in the entrance

of Peloponnesus.

We shall write more about it

next weeks...

Vinaròs, "a piece of heaven"

Greetings from Vinaròs, "trosset de cel", as people here say (more or less, "a piece of heaven").

The Carnival is coming soon, and for "vinarossencs" it is not only a party but mostly a passion. Do you celebrate Carnival in your town?

Greetings from the South of Poland

Hello everybody,
We live in the south of Poland,called (Upper) Silesia near the Czech Republic and not far away from Cracow (the old capital of Poland). My students are eager to start a new project with your students from all over the Europe. Thanks to English they can keep in touch with yours students.
Muchas gracias Mille Grazie Efcharisto poli Mulţumesc.Danke Shőn! Thank you very much!

Korinth - Greece

Korinth-Greece
This is our port and
in this picture you can see also
"Gerania Mountain"
Between Korinth and Gerania
there is the entrance of the
"Canal of Corinth"

Hello to all of you.
This blog is very nice and I hope it will be useful to our students and us teacher for the eTwinning project we are going to start.

Hello!!

This is the first post of our project, titled "Opening our windows to European friends". It is an eTwinning project, and we are some teachers who want to help our students in their learning of the English language.

Although we haven't had completed the full registration of our eTwinning space, we are working hard with the motivation of our students, because we are convinced that our efforts will not be useless.

So you, either teacher, student or friend, be welcome to this blog. Feel free to leave a comment with your ideas and opinions, we will appreciate that very much.