Report on our Erasmus Week in Olpe
The first day of the Erasmus Week, when the students and teachers of our partner schools met at our school, was very exciting. Everywhere were new faces and everybody was looking forward to meeting the students and the teachers.
At the beginning we started with the salutation by our headmaster and Mrs Schmidt to show our guests how thankful we are that they were here. After that the students from Germany guided a tour through the town. This was very interesting because we learned a lot of new things about our city of Olpe, that we hadn’t expected.
After lunch we started our workshops with different topics, like the topic of global fast food, topic of fair-trade and the topic of consumer education. Workshops like this are very special in order to you learn things about topics that normally not everyone notices.
Tuesday, 19 April
This day we went to a windpark in our area. The coach driver had some difficulty to reach the park, as he had to take forestry roads because the park is amidst impressive scenery of typical spruce forests of our Sauerland region.
The CEO of the park told us that the five wind turbines belong to the citizens of the nearby villages as the “the wind belongs to those people”. The residents are not disturbed by the mills because they live far off enough. Even standing below the rotating blades we did not hear much noise. The turbines produce 10 megawatt per hour and the plant is friendly for the wildlife of the forest. The CEO could convince us that this sustainable energy is a good alternative to fossile energy resources.
Wednesday, 20 April
This morning we met at school and started our departure to GEPA, the fair trade organization in Wuppertal. A guide told us a lot of interesting information about this big fair trade organization. For example that it was founded on the 14 May 1975 and that its founders are very proud that they know the people they are trading with. Moreover he told us that it is very important for them to support their partners in the developing countries to help them to live a better life without poverty. We never saw an organization like this with products that taste much better than all the others; so visiting this organization was a great experience for all of us.
After this we went to Cologne for visiting the city on ourselves and to shop some clothes.
Thursday, 21 April
The first topic of this day was preparing different healthy dishes of the partner countries in our school kitchen. The ingredients were organic and regional. This process was a nice experience for all of because we learned how important team working can be because cooking is only successful, when all help and support each other.
After lunch we met the head of the district authority of Olpe at school who told us facts about the district of Olpe. Afterwards we went back to our groups to finish our PowerPoint presentation about the different topics.
Friday, 22 April
On the last day we started to write a Project Song about the experience that we made during the last days. This was a hard job for us because it was very difficult to write a text that is perfect for a melody, but later we made it and presented this song to our teachers. After this all groups presented their PowerPoint presentations and informed about the important facts of the topics, they had worked on.
The week ended with a lunch in a pizzeria, a last chance for us to talk and to share our great experience that we made together.
Vivien Ostrowski, HSG 15 , BK Olpe