described by Mia and Paula (class 9):

Saturday and Sunday:

A journey of 19 hours in the bus... a stop every two hours, a snowball fight in the middle of the night, meeting the new day in Austria; and finally: Italy! At noon, our bus driver dropped us off at the railway station of Quarto d'Altino and we had the opportunity to take the train and to explore Venice on our own for a couple of hours on this cloudy Sunday in winter.

What a city! And what a chance to eat our first real Italian pizza.

(pictures: Mia, Moritz, Mia)

Late Sunday afternoon, we took the train to Portogruaro and - finally met our Italian partners and their families for the first time and got to know the places which should be our home for the next week!

Monday:

On the first real day we met in the school of our partners, the "Liceo XXV aprile", an old palace in the historical city centre of Portogruaro. We got to know each other better with an Ice-Breaking Activity called "Human Bingo". This is a game where you ask each other questions to get to know each other better and to learn something about your partners.

We presented and discussed the texts we had prepared in our first WebQuests.

Then we went to the computer lab and were introduced into the software that we needed for our book. We started to prepare the first pages for our Latin book. This book will be a result of our project. It will contain the texts, translations, analysis and illustrations from our WebQuests.

(working in German-Italian pairs)                                    (working on the Latin book))

In the lunch break we ate pizza together in a small place in the city centre near. Afterwards we had enough time to explore Portogruaro together. The time in the group was very nice.

The next day we worked on the Latin book again and presented our masks to the Italian students and made a quiz to assign the masks.

Yesterday, the Italian students had presented a text written by Galileo Galilei which they had translated and analyzed for our Latin book. The Italian teacher of mathematics, Mr Mosangini, explained and demonstrated how to create a Galileian telescope. When he had done so, we could use the telescope in the school yard.

(You can see the worksheet for this and other activities on the page -> Didactic Material)

In the evening we went to Venice again, all together. We visited St. Mark's Cathedral together as a group. The cathedral was booked just for us. At the beginning it was very calm and dark inside, but then the lights started to shine and we could admire the wonderful architecture.

We could also look at the mosaics in the cupola of the basilica and the Latin inscriptions which are inserted there. Our Italian partners had presented them to us in one of their WebQuests. They show pictures and text of the Genesis from the Latin bible.

Afterwards we had some free time. We enjoyed the atmosphere of Venice by night.

Wednesday

On Wednesday the groups worked on the Latin books and we were introduced to history and archeology of Aquileia. In the lunch break we all went out for pizza. After that we had family time. Some of us went to the shopping centre, some to the beach in Caorle, a village near Portogruaro, some stayed at home and talked with the family. In the evening the whole group went bowling together.

Thursday

The next day we had a trip to Aquilaea, a city which was very big and important in ancient times, especially in early Christian time. With the help of the App Actionbound we explored the archeological excavation sites. And we had our cameras with us. Because we had the task to prepare a photo exhibition.

We also worked with self made pinhole cameras and took pictures of Aquileia which we developed the next day in the darkroom of our partner school.

Friday

On Friday we were in the computer lab again. In German-Italian pairs we chose pictures from Venice and Aquileia for the photo exhibition with the title "approaching culture". We gave titles to our pictures and we learned how to use photo shop to increase the message of our pictures. 

This was the last day, we enjoyed the time together very much and prepared to say goodbye. We celebrated our planned farewell party with many delicacies, baked and cooked by us, the Italian and German students, and the Italian parents.

(group pictures: students - parents / families - teachers)

Saturday

On Saturday we went to the lessons with our partners. In Italy students have lessons also on Saturday. We saw that there are some differences between the German and Italian text books. In Italy most books are following a strict time line, both in Italian, Latin, history lessons and so on.  

At noon the German group sadly started their return journey after a great week at our partner school.