Move2learn about your partners' school, their way of life, their cultural tradition, their artisan heritage
Mia's and Milena's documentation and about the free time activities.
https://youtu.be/tsnHXBpXJcY
Report on our school website:
https://www.asgsg-marl.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1416:rrr&catid=60&Itemid=244
Move2learn, learn2move
Rome
September 17 – 22, 2018
Monday : Day of our arrival
Our journey starts in Recklinghausen, Germany at 7 in the morning.
Here we take our first train together to the airport Düsseldorf.
Just a few more hours until we finally get to meet our Italien friends, the excitement is almost unbearable, questions like - What will their homes and families be like? Will we have a lot to talk about? are all we can think about.
A 2 hour flight later we land in Italy, approximately 30 minutes away from Rome city center
And just a few minutes later we finally walk through Rome’s central train station looking for our exchange partners.
They are easy to spot holding up a huge poster which reads :”Welcome ” and the German flag colours as background.
We run towards them hugging and kissing each others cheeks ( the typical Italian greeting seems strange to us at first but a few days into the week it seems strange not to do so )
Here is where we say goodbye to our teachers and go to our temporary homes for the week to unpack and change.
A little later we meet all the other students again for ice cream and a chatty coffee.
Our first day was full of excitement and new impressions and it was great fun, only remembering makes us smile.
Alisa Winkelhagen
Tuesday: School and Sightseeing
Tuesday was the first day in Rome after our arrival. We had the first night at our lovely Italian guest families. We met at Via G da Procida at 9.10 am, after a lot of traffic. We visited the school , which seems as a normal apartment building from the outside. After a little guided tour, we visited the current class of Mrs.Fasanelli. They prepared a few questions for us ,for example: What are differences between Germany and Italy?
We talked a while and after that they taught us Italian tonguetwisters ,which we should learn. It was very funny and we all mastered it. Subsequently, at 10.10 am, we walked with the class and Ms.Gabriella Pastore to Villa Torlonia, it's a huge Park near the school.
We were divided in four groups and had something like a rallye through the park with a few work out sessions. It was arduous, because meanwhile we had 30 degrees in shade, but the little fountains all over the park helped a lot.
We said goodbye to the class and went with our teacher and our exchange students to their school. There our teachers met the headteacher Ms.Elena Zacchilli. At the school we met Ms.Giselda D‘Eugenio and took the metro to Piazza del Colosseo.
From the Colosseum to the markets of jTrajan Ms.D‘Eugenio guided us, and told us many interesting things about the old buildings. It was very impressing and this was probably the day when we took the most pictures.
At 4 pm we had a guided tour at the Markets of Trajan until 5.40 pm, we had a wonderful view from the roof and it was impressing what people in the past were able to build.
After the tour our official program finished. So our whole group went shopping at Via del Corso, many shops were quite expensive but anyway, it was more fascinating to watch the crowd of people and listen to the buskers.
At the end of the street there was Piazza del Popolo and we climbed a few stairs to have a breathtaking view,
There we took the last photos of this day and then we descended all the stairs and everybody went home to sleep. We all were very tired and our feet hurt because of the over 25.000 steps we walked through Rome. Anyway it was a wonderful day with many wonderful impressions.
Written by Annalena Schwabe
Wednesday, September 19th, 2018
After arriving on Monday and exploring the markets of Trajan on Tuesday, on Wednesday we went to different places to do interviews with many people at their own workplaces.
With great plans for the day we met at school in the morning. There we met the really nice teacher, who was going to acompany us for the day. Also we met three incredibly nice girls from the school, who did help us preparing the questions for all of the interviews we were going to do in the afternoon. After preparing our questions we started and made our ways to three different locations in San Lorenzo.
There we at first went to Fondazione Pastificio Cerere. A kind Lady named Claudia showed us around a small exhibition by artist Margherita Moscardini about the fountains of Za’atari, which is a refugee camp in Jordania close to the Syrian border.
The next place we visited was the atelier and shop of designer Myriam Bottazzi.
She told us a lot about her work and we were able to see many of the accessories she designed, which definitely were something special.
In San Lorenzo the last place we visited was a restaurant called Soul Kitchen. One of the owners told us about how they started the restaurant back in 2011 and how it developped through the time.
The other three workshops we visited were located in Via Urbana, a street with many little shops in Rione Monti. In all of those three places they sold things made my hand.
The first one of them was Studio Silice, a place with handmade pieces of glass design. The Lady working there showed a few of her techniques to us and showed many examples of her works.
Second was a small workshop run by a man, who was working with wood to create things like small tables or shelves. He told us he was working together with his brother and how he came to the idea of starting something like this.
The last studio we visited that day was a candle store. The shop was owned by a woman who designed, produced and sold all the candles by herself and with the help of her mother. The candles all had a really nice and unique look with their bright colors, special shapes and prints.
All in all you could say we had a great day with meeting many interesting people and learning much about different kinds of work. All the people we met did really inspire us, since they had a lot of passion for their jobs and somehow fulfilled their dreams and made the things they loved and loved their job. Also the way many of them worked together with friends or family was really interesting and great to see.
Freya Hallwas
Thursday - Trip to Ostia Antica
Ostia Antica, the harbor city of Ancient Rome, was the place where we spent most of our Thursday.
Before we entered the city, there was a cemetery, the location was the countryside because it was important for the Romans to separate the dead ones and people who were still alive.
The first attraction was the Theater, concerts, plays and musicals were put on here regularly. Its Auditorium looked similar to the one in the Colosseum but it was a semicircle. Only rich people could afford to sit in the front because speakers weren’t invented and only audiences who paid more and got to sit in the front could hear the performances very clearly.
The second stop was already in downtown, the ancient “fast food restaurant”. It’s quite surprising that there were already restaurants food and even hot drinks back at that time. They even had a bar to store packed food (and drinks I suppose) and menus.
After that we went to the place where the inhabitants grained corn with stone mills (corns were the main crop in Ostia Antica), they took help from donkeys to move the mills by tying them with poles that were fixed on the stone mills and keeping them walking. The trick was they covered the donkeys’ eyes, so they didn’t know they were walking around the mills and wouldn’t get dizzy. The people used the corn flour to bake bread, their staple food.
The most impressing place for me was the one where they dye, clean and store cloths. It looked like a cellar, the water and dyestuffs were poured into the pond-like thing and the workers would use their feet to step on the cloths to make sure everyone of them was soaked and got fully dyed. This job was one of the most tiring jobs at that time, also, because of the poor sanitary condition, workers got diseases very easily.
We randomly went to the top of an ancient residential building to take a better look of the whole city. While we were enjoying the view, our guide told us that back then, the higher the floor was, the lower the price would be for the rent. This was because there were a lot of accidents at that time, for example fires and floods. It was less likely to survive when you lived on a higher floor. Also, living higher cost way more trouble, for example, you had to go downstairs to get water and upstairs again every time you needed some since there weren’t taps yet.
Of course, there were many other historical spots in Ostia Antica, we couldn’t cover the whole city in a half day tour, but still, the ancient wisdom and mysterious atmosphere fascinated us. It’s hard to imagine how people came up with all the brilliant ideas that are benefiting us today. Besides, I really appreciate Mrs. Giselda D'Eugenio and our archeologist tour guide for their hard work, great help and excellent explanation.
Mia Wang
Friday, 21st September 2018
On September 17th - 22nd September 2018, we had the possibility to visit the Italian team from Licéo Machiavelli we were working with on the website eTwinning with the project: Citizens@work in the school year 2016/17. eTwinning projects have been a tradition at our school for a long time. Also the school in Italy has been our partner for a long time. The European Commission gave us the opportunity to meet our partners by launching the competition ‘move2learn,learn2move’ in 2017. Luckily we were awarded with the chance to meet our eTwinning partners.
On Friday, our last day of the week with our partners, we were invited to a little sightseeing tour with the teacher Mrs Charis Marconi.
On Friday at 8.30am, we met at Piazza Bologna. Together we went to the part of Rome where the Jews lived, also named as the Jew ghetto. First we saw a school for Jews, there you are able to learn everything about the Jewish religion. This is only for people who live a Jewish life. You can compare this also with Christianity, there are also some schools for religious people to learn more about their faith on a regular basis.
Walking in this part of Rome we sometimes saw golden cubes in the ground. Mrs Charis Marconi explained, these cubes were a memorial for many Jewish people who died in the second world war in Auschwitz for example (as you can see in the picture).
A little further from those memorial stones we reached the great Synagogue of Rome. This synagogue is a symbol of the emancipation of Roman Jews to become equal citizens in a Christian country. We stayed outside the synagogue for almost 45 minutes because we talked about the bad things which happened to Jewish people and about the relationships between people from different cultures in general. Together we realized the importance of practising tolerance and understanding. We compared the situation of the Jewish people in the Second World War to our situation nowadays. All of us agreed that treating people in a tolerant and respectful way is important.
After our discussion we crossed one of the oldest bridges of Rome to go to the island of Rome, called Isola Tiberina (Timber island).
On this little island we were able to see a hospital, the first public hospital in the whole world. It was an amazing experience and an important story which our tour guide told us.
Finally our wonderful tour ended in a little café where we rested for our lunch break until 01:00pm. After the little Lunch break the Italian girls decided to invite us to a special candy and ice cream store. So we went to this place and enjoyed the Gelato (= Ice cream).
After that, the German girls rested a little bit at their Italian families , while Wesan of the German team had the opportunity to meet a student, who she worked with on eTwinning once in the year 2015/2016. In the former project ‘Let’s make a change’ Wesan and Francesco had decided to write a song as a project contribution for eTwinning. So Wesan and Francesco made music and talked together personally. It was a special moment for them to meet for real and it was unbelievable, because they had never seen each other before. Until today there is this friendship between those two students.
Then all of us met at the station, called Termini. There the German girls bought some souvenirs, it was the last chance to buy some souvenirs. After that we continued with the Friday program. So we met near Saint Peters at the metro station, to go together to the special surprise of the Italian team. This surprise was extraordinary for the German team. The Italian team invited us to a typical restaurant in Rome where they had decorations for a Bavarian Octoberfest. We were excited and it was a very creative idea of the Italians.
Having eaten a delicious dinner together, we took some pictures and went to Saint Peter’s Dome to make some group photos. It was an awesome trip with the whole team.
Finally the Italians decided to invite the German guests to a little party with some of their friends, to enjoy the last moments together in Rome. It was an incredible last night which we will never ever forget.
Thanks to the Italian team. And even thank you so much to the European Commission, you gave us the possibility for such amazing experiences we will never forget. Thank you.
By Wesan Muawiya
Saturday
This week was wonderful. We visited many monuments and places that are well known in the whole world.
Everything seemed so big. I really liked the program, because we got to know a lot of facts about the past and old Rome, we went for example to “Colloseum” which is an amphitheater, actually it’s the largest that has ever been built. We got to know that there were many gladiator fights which could be watched by more than 85.000 people.
We got to see “Fontana di Trevi” as well. It’s one of the most popular fountains in the world. The Italian girls told me that you have to throw a coin into it standing backwards and make a wish, if you do so you’ll get back to Rome. That’s really beautiful in my opinion.
But we had time in Rome for shopping and hanging around with the girls and the family as well.
I learned Italian, but actually I prepared some sentences and words in advance, because I knew that the family of my partner doesn’t speak English that well and I wanted to thank them for everything.
The hospitality of the Italians was incredible, I’m so grateful. The family members always prepared lunch boxes for us and woke up earlier than they usually would. We, the Germans bought many gifts to thank them for everything and said „grazie“ really often to show them it‘s incredible how much they care about us. The teachers also tried to make the week as beautiful as possible, they organized everything and kept the group together.
I’ll never forget how little I slept; none of us slept more than 4 hours per night (for the whole week). But it was completely worth it.
On Saturday we went to the train station in the morning and said goodbye to everyone. It was really sad and some of us had to cry, but I’m glad it’s surely not a goodbye forever. We went to take the train to the airport. After our stay at the airport we flew back to Düsseldorf.
Three of us drove home by car from the airport. We made it to Recklinghausen where we got picked up by our parents.
To recap it was one of the best weeks of this year. I’ll never forget this wonderful experience. We’re an incredible group!
Milena S.