After a year full of lock-downs and with the Erasmus+ project FOCUS standing still, we finally got to meet again, for the first time since March 2020.
So, of course everyone was incredibly excited when we boarded the plane in Frankfurt, ready to meet our host families and have a great week full of new experiences. And we were not disappointed.
We arrived on Saturday, 6th November, to warm temperatures and sunshine after havving started in the dark and windy cold of Germany at 6:30. Our host families were already waiting for us at A Coruña airport and took us home after an exhausting journey.
Relaxed and ready we enjoyed our Sunday with the program the families planned. Some of us went to a basketball match, others went to the beach and in the evening a bigger group met up at the “Cidade da Cultura” to enjoy the beautiful view over the city.
On Monday the project and official program started with an introduction and a general explanation about what we were going to do that week. Then we started our tour through the city, learning much about Santiago and its most famous sights, like the cathedral or the university. We ended up walking a distance of roughly 15 km, but everyone was having a lot of fun. For the afternoon our host students planned a trip to the jump house where we enjoyed an hour of fun.
On Tuesday we took the coach to Pontevedra, a city without cars in the old town. Since it was a project none of us knew, the mayor explained the main idea and its advantages for the citizens and the air quality in the city to us. Afterwards our host students presented the city and its history to us by performing different role plays. For lunch we went to the beach at Aldán and could enjoy a beautiful view at the ocean whilst relaxing in the sun.
On Wednesday we went to “SOTAVENTO”, an experimental wind farm. We got to see different types of generators, learned a lot about renewable energy sources and got a guided tour through a so called “intelligent house”, which has different features in order to live option as sustainably as possible. After our visit we went to Centrona, a nearby town to enjoy our food and the sound of waves crashing on the beach. When we got back to Santiago most of the host students and their exchange partners went to a maze in “Parque de Belvís” and let the evening pass by watching the sunset and spending time in the group.
On Thursday we began to prepare our workshops which included an Escape Room, a role play, a QR codemap from Santiago and a presentation of different characters from Compostela. All the workshops were dedicated to Santiago and the history or our trips to Pontevedra and the wind farm. We ate our lunch at home and met again in the Alameda park to hang out and go souvenir shopping.
Friday we presented the results of the workshops, which was a lot of fun, talked about the week and said goodbye to the teachers from Spain, France and Poland. One half of the group stayed together for lunch at Domino’s Pizza and reunited with the rest of the group to spend the last evening all together which was a very nice ending to a very nice week.
On Saturday we started our flight in Santiago at 09:20 and finally got back home at 23:30.