SusSol NEWS No. 1., 1 May 2011 Sustanaible Solutions An interesting, wonderful and special trip! The journey CONTENT Information about the journey, the flight en how we got where. Activities Information about the kayaking, the presentations, and some things that went wrong during the trip. Background information In April 2011 eight schools from Scotland, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Poland, England and Switzerland presented their Sustainable Solutions project. Eva, Remco and Vinamr presented their presentations to the other countries in Ceuta, Spain. During this 6 days trip, they experienced and learned a lot of new things. Together with the teachers and two students of the ISSE, they had a lot of fun. In this newspaper you will see their incredible experiences. Enjoy the reading! Information about Ceuta, the city where the presentations where held, and also Morocco, where we visited some building and drove camel. Extra.. Food and weather A short discription about the weather during the week and information aobut the food we got during the trip. We are so lucky that we had the opertunity to come to this meeting. Sustainable solutions project: what is it? Sustainable Solutions is a Comenius Project involving eight schools from across Europe. Many schools are increasingly required to address sustainability within their teaching programs. Consequently, in this project, we are encouraging students to investigate issues of sustainability to raise awareness of what sustainable development means and to look at sensible solutions about how sustainability can be achieved in practice. The work of our students will be displayed on the school websites and all of these will be linked to this central project web site. The project started in September 2010. There are eight partners in the project located in seven European countries.
SusSol NEWS No.1., 1 May 2011 The journey to Malaga In April 2011 we visited Ceuta to present our presentations. At 6 o clock in the morning we had gathered at Eindhoven Airport, where at 8 o clock the plane to Malaga left. We went together with the ISSE, so we met two new children, called Arushi and Stuart, and their teachers Ms. Keermaekers, Mr. Lima and Mr. Schoffelen. After we had checked in, it was time to say goodbye to our parents. Very difficult of course (just joking). When we were behind the customs, the trip had started. We waited some time at the airport, and after a while we were in our airplane Transavia. During a twohour flight, we knew each other which was very nice. After we arrived in Malaga, we were abroad and so we could enjoy the beautiful weather. The journey back home After we were dropped off by bus and said goodbye to the other participating countries, we saw at the airport that we had delay of an hour. Too bad, but in that time we had great fun with each other. We went to the Burger King, we did some shopping and did relax. After the time had elapsed, we boarded the plane and headed to our cold country the Netherlands. Around 10 o clock in the evening we arrived and then we all said goodbye to each other. Around midnight everyone slept comfortably in his own bed. Unfortunately, the trip was over. The travel was well organized. It was comfortable and went pretty quick. We were all very satisfied. Information about Ceuta Ceuta is a city which is a city in Spain which is geographically place in the North of Africa (See fig. 1) It has an area of around 18.5 square kilometre and a population of approximately 75.000 people. Ceuta lies next to the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Due to the location Ceuta s location, Ceuta has got an important role in commercial trade and military way-point for many cultures. By Vinamr Rastogi Ceuta was a free port before Spain joined the European Union. Therefore the population consists of Christians, Muslims (chiefly Berber), and small minorities of Jews and Hindus. Both Spanish and Riff Berber are widely spoken. Spanish is the official language, while there have been calls to recognize Berber as well. Morocco claims Ceuta, along with Melilla (another Spanish city which is placed geographically in Northern Africa) and a number of Mediterranean islands which border is 2
SusSol NEWS No. 1., 1 May 2011 Morocco, an impressive day trip By Remco van Dooren During our trip, on Wednesday we went to Morocco. We bought some stuff, we visited some buildings and we have ridden camel. It was a very interesting trip because there is such a big difference between the culture of them and the Europeans. Remarkable was the thing that you could see at the Moroccans that they wanted to sell their goods to us, because they think that Europeans have much money. They think that we can buy the highest price for a cheap thing, but instead we want to bed on things to get it for as less as possible. Since we visited the cultural country, we also know some information about it. Morocco, officially The Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in Northern Africa at the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, the Strait of Gibraltar and the Atlantic Ocean, bordering Algeria and Mauritania. It belongs to the Maghreb countries, which includes Tunisia, Mauritania, Algeria and Libya. The country also belongs to the Arab League. The country was declared independent from France on March 2 in 1956. The capital of Morocco is Rabat and the largest city is Casablanca. Other major cities are Fez, Marrakesh, Agadir, Oujda and Tangier. Morocco is a monarchy, since July 23, 1999. The King of Morocco is Mohammed VI. He became the king of the eighteenth-alaoui dynasty that ruled Morocco since 1666. The national holiday is on July 30; the day King Mohammed VI succeeded his father Hassan II. The dominant religion is Islam, but the country also has a small percentage of Christians and Jews. The official language is Arabic and French is the second language. Approximately 40% of the population speaks one of the Berber languages as their native language. In the north of Morocco, the population speaks Spanish as a second language. Morocco has a population of nearly 33 million and an area of 710,850 km. It is a very cultural and well-attended place. 3
SusSol NEWS No.1., 1 May 2011 The food During our trip to Ceuta, we have experienced a lot of different cultures. One of them was of course the food. We experienced a lot of differences in the Dutch and the Spanish food. But not only in the food itself, but also the times it is actually eaten. In Spain it is normal to first have breakfast just like in The Netherlands. They have lunch at around 3pm. This is very late for Dutch concepts. The size of the lunch is also very different to the average lunch in The Netherlands. The lunch consists of three or sometimes four courses. This is extremely much in The Netherlands. In Spain they also have dinner very late, they have it between 9 and 12 pm. The food itself differs as well. The breakfast is quite the same, with some fruit and toast. We had the breakfast in the hotel. This a good breakfast, it was a walking dinner. The lunch was late and huge. But this wasn t a problem, because by the time we could have dinner, I got so hungry I could eat all of it. The lunch in Ceuta was very varied, you could whatever food you wanted, so not only typical Spain food. This was nice, but also a pity, because we would have liked to taste a bit more of the Spain culture. We also had lunch in Malaga the day we arrived. This time we lunched in a typical Spanish eat house, and we got typical Spanish food: Tapas. Tapas is a dish which actually consists of more small dishes. It was originally a small dish for before the main course. But they were usually so nice, that they ate so much of them that they weren t hungry anymore. So finally they left out the main course and just ate tapas. Tapas mainly consists of fish dishes, with sometimes some vegetables. I really liked this, because you had a lot of variation in food with all the small dishes. It was a bit strange to try food from a different culture, but it was a really nice experience. In the evenings we also had tapas, and sometimes we had Moroccan food, which was again very different to Dutch food. Overall, we had a really good time, when it comes down to the food. In the beginning it was a bit scary to try all this new cultures. But it was really nice and a new experience! By Eva Scherders Spanish Tapas 4
lorem ipsum uitgavenr., datum The mystery of the bagage It was the day that we arrived on the airport of Malaga. Everybody was in a relaxed mood and so was Vinamr. Nobody really realised that he was a little too relaxed (No he wasn t under influence of anything, but still ) Everybody picked up their baggage from the belt and we headed outside to the sunny weather (In Holland we think we lack sunny weather). With the taxi we arrived at the hotel. We planned to go for a swim. Vinamr tried to open his suitcase with the code he thought was correct, but the code seemed to be wrong. He didn t understand it and called home to ask if he had the right code in mind. He did. It was a real mystery until the suitcase got opened by an iron cutter. His clothes weren t in the suitcase. Of course Vinamr started panicking (nearly got a heart attack) and realised it wasn t his suitcase. Remco and Vinamr headed off to their teacher (Mr. van der Klundert) and they told what had happened. After a lot of struggle, the phone number needed was found and it seemed that his suitcase was left at the airport and that they could come and pick it up. The suitcases may have been the same type, but Vinamr learnt to look on the nametag next time. When we arrived in Spain and met all the children from the different countries, it first seemed to be a barrier for us to make contact with the other children. This was because we didn t know how they would respond to us. Eva and Vinamr tried to break the ice many times but they failed pretty badly. It was not until they had the courage to TALK with them at the first diner which we had together. Of course now we think we could have made contact earlier. We were just not sure how too. A nice experience again. Talking with everybody wasn t only interesting but also very funny. We understood each other s jokes since all of us based them on earlier talks. All of us spoke together mainly (of course) in English. But we also tried to communicate with each other in other languages like Spanish and German. I think all of us had a great time and it was really wonderful for all of us to have such an experience. By Vinamr Rastogi By Vinamr Rastogi 5
lorem ipsum uitgavenr., datum Kayaking in the sea, a new experience On Tuesday the 12th of April, in the morning, the teachers went to a meeting for just the teachers. We however, had a much more adventurous and sportive activity. Our activity for that morning was kayaking on the sea. Personally, I was a bit nervous, because you were alone in one boat. This turned out to be unnecessary, because we were directed by two students of a gymnasio or a gym school. Directing us was an assignment for this gymnasio, as one of the two had told me in half Spanish and half English. Also a professional kayaker was present. The Kayaking itself also turned out to be very intensive, but nice. It not that difficult and we had fun splashing water on each other with our peddles. The wind-force was quite strong so we had to stay close to the shore, but this didn t take away the fun. After this sportive activity, we could relax a bit on the beach. By Eva Scherders It was a very intensive, but enjoyable activity for in the morning. The weather The weather from April 9 th to 14 th has been quite normal in Ceuta. The maximum measured temperatures, were 23 C. This is a bit above the average in April, which is 20 C. There has been a lot of sun, but clouds did cover the air sometimes. Most of the time it was partly cloudy. There has been no precipitation during these days. The wind has blown with a speed of 0-23 km/h, the average was about wind-force 3. For us the weather has been perfect. No to hot, but still warm enough to visit the beach and walk around in Ceuta. Because of the beautiful weather all the planned activities could proceed as planned, which was better than we could have ever imagined. By Eva Scherders