IES “RAMON Y CAJAL” DE MURCIA, SPAIN 

The 1st meeting of our new Project, Europe United, took place fom 14th-19^th October 2011 and we prepared different activities for the visit.

 At the weekend, the visiting students could enjoy living immersed in our culture and traditions with their Spanish host families. Anyway, in case they might feel homesick, most of them went partying together.

All the teachers had a guided visit of the Museo de La Muralla in Murcia city on Friday evening. On Saturday we walked around the most typical places in town and then went to Torreagüera so that our foreign colleagues could see a typical cottage of the “huerta” area called “barraca” and the farming implements used in the past. On Sunday we went to Cartagena to show them the second city in the Region of Murcia. There we took the panoramic lift to enjoy the breathtaking views and we went to the Castle of Concepción, the Civil War Shelter and the Roman Theatre. Afterwards, we took them to the sea so that they could see, smell, and some of them even touch the Mediterranean Sea and the saltworks.

On Monday we welcomed the foreign teachers and students at school, and some Spanish students showed them around. After that, María Ponce, Marisa López and Manuel Navarro presented our region and our educational school system to the whole Comenius group. We followed with the exchange of the posters made by the different schools about the 1^st activity of the project “My European Union” and the exhibition of some of them in the hall. While we were evaluating the activity, the foreign students had the opportunity to play a volleyball match with our students, and also to attend some lessons with their Spanish hosts.

During the last period we prepared an “International Lunch” to which the 18 students involved in the meeting contributed with typical dishes from each country in the project. In the evening we enjoyed sightseeing again.

On Tuesday morning, both teachers and students participated in a music lesson and in a salsa lesson. Afterwards, the teachers met to work again on different issues of the project: the next activities, the mobilities, the blog and the website, and we also chose the logo that will represent the project in the next two years. In the meantime, the students took part in several lessons and sport activities. For the last period we prepared a cultural exchange with the students of 3^rd year of secondary education and they were talking to one another in the school courtyard. It was an extraordinary experience for all of them.

In the evening, after visiting the Real Casino of Murcia, we took the European teachers to the Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático (Drama Arts School), where we could enjoy lessons of flamenco and castanets, and an improvised  folk dance: “jota murciana”. Since the following day was the departure day for all the schools, we prepared a farewell party with the collaboration of many of the Spanish teachers envolved in the Project who made typical Murcian dishes for that special occasion.   We are really lucky to have a great musician within the Comenius cell at school, and he invited some of the many components of his group “Los Parramboleros” to play some of their songs for us. We had a terrific time and really nice memories.

Begoña Toro Velasco

Coordinator of the Comenius Project