Week Three

Professional

The excitement is increasing this week as we prepare for our two day placement in practice school, we will find out the name of the school this week and the partner who we are to work with. I myself am very nervous about what to expect and what differences I will see within the school environment, however I am put at ease by the Americans who have already been placed in a school. They have given glowing reports about their mentors and the students; our Irish friends Ciara and Michelle have also been in practice schools from September and they also have a lot of positive things to say about the children and teaching environment.

My picture for class

A lot of what we are learning in class focuses in on other cultures within the Erasmus group, this week we had to pick a picture that represent our country and then present it to the group. I choose to focus on the city of Belfast and the titanic, the past of northern Ireland has been asked by different people and I find sometimes it’s very hard to explain to people, but it puts us in better stead for the future when trying to explain something so deep routed in our past and present to children we will be teaching. Thankfully we found out that our fellow Erasmus don’t have to harsh an opinion of Northern Ireland as we originally thought.

Austrian castle

I found out a lot of interesting information about other people’s cultures, for example the people from Finland use saunas quite often and are missing them a lot when studying here. Latvia has a huge music festival every five years with around 13 thousand people in attendance. Austria has a lot of lakes, castles and mountains; from the pictures we were shown it is a truly beautiful country. Most interesting is the political situation in Belgium between the Dutch and French side, something that I was completely unaware of until I came here.

What I have learnt this week has sparked some creative thinking in how I would apply these types of discussions to a classroom, the NI Curriculum(2007) suggests that children should learn about some positive and negative changes in the locality caused by human/natural events and that some human events in the past impacted globally. Within the topic of children’s place within the world I think that it is very important to teach children about many different places and cultures as I myself has been inspired by other people’s cultures and greetings ( i.e. kissing on the cheek when greeting people or saying goodbye) and had the ability to compare them to my own culture and learning, I find that children would find it equally as interesting and beneficial. It is important that a child learns to find their own sense of place in the world, Owen and Ryan (2001) highlights that children when developing a sense of place, will start by showing an interest in the world in which they live ad then begin to notice differences and ask questions discussing what they like and dislike and how they can compare it to their own culture. The ability to compare and contrast cultures and environments is an important skill for children to learn.

CCEA (2007) Northern Ireland Curriculum, Belfast, CCEA.

Owen,D. Ryan,A.(2001)Teaching Geography 3-11,The Essential Guide ,London,Continuum.

Week Two

Cultural

So after only a few days of classes I got a whole week off to celebrate carnival; it’s a festival mostly celebrated in the south of the Netherlands. Due to this holiday a lot of the Erasmus group decided to take this time to return home or to visit different places around the Netherlands and alas Eimear and I were left to fend for ourselves for a while.

Venray parade

Eimear and I were very lucky to be invited by an Erasmus student from last semester Joyce, to visit her in Venray where we received a very warm welcome and were looked after so well by her and her parents .  There is nothing I can really compare carnival to from back home, it's a wonderful cultural difference. Everyone comes together to celebrate, the young and the old dress up in costumes, houses are decorated and the village all comes together with a sense of community that is breath-taking to celebrate. We watched the parade as it made its way through the town of Venray; each village had made a massive float, some were more intricately designed than others, with moving parts, on top of these floats were the prince and princesses that each village had elected, they had a lot of people joining them as well in special costumes dancing and rocking to the carnival music. Even though I don’t know the Dutch language I could still appreciate the music and recognize some of the themes they had chosen for their float. The day ended with a few drinks in the tent were the band was playing, it was packed with people all in costume enjoying the music and fun, in the Netherlands it is legal to drink from the age of sixteen, I found this very strange but they do not have the binge drinking problems that we have back in the UK.

Fieke and I 

The next day we met another former Erasmus student Fieke who still maintains a slight Belfast accent, it was great to see her again after so long and to spend the day exploring the town of Nijmegen. We walked across the Waalbrug and took in the views of the city and then had a catch up over coffee, I hope to visit her again soon in her home village.

Amsterdam

The week ended with a two day trip to Amsterdam, I have been dying to go from the moment we arrived. The first day we settled into our hostel near the dams square and then began exploring the sights to see. It is such a beautiful city; I love the mix of old and new architecture and the canals that flow throughout. On one bridge I found locks with couple’s names on it, and I can understand exactly when walking through the streets and over bridges why people say it is romantic. On the second day after 10 years of waiting I finally got to see the Anne Frank museum, it was a heart wrenching and sobering experience to be in the place where she spent two years hiding from people who wanted to take her life because of her religion. There are a lot of lesson we can learn from the past and this museum brings a lot of those to mind. Her father Otto Frank the only one to survive after their betrayal dedicated the rest of his life to publishing Anne’s diary and to the museum to educate the future generations,I leave you with a quote from Otto.

We cannot change what happened anymore. The only thing we can do is to learn from the past and to realize what discrimination and persecution of innocent people means. I believe that it’s everyone’s responsibility to fight prejudice. Otto Frank, 1970.

Week One

Personal

"If you're twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel - as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them - wherever you go" Anthony Bourdain (2010)

Darren and I on the plane

I had this quote in mind when I boarded the plane to start my journey to the Netherlands to start Erasmus and what a journey it was, it’s hard to believe that I've only been here for one week. The journey started In Belfast international airport with the surprise of our lovely friends meeting us at the airport with a poster to wish us well, it was an emotional goodbye but that was quickly followed by excitement when we arrived at Schiphol airport. Apart from a certain incident with an escalator were I lost one of my bags and had to run back up the downward moving stairs to get it the journey was very easy.

The  'Family room'

When we arrived at halls we didn't have any buddies like we would have expected from Stranmillis, we felt a little bit lost and the feeling only got worse when we discovered that there was no Wi-Fi. Then we heard the welcome sound of other voices apart from our own and ran out to meet our flatmates, two lovely people from Belgium, I have not spent a day so far without laughing so much my ribs hurt.

We met the rest of the Erasmus group and the people who would be looking after us, Magda and Ben, on Friday and it was such a warm welcome. There are people from all over Europe; we were introduced to two girls from Dublin who have been here from September and were very excited to have some other ‘Irish’ people arriving, so they have been showing us around and helping us get our footing in this wonderful diverse and beautiful city.

Our welcome at pabo

Our classes started on Monday and unfortunately we didn't have bikes then so we were a bit late as we got lost by walking in the wrong direction, I showed a new found skill in map reading and we arrived eventually.We had a brief introduction to the Dutch education system; I would say that it is similar to our own in some ways but very different to ours in others. For example Dutch children take a test at the age of 11/12 to decide what secondary education they fall into, however there are three different routes that they can take, they are all trained to have a career regardless of how socially desirable that career may be, all students must stay in education until they have gained qualification.

My beautiful bike

We finally bought bikes on Tuesday and have been cycling around the town ever since, we have to cycle about 25 minutes to the university everyday so we may come back to Northern Ireland a lot more healthy than we left. I enjoy the freedom of having a bike and being able to take trips into the town to have coffee and not feel bad eating a huge chocolate muffin.

Shopping in Nijmegen

Overall the first week has been one to remember, I've made friends in one week which I know I will have for the rest of my life and am looking forward to the rest of my time here, learning about other cultures and learning more about myself along the way.


A,Bourdain. (2010) Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook,Bloomsbury Publishing, Great Britain.