Week Six

Cultural

Eimear and me in Eindhoven

On Monday I had the opportunity to teach the children a little about where I come from, I made a PowerPoint and talked through the pictures outlining the different aspects of life in Belfast, it was received well and the children could understand most of what I was saying, they asked really well thought out questions and were genuinely interested in the topic. It was lovely to be able to show them a little of my culture and for them to see the similarities and differences between Northern Ireland and the Netherlands. I find the children in my class are growing more confident in speaking to me and Silvia, they will have longer conversations with us in English and will tell us more about themselves, they have been teaching me the Dutch names for animals and  ‘jeukende’ which means itchy.

St Cathatina's church

On Thursday we had to talk about the political systems of our countries and found that a lot of them are very similar it was interesting but not as interesting as learning about different parts of Dutch culture from the comedian John Fealey, an English comedian who had spent sometime in the Netherlands. We watched a video where he introduced us to the celebration of Koninginnedag (Queen’s day) it is the celebration of the Queen’s birthday, which occurs on the 30^th of April however next year it will be called Koningsdag (King’s day) and will be celebrated on 27^th of April. There will be a type of flea market and everyone will dress in orange, I am very excited to see this and I hope it will be just as fun as carnival was. I think I will teach children about the celebrations of the Netherlands instead of just the usual world celebrations that are outlined in ‘Celebrations and good times’ thematic unit, I knew nothing about the festivals and it is such as shame and they are very rich in culture and children would find them extremely interesting .In this the children will be covering a wide range of thinking skills and personal capabilities and well as cross-curricular skills, Children have opportunities to have experiences with all the senses ,enjoy the unexpected, unusual and surprising and also make connections between their own culture and others. CCEA (2007)

Interesting looking shop

Visitor from home

This weekend my friend from Belfast came to visit me in Nijmegen it was brilliant to see her again and to show her around the city and she also brought me Tayto crisps and tea bags from home which is wonderful because it’s like a little reminder of home.  She arrived in Eindhoven so we decided to take the opportunity to visit another city and to pick her up from the airport. Eindhoven is a lot more modern than Nijmegen, it has more shops and will also be getting a Primark very soon, we also visited St Catharina’s Church which is absolutely stunning, it is interesting to be able to compare the different cities,  I find Eindhoven beautiful in a very different way to Amsterdam and Nijmegen. 

Of course the week rounded off with a celebration of St Patrick’s Day, everyone became Irish for the day we painted our fellow Erasmus student’s faces and decorated ourselves in various shades of green in the flat before heading out into the centre to find the Irish pub, aptly named the Shamrock. In the pub we had Guinness and sang the usual songs to sing on St Patrick’s Day at the top of our lungs, I think we scared a good few of the locals and they probably though we were mad, but it was a great experience to bring a little bit of our culture to the Netherlands. Everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves and we really lived up to the Irish stereotype, so the next few weeks we shall have to focus on work rather than fun.

 St Patrick's day!

 CCEA, (2007) Celebrations and Good Times! Thematic Unit, Northern Ireland Curriculum, CCEA, Belfast.