Feedback from Nijmegen

What a special year it was, indeed. Four young people, two from Spain and two from The Netherlands had the opportunity as exchange students to spend three months abroad. And, very important, Europe paid a great deal of their costs!

Of course we teachers from Mieres and Nijmegen know each other for some years now. We had a wonderful language project “SKILL” together and we wanted to continue our cooperation with another project. We think it is very important that young people go abroad and learn from other cultures. It is good for their personal development and for the use of languages, of English in this case. And so we decided to start this individual project for our four pupils. What was important for them in this school year?

First, they stayed in the family of their exchange partner and were able to learn a lot about cultural differences in family life. This has been one of the main goals of our project. We want to thank the Spanish families for their warm welcoming and hosting of our girls Marieke and Roos. They had a great time in the families.

Second, at both schools we, the teachers, gave the students a nice week schedule of lessons in all kinds of subjects in English, not too many, because they had to do a lot homework for their own school too. Beside of this, they were able to participate in other activities like sport, music, trips etc. In this way they learned many things about school and social life in another country.

Third, they travelled around in the other country with the host family or with friends from school. They saw many things they didn’t see before.  For our Marieke and Roos the Ocean, the mountains and of course Madrid were the highlights. For Andrea and Aique for example our flat delta country with rivers, windmills, dikes and Amsterdam were new and exciting.

And what about us teachers? Why do we do this? More than one thing has to be mentioned. It is wonderful to see how young people from abroad cope in a new situation and to be able to help them. It is very motivating to work with collegues in another country to develop such a nice project.

Look around and see the world

Look around and see the people.

You see, you wonder, you admire.

Growing insight in nations, cultures, and in mankind,

Especially in yourself.

Henri Pieper

Eliane Buningh,

Teachers in charge of the project at Kandinsky College

In fall 2012 I went for 3 months to Asturias, Spain. My school was one of the first to participate in such project and, together with Roos van Lin, I was the lucky one  allowed to go.

I left home in September and moved in with a nice family with one son. He would be my partner for 6 months in this project. In those 3 months I went to a Spanish high school, had 10 hours of Spanish language a week and gave a lot of presentations about Holland. I also saw quite a bit of the Spanish culture and nature. I even went twice to the capital Madrid.

 I really enjoyed those months but it was quite tough as well. You’ll get to know yourself better and better and you see how you deal with certain situations. This is quite frustrating in the beginning. For example I never thought that I would have difficulties with being alone in a foreign country. I was quite homesick after one and a half month, though. I missed my friends a lot, but luckily I had my own room for some privacy at a time and Roos who was going through exactly the same thing, which offered some support. So I would recommend to go on an exchange with some other students as well, instead of going all by yourself. Also the match between the exchange partners is something important which in any case will influence your exchange experience. I experienced some difficulties on this area, but all with all, I had a lovely time in Spain. I really enjoyed everything new I saw and did, and it may be worth repeating.

Marieke Burghoorn, 

Participant, 17 years old.