Arriving to Melilla
The first international
meeting started with some difficulties with the weather conditions: the wind
was so strong that only the Finnish team made it to Melilla as planned, while
the other teams were stuck at the Malaga airport. Luckily the Welsh team could arrive
already on Monday morning and the rest, Portuguese and Reunionese teams, came
on Tuesday morning. (Good thing was that one of the Spanish teachers, that is
within the project was also stuck in Malaga, so he could keep company to the
guests and show them the city.)
For us Finns, the journey
to Melilla was pretty long: On Saturday we travelled, together with Laanila high school's students and teachers, from Oulu to Helsinki and
then from Helsinki to Malaga. We arrived to Malaga quite late, so we just stayed
over the night at an airport hotel. On the Sunday morning we continued the
journey over the sea to the African coast and the city of Melilla. The host families
and the local teachers met us at the airport and welcomed everybody
with open arms. The Spanish adventure could start.
The wind was really
strong the whole evening, 80 km/h as worst, and the temperature was colder than we
had expected. Luckily, we got also some sunny days later during the week.
Monday
As half of the
participants were missing, Monday’s program had to be reorganized. We started
with the logo competition. Every partner school had in advance sent two or
three suggestions for the logo of the project, and the students that were present voted one of the Portuguese logos for the winner.
Then we had a panel
discussion about poverty in Melilla. A representant of Red Cross (Cruz Roja),
the director of Social Services in Melilla and a representant of charity organization
Cáritas were talking about their ways to help people in need. We learned that poverty
is a big problem in Melilla. As the population is increasing, also the poverty
is increasing. Poverty leads to inequality and exclusion. Organizations that work
to alleviate poverty have an important role in the city.
Tuesday
On Tuesday, when the
last participants finally arrived, we had an official reception at the school
by lovely principal Ana Garcia Pedregoza and the Head of Education in Melilla. After that,
the Spanish students had a presentation about their school and the city of
Melilla.
Together with the guests, the Spanish hosts also presented the 17 sustainable goals of UN, that our project is all about. The host school had made the goals visible in the school, for example with posters, t-shirts and bags. It is important that the whole school community is aware of not only the project but especially of the UN’s sustainable goals.
After the presentations
we took a bus to the old city of Melilla, Melilla Vieja, and had a guided tour with
the school’s tourism students as guides. Old city was really charming, and the
guides made the trip even more interesting.
After returning to
school the teachers had an awesome lunch with multiple dishes, that was
prepared and served by the school’s extremely talented cooking students, and an
eTwinning workshop. ETwinning is a platform that is used in the project to
share ideas and works between the partner schools.
Wednesday
Wednesday started
with the Route of the temples. We visited four holy places of the city’s four religions:
a Catholic church, a Jewish synagogue, a Hindu temple and an Islam mosque. Melilla
is a great example of how different religions can live side by side in peace.
After finishing the tour,
we had an official reception at the city hall where the President of the city
welcomed us and lots of local medias were represented. Later the day and the
next day we were both in the tv-news and in the newspapers.
We all returned to the school on the evening for a compost workshop and host family
evening with some Spanish dances and delicacies.
Thursday
On the way back to
school we drove by the fence at the Moroccan border that was very impressive.
The fence (or fences – there are four of them next to each other) surrounds the
city and separates Europe from Africa. Almost daily some fortune seekers try to
jump over the fence, and some of them succeed.
After the trip we had planned to go to a hiking trip and go tree planting in the countryside but the
weather had gone bad again, so we stayed indoors instead. There we had students’
presentations about sustainability in their own schools. It was interesting to
see and hear about the projects and theme days that our partners had done. We
got also a lot of ideas to put into practice in our school.
Friday
Because we hadn’t enough time
on Thursday, we had the rest of the students’ presentations on Friday. After that we had a coffee break where the diplomas of participating the meeting were
delivered with huge applauses and cheek kisses.
The teachers had a meeting
about upcoming meetings while the students had some sportactivities. Afterwards we gathered
once again in the assembly hall and had an extremely impressive lecture about trash in the ocean and how we all are responsible to make our beaches and waters
clean again. We also got a new assignment to be done before the next meeting in
Portugal: to examine and sieve one square meter on the beach and divide all the
trash we find into categories (plastic, cigarette ends etc.). For us Finns it will
be a bit challenging task as the beaches are already covered by snow. :D
The Finnish team had
to leave already on Friday, but we had one more chance to enjoy the Spanish kitchen:
the cooking students had prepared paella and some tapas that we enjoyed with
great appetite. Wind had become calm again and our plane could leave. This time
we stayed over the night in the center of Malaga where we had a little bit of
time even to explore the city.
Despite the weather
problems and the changes in the program the week has really succeed. We learned
a lot, got new ideas, widened our views and enjoyed the warm hospitality of the
Spanish team. Thank you, all the lovely people in Melilla and in the other partner
schools! It was easy to start the project in this cooperative and inspiring team!
