Select a day
First impressions of the Achill experience
This
is the first time a group of Hungarian students participated in the "Borrowed
Identities" project. It was 7 p.m. we were in the airport and the
check-in for the flight to Dublin was closing in a few minutes. One of
our students had not arrived yet and I couldn't even reach her on the
mobile phone. There was a car accident on the road to the airport. She
might get stuck there. This was the scene how it all started for the Hungarian
team. We were really relieved when on our way to the gates she finally
arrived. From then on everything went quite smoothly for the whole time.
Students from all over the world found their way to each other. What surprised
me the most was the lack of knowledge students in western Europe have
about our country. We were glad that we had the opportunity to show the
cities, landscape and music of Hungary at the Farewell presentation on
friday. Working in an international environment is always a challenge
for students and teachers alike. As it was our first time I was not so
sure how well the Hungarian students will get on with the others. Although
we learned that one Hungarian stereotype is 
being
shy it took only a little time until they were integrated. Mixing nationalities
in the cottages and workshops were creating cottages profiles and learning
funny stories from each other. We certainly laughed a lot! What made Achill
special? Intensity is the keyword. It is intensive work, intensive human
relations and it is an intensive intercultural experience. You experience
many stages of acculturation from exploring at the beginning though feeling
lonely and homesick when your purse is stolen. You also begin to wonder
if there is a certain level of assimilation to the multicultural when
it comes to say good-bye. It seems it becomes really hard to leave the
others behind. I'm sure this trip is an experience for a lifetime for
students and teachers alike.
Réka Ildikó Rátkainé Jablonkai
(Hungarian group)
Learning a Lesson for the Real Life
I
am in the Media workshop and one of our productions is the photo album.
I was the person in charge of the creation of the concept. I took time
before the meeting to write my ideas. For me, to think about the project
I took the perspective of the consumers… and because of this the
concept seemed to be a little bit complicated. All my team workers were
skeptical and did their best to say that it will be too much work for
such a short period of time, and sSo that the concept wasn't for us. But
because I really thought that the concept was good, I tried to find all
the arguments I could to make my partners take part of my project. So
I tried to do my best to explain my ideas in another way and tried to
answer their questions in order to get all the votes at the end. Now,
I can say that I have done a good work because all the team agreed with
the photo album project. I think that what happened in our meeting is
a perfect example of the real life, if you work in marketing or other
similar areas and you work on a project and you think that you project
could convince a lot of consumers before going to meeting, you need to
take time to think about all the objections your team could come up with.
If you take this reflections time you will be able to convince people
on your project. The workshop was a good lesson for the real life including
myself because at the end it took more time than what I had expected.
Guillemette Le Guennec
(the French in the German group)
