Select a day
After
waking up I was really looking forward to a nice breakfast and some hot
drinks. So I packed my suitcase and my room mates and I walked to the
breakfast room (which we had not seen before). We followed the signs and
the music to the restaurant room. And what a surprise, I couldn't trust
my eyes; the room was some kind of a small church. There were huge colourful
windows at both sides of the room, the ceiling was several meters high
and you could see that they invested much in restoring this old room!
I was still impressed about the room when suddenly some other students
entered the room to have their breakfast. So we went to the buffet together.
There was a lot to choose from: coffee, tea, toast, jam but also eggs
and ham. We all took some slices of toast and enjoyed our meal together.
The atmosphere was very nice; we talked about the
previous day and the following ones. Our student Travel Manager told us
some details about the structure of the day and the travelling to Achill
Island. After that everybody checked out of the hostel and we took some
taxis to the train station.
After
arriving at the station our student social manager Laura (a Mexican girl
from the German station) started her job and introduced a game to the
big group. We called it the 'get-to-know-game'; everybody formed a circle
and one student got a little ball. Then we through it to someone else,
by saying for example "My name is Julia and now I throw the ball
to Katinka!". In this way we got to know one another very quickly
and learned a lot of different names. It was very funny! After that game
we asked if someone was able to tell all the 39 names, and Reka from Hungary
knew them all already - she won a big coffee!
After that nice game we were told to sign up for one of the seven interesting
workshops. It was not easy to decide, but after a while everybody wrote
their name on one of the lists. In the end there were lots of different
nationalities mixed in each workshop (for example in the 'Media Workshop',
there are Guillemette from France, Elin from Sweden, Agnes from Hungary,
Anda from Spain, Berit and Julia from Germany).
Julia Maas
(Germany group)
The First Mixing
Before
we got on the train we had some time left. To use the time as best as
possible our student social manager had the great idea to entertain us
with a famous French song. All the travellers at the train station were
staring at us and we had a blast. It helped us to break the ice. Then
we got on the train enjoying the wonderful landscape. Theo, one of our
group leaders, prepared an intercultural survey. Two people from different
nationalities got together and asked questions about their international
experience. That was really helpful to learn more about each other. I,
for example, talked to Magnus, he is from Sweden and told me about his
trip to Russia. It was really interesting to learn more about a country
I have never been to. After we arrived at Achill Island, we moved into
our cottages, which are little cute houses right by the coast in the middle
of an incredible landscape. In my cottage are four different nationalities
which is really interesting and a lot of fun. After dinner our student
language manager prepared a quiz for us. Everybody got a little card with
hints of one historical person in four different languages. We had to
work together to figure out the answer, which was a lot of fun. After
that we had a meeting in our project group. We started to work on our
structure for the week and collected first ideas. After a long day with
a lot of new impressions we went tired but happy to bed.
Nicole Mösslacher
(German group)
