What do you know about the European Union?

Polish students made some posters and drawings, painted pictures and wrote short articles about the European Union and put up them on the school board bulletin, which was placed on the wall in front of the entrance to their school.

My image of Poland

We think that polish people are nice and friendly. They are a little bit different because our traditions aren’t the same. One thing that is different from us is the religiosity. There people feel the religion more inside and they practise it much more than us. They go to the church every Sunday with formal clothes. Their clothes are different. We think that they have got a different style. They were very affected because of the Second World War, and you can see it in many buildings and especially churches because Poland is the country that suffered more the Nazi destruction.

Their diet is very different from our diet. It is based in soups, meat and a lot of vegetables. They prefer drinking hot tea than water. Most of the people have a vegetable garden near their house. Their eating timetable goes earlier than ours: they have lunch at 12 o’clock and the dinner is at 7 o’clock. Although their food was different it was good. In the trips they gave us a lot of chocolate and sweets.

The country is very beautiful and it has got a lot of nature everywhere and the touristic places were far from where we were. The town where we stayed was small and it was formed by a central street and then other little streets that ended in this central street. In the town everybody has a house because they are few people and they have been living there for a long time.

The first days of our stay there, the weather wasn’t very good because it rained but the other days were sunny days.

Laura Colom and Ivette Sabanés

My image of Poland

Our image of Poland in general is nice, but there are some things , like the weather , that we didn't like this much. So now we will explain you in detail our vision of this country.
The people in Poland are quite nice, but more closed; you have to talk t0 them so that they trust you. Well, when we arrived the Polish students and their families came to us and hugged us.
In the culture there are many differences from our culture. For example ; they are very religious, they usually haven't got a big breakfast and they have lunch earlier than us and have dinner at 7p.m.
There is a typical dance and music that everybody has to know. When you enter in a house you have to take off your shoes. The way of cooking is very different because there the people usually eat a lot of meat and fat, potatoes and others things. They also eat a lot of vegetables, rice, soups, in the lunch and in the dinner. In the break time they eat a lot of chocolate, sweats and little cakes.
In Poland the scenery, was very rural and perfectly clean. We had a very good time in Poland with our friends and the teachers! We miss Sylwia and Łucja.

Mercè Gaitan and Cristina Castañe

Poland

In June, we went to Poland. We stayed in Juszcyna, a village near to Zywiec. In Zywiec,
there was a factory which made one of the most important beer in Poland. In that factory,
we saw the museum of the beer, and the process of making this drink was really interesting and
curious. In Poland, the beer is traditional but in Spain, the traditional is the wine.

People in Poland were really nice, some people of Poland have got a low level of English so the communication was sometimes really difficult for people from another country.

People were very religiously and they went to church every day in the morning and some of
people went in the afternoon, too.

Polish culture is really interesting and there are a lot of beautiful places. Crackow was really
pretty and there was interesting history about the Second World War.

The food was ok, the first dish was often soup and the drink that accompanied the meals was tea.

In our opinion, Poland was very beautiful. In the future, we are going to this country again.

Miguel Galán Alcalde
Jordi Cucurull Galofré

MY IMAGE OF POLAND

Visiting Poland has been an incredible experience. Poland and Catalonia are very different places with very different cultures and lifestyles. The weather is also quite different from here.

People there have a very simple life, without many possessions. They live in humil houses, most of them made of wood, with all their family. However, they are very familiar, close together and grateful and our Poland families were so nice and lovely with us.

Their culture is quite different. Polish people are more religious than Catalan people, they go to the church every time they can and they believe in church values, they are also very traditional and follow the catholic traditions, for example they eat fish instead of meat on Fridays. There is a lot of folklore, like the paper flowers or their typical dances which everybody knows.

The landscape in Poland is really beautiful , it’s like a huge green carpet, where the trees seemto touch the sky and you can feel a lot of peace and breath pure air.

In general Polish people eat a lot of soups with vegetables, meat, and drink a lot of tea. Unlike Mediterranean diet, in Poland they use butter instead of olive oil and they don’t eat much fruit or fish so we think that they don’t have a very healthy diet.

Their level in English isn’t very good but they try their best. We think their maths and chemistry classes were more interactive because they practice what they learn in the laboratory. They also have a higher level in those subjects.

Our Polish students were Magda and Basia, we have a very good memories of them and our stay in Poland was great.

Thank you for all :)

Queralt and Emma.

MY IMAGE OF POLAND

We think that the people of Poland are very nice, responsible and different.
Their culture is more religious than ours, they believe in Jesus more than us. In Spain some people believe in Jesus, but in Poland on Sundays they go to the church, and the celebrations like Christmas or Easter are more religious than here, in Spain.
The country is very nice, but there aren’t too many shopping centers and things like this, and we are more advanced in technology.
The landscape is very mountainous, with trees, lakes, sometimes it's cold, altough when we went there in summer, it rainned some days and, and the temperature were very cold.
The food is different, the food is usually sandwiches, with butter, almost all the food contains butter, they eat a lot of soups, they usually drink tea, they almost never drink wine or water in the meals.
They are usually in the street, meet with friends in the park, and things like this, but they almost never go to the cinema, to the disco, use the computer or the mobile phone, and it’s very different.

Ariadna González
Laura Fernández

September

Polish students chose some pictures taken during Spanish guests’ stay in their village and put them on the board bulletin. They placed it on the wall in the main school corridor.
Apart from that, they have been writing some diaries about Spanish pupils visit in Juszczyna too.
Examples:
“In June 2011 Spanish came to Juszczyna. They were staying here from the 5 th to 15 th of June. During their stay we were travelling to different places with them. We were in Oświęcimiu to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau-the Museum of the Concentration Camp, where a lot of the Jews and other nationalities were killed by the German Nazi during the Second World War. We were in Kraków, where we saw the Saint Maria’s church and Wawel Castle-the seat of Polish kings. Next we travelled to Żywiec, where we saw the Brewery Museum. Next days we spent at school. I hope that Spanish guests were glad with Polish hosts. Spanish youth and teachers were very nice people.”
Mateusz
“The Spanish students visited Juszczyna in June. My friends, teachers and I welcomed them in our school. Each Spanish student lived in the house of my classmates. They went on some trips. They visited Kraków ,Wieliczka and Żywiec Brewery's Museum. Spanish students often went out with me and my classmates. We went on the pitch and played football and volleyball. One day we organized a party. We danced and we had a good time together. After their departure for Spain we missed them a lot.”
Marcel

Conference in Bielsko-Biała

The Regional Conference on Polish Presidency of the European Union.
On the 3rd October the coordinator of our project, Edward Szczyrk and his colleague, Maria Zaor took part in the Regional Conference on Polish Presidency of the European Union

in Bielsko-Biała. They gave a short presentation on our project there.

The conference was organized by the Educational Inspectorate in Katowice.
The conference’s participants presented European programmes of the European cooperation and Polish schools shared their experiences connected with the projects, which have been done with their partners’ schools from the whole Europe.
Different schools from the Silesia Region showed their achievement in the meeting and prepared exhibitions to present the objectives, products and results of their projects.

Poland 2011 Diaries

Students from School El Casal in Castellar del Vallès visited the partner school in Juszczyna, Poland, in June 2011 for ten days.
Here are some diaries from some students participating in the visit.

6th June 2011

It’s the second day of our Exchange in Poland and we started to do some presentations about our culture and costumes in Spain. Then, the Polish students acted a play for us “The prince Cinders” and when the play finished the other students sang some songs in English. After this, we went to visit the cemetery and then the church, where the priest told us about the history of the church.

When we finished visiting the most important things of the village, we had lunch in the school. Then we went to a classroom and discussed about our differences and similarities. After this, all the students and teachers went to Żywiec. There went shopping because it was raining and we couldn’t stay out, but when the rain stopped we went to a very nice and big park and visited a Castle. At the end of a park there was a bus waiting us to go back home.

Ivette Sabanés