Longer weekend than usually:-) 20th-23th March

• This looong weekend started with Vasek and Eliska´s birthday celebration On Thursday evening:-) The other day around noon our first big visit from the Czech Republic came to Haderslev- Vasek´s family, so next 4 days we spent with them. We travelled quite a lot, so these are the places we visited:
  
  
  
  • the island called Romo in the west coast where you can see white sandy places everywhere
  • Ribe, because it is quite close to this place and I love this historical town so much!!!
  • Odense, where we were walking a little bit in the centre
  • Roskilde- the capital in earlier times of Denmark and its beautiful cathedral + huge Viking museum
  Only the wind was blowing extremely: On Sunday afternoon we decidet to visit Christiania, "a state within the state"in Copenhagen, where people don´t have to pay taxes and live in former barrack and live on selling some souvenirs, running a few pubs and 1 really nice coffee place and also evidently selling canabis, because the smell of canabis was very strong everywhere in Christiania...:-) I don´t have any pictures, because it is allowed to make pictures there. I must say that I was afraid of going there(and I would probably never go there in the evening), but the rest persuaded me and although I didn´t feel there very safe, I am happy that I saw this social experiment with my own eyes and I will probably remember this visit till the end of my life:-)
  
  
  • On Monday we were just walking around Copenhagen, saw the most typical thing: a mermaid and then one of the most wonderful churches I have ever seen: the church was round with a round top, so it made special atmosphere inside.

AABENRAA: drama, music and movement, Wednesday 18th March

We had a special day today. It was special, because we went by bus to another part of University College South-to Aabenraa. When we came in, my first impressions were like-oh, aren´t we in some Art exhibition? The hall was very nice decorated with various products, for example ceramic ones and the whole interior created special art, creative and cosy atmosphere. Two teachers welcomed us and the lesson could start. At the beginning we were playing games focused on learning names and also singing some children songs. Although we know each other’s names very well, I must say that these games were funny, because we used movement and impulse a lot and our teachers were creative and enthusiastic.
Then we were playing few drama games in a circle, for example we imagined very heavy thing in front of us that could change its shape but not weight and had to pass it to the person standing next to us (then for a change a very light thing). Another game was based on passing “impulse” representing a clap of our hands and also on rhythm and the right sequence.

After a lunch break a special loud performance was waiting for us. We were practicing a samba rhythm with several kinds of instruments: I can mention only big, medium and small drums, because I don’t know the exact name of the others…:-) So each group had to learn a different rhythm and in the end to play altogether. This lesson was very loud and creative and I enjoyed it and also realised how difficult it is to follow the right rhythm among lots of others!

And what is more, during the lunchbreak we were sunbathing outside!!!:-)

And after school we went to the centre of Aabenraa, did some shopping walking.

COOKING DANISH AND INTERNATIONAL FOOD, Monday 16th March

We spent the whole morning in a huge kitchen (consisting of several smaller kitchens) at our college. It was quite a surprise for me, because I have never experienced University kitchen so far in the Czech Republic. So as it was explained to us, Danish population put an emphasize on an appropriate nutrition so it is important to have these lessons- in my opinion it is a great idea! So later, each nationality started to prepare their typical food. Our Czech unit chose a typical Old Czech food called BRAMBOROVÉ PLACIČKY with 3 different flavours: 1.sweet ones with jam, 2. garlic portion and 3. with red cabbage. I enclose the recipe in case somebody liked it and would like to cook Czech bramborové placičky:-) So:

INGREDIENTS:Potatoes
Coarsely ground flour
Salt
Eggs
Oil

For the top: garlic+butter, red cabbage, plum jam
Steps:
1. cook whole unpeeled potatoes
2. remove jackets and let the potatoes cool down
3. mash potatoes and add flour and eggs (as much as needed) and salt
4. roll out the dough
5. cut out rounds or whatever shapes (use for instance special shaped things as we did->it is easier and looks cute and funny:-)
6. fry placičky
7. add something as already mentioned on the top
8. And I wish you DOBROU CHUŤ! (=Bon appetite in Czech)

So about the noon everybody finished their preparation and described their typical food. And 3-course lunch was coming, first Hungarian delicious goulash, then salty food and desserts as the third. Everything was really tasty and after all the courses we looked like 14 satisfied balloons:-)

HADERSLEV MUSEUM 15TH March

Sunday afternoon belonged to Haderslev Museum where we were the only visitors at that time:-) This museum is focused on PREHISTORY OF NORTH SCHLESWIG (from about 4000B.C.: Paleolithic/Mesolithic Ages - Neolithic Age - Bronze Age - Iron Age - Viking Age) and also on HADERSLEV HISTORY since Middle Ages and Renaissance (1050) till Modern Times.
I really enjoyed this museum, especially collections of ceramic products from various ages and most of all probably Modern Times part where you can see Urban homes: Shoemaker´s room, upper class rooms, !!rural grocer´s shop!! And reconstructed street picture with old bikes and also period cat:-)
I can really recommend this museum to everybody!!!

INTERNATIONAL WEEK 9th-13th March

I-integrating newcomers:-) I was really surprised how quickly the new students became integrated into our Erasmus group; I had the feeling that I knew them longer than only a week + inviting new people to our flat in the afternoon, where we played several games, first for getting know each other more and then our favourite funny Tic-Tac game:-)

N-nice new people from various countries (Norway, Belgium, Holland, Portuguese, Austria, Germany, Denmark and Spain) T-teaching Danish:-) On Monday we became a Danish teachers for a while, it was very strange to teach this difficult language, but funny.

E-experiences from local schools-sharing experiences of all of us + Torbjorn

R-Ribe, the oldest town in Denmark-the pictures will tell everything:

N-nice weather, we were very lucky these days

A-amazing creating of several music bands

T-too many music lessons maybe

I-intercultural competence and stereotypes

O- one necessary visit at local dentists´ centre, poor Vašek, but his 2teeth were quickly put into order:-)

N- new points of view of the life

A- afternoon running (me around Haderslev pond and Vasek+ Aleix to the harbour), then I ran home for my camera, because the weather was so beautiful that I had to make some pictures of this late afternoon and especially of my favourite objects-trees.
L-living with Cindy, a Dutch girl. It was really nice to live with Cindy for this week, we enjoyed it and I hope she the same:-)
W-walk in the town of Haderslev with our interesting History teacher

E- evening full of nice Danish hygge at the college

E-Eurovision song contest K-key week in our Erasmus stay so far, I think that all of us were very happy for this international week and also expressed it during the final presentations. On Friday we had farewell lunch where every country prepared light lunch and then it was time to say goodbye to some of our new friends, because some of them were leaving...for example our Cindy:-(In the afternoon the Portuguese couple recommended to us to see a special mill not far from the university (because everybody got a special photo from these Portuguese in front of some mill, so we were curious where this place can be and how come that we hadn’t seen it so far:-), so we decided to go and find this place. And what’s more, we also found Haderslev archaeological museum and became a little bit ashamed, that we didn’t know about that for such a long time…:-)

7th-8th HAMBURG

The guys from the big and nice house (how I call them:-): Mate, Noemi, Zep and Eliska were planning a 2-day trip to Hamburg so it was great opportunity for me to go with them and visit my friend Natali who I was working with in Iceland almost two years ago and have stayed in contact through emails since that time:-) And I was also looking forward to seeing Hamburg, because I had never been to there before. And my impressions of this German city?

Veeery big (I saw it from the bird perspective:)

• wonderful Rathaus (we had a tour inside with a guide in english and there was also a great collection of drawings made by Hamburg citizens)

• a charming promenade along the harbour (when we went there with Natali, the sun started to shine, so the harbour looked different and very nice than from the bird perspective before:)

• amazing and colossal historic warehouse district within famous Hafencity (=the biggest inner city construction site in Europe!!!) with several museums inside


• I was also in the town 45minutes from Hamburg and spent an evening with my friend´s family and also the night, so it was really nice to meet her after such a long time!:-)

4th March- ART LESSON:PORTRAITS:-)

On Wednesday we had a very interesting art lesson focused on our portraits. Everybody made several portraits of himself/herslef and big mirrors became our partners during this lesson:-) First task was to draw ourselves only by watching into the mirror, not on the paper and to try to feel the distances between our parts of our faces. First time is first time so I couldn't recognise myself..:) But then we were practising is more times and I could see a little bit more similarities with my features:) I was amazed by several portraits of my Erasmus friends, some of them were so great that looked almost like a photo!

Another types of our portraits were for example: a face drawed only by 1 line and portraits made by drawing on the mirror and then put on a sheet of paper, or portraits based on precise measures with a ruler.

This lesson was so interesting and the teacher really nice. I learned more about how to make a portrait, how to be more precise in drawing ourselves. I think that I could use this maybe in English lessons: pupils would draw themselves and then describe themselves in English:-)

5th March-Eliska's birthday masala and apple pie party:-)

On Thursday almost everybody came to congratulate Eliska, because she celebrated her birthday. At the beginning while Eliska was preparing her special apple pie (according to family recipe), Anja, Vasek and me were filming an amateur short quiz show about the Czech Republic.

Then the others came and we were talking, drinking Indian delicious masala tea and tasting apple pie. After some time we decided to play Lilla's drama games and since that time I was laughing all the time, because the games were really funny:-) Especially tic and tac (I will never forget this game:), then creating several stories when each person has to add some continuation, or sitting in a circle and drawing some word on the back of sb. who was sitting in front of us (the whole circle same word) or Zep's game with dots. Thank you for this evening dear Erasmus friends!:-)

International food party and poker night:-)-last day of February

On Saturday we decided to interconnect food party with poker party so we called this evening as "International food and poker party":-) It was a really nice evening we enjoyed it. We wanted to cook typical Czech food called "bramboracky", but Polish girls were quicker and cooked a pile of their typical Polish food called "bramboracky"too:) It was the first time I have tried bramboracky with sugar or garlic sauce and it was very tasty. Carlos cooked his speciality-omelette and baguettes with typical Spanish ham, it was also very nice.

And after this rich dinner Mate explained Poker rules to us so we started to count tokens carefully:-)