Just before Christmas seven of our students returned from a five-day visit to our partner school in Northern Germany.
They brought with them warm greetings and best wishes for 2010 to everyone at Wymondham College from host families, students and staff at the Niedersächsisches Internatsgymnasium in Bad Bederkesa.
They had travelled to Germany on a double mission. Firstly they were going to offer a selection of Christmas workshops to the younger students at NIG and secondly they were to explore the brand-new Klimahaus® Bremerhaven 8° Ost within the context of a joint climate-change project with their host partners. Despite a sudden onslaught of sore throats and tickling coughs, all students displayed a fantastic attitude throughout the visit and as such were brilliant ambassadors of the College.
After a warm welcome in his office by headteacher Peter Duryn, our delegation joined up with the host students to embark on a whole day’s climate change project with Ms Gray and Mrs Pfeiffer and their German colleague Frau Wiencke. An online competition was launched to find out who has the higher carbon footprint (in German: “CO2-Rucksack”) – the German or English students. We shall leave you in suspense as to the final result; there is soon to be a display in the Geography department. Throughout the activities all students engaged in bi-lingual discussions about the relevance of ‘climate-change’ to their lives, about the extent to which each and every one of us has a ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ foot and about pathways towards a more sustainable future. Some definitions and arguments were unavoidably lost in translation, however, spirits remained high throughout the day, which is certainly more than the eminent congregation in nearby Copenhagen could deliver.
The visit to the Klimahaus in Bremerhaven three days later was the definite highlight of this project. As a group we were setting out on a journey of discovery around the world, always following the 8th degree longitude. Starting from a railway platform in Bremerhaven itself, we travelled through such different climate zones as that of Switzerland, Sardinia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Antarctica, and Samoa – all the way making friends and getting to know sights, smells and sounds of the respective regions. Favourites with our students were the refreshing downpour of rain as experienced from the inside of a weather-beaten Fiat 500 on Sardinia and dressing up as Polar explorers at -10?C. It was difficult not to get drawn into the hardship of people’s lives as we met them on our journey. A separate section of the multi-media exhibition was in fact dedicated to the actual impacts that the change of climate has had on human beings, animals and their respective habitats.
The Christmas workshops were delivered with boundless enthusiasm on our last day in Germany. Whilst Lauren and Adam were making Christmas crackers with three sets of Year 7 classes, Alex, Dabota and Shannon impressed with their repertoire of Christmas carols. All German youngsters now believe that “Santa (really) got stuck in the chimney”! Chloe, Eloise and Ms Gray were meanwhile busy making Christmas cards with Year 6 students.
What more is there to say? We all were probably overwhelmed and intoxicated by the atmosphere at the German Christmas market in Bremen, the generosity of the host families and the abundance of food at meal times. I am sure this visit will stay in the memory of those who went and those we visited for a very long time. Hopefully many more students from NIG and Wymondham College respectively will be able to share similar experiences in the future. We look forward to welcome a German delegation next autumn.
Thank you to all those who helped to make this trip possible.
Mrs B. Pfeiffer
Please click
http://www.nordsee-zeitung.de/Home/Region/Cuxland/Cracker-zum-Fest-gebastelt-_arid,282781_puid,1_pageid,17.html
to read an article about the trip which appeared in the German newspaper Nordsee Zeitung.
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