National Presentations
At the end of each day there was a cultural night of one or two of the participating countries which every time tried to prepare an interesting and original presentation of their nation and home land and share it with others.
Atmosphere of the evenings was relaxed and all facts were presented in an amusing and catchy way with awareness of the non-formal education part.
We had an opportunity to learn useful information about every country such as geographical characteristics, population, currency, traditional habits and folklore dances. Using colorful PowerPoint presentations with plenty of photos and videos this was both entertaining and educational at the same time. The Polish and Greek groups showed us one of their folklore dances and successfully taught us a part of it.
To catch everyone’s attention, each group used a different and inovative approach.
As this was a graffiti exchange, Czech guys presented their own works in an electronical design book.
Polish group prepared their traditional dance and a pronounciation game which was very funny because it is quite uneasy for French or Spanish to say words like “BRZĘCZYSZCZYKIEWICZ”.
Estonians stressed out the importance of singing in their history and so sang a traditional song.
Since Greece is a paradise for an eye of a tourist not only because of beautiful beaches and small islands, but it also has an enormously rich and famous history, we watched several videos displaying the most attractive architectonical and natural wonders of this country. In the end noone missed the opportunity to learn or improve his skills at the traditional Greek dance!
Although the previous evenings were pretty well prepared, Spanish and Italian team managed to perform at a level that amazed the whole collective.
Spain started with a hilarious self-made video about typical characteristic of their nation, continued with offering a degustation of different pork hams and finished with presentation of their country including a map game and list of important parties.
Italians took this awsome evening as a challenge to prepare something as perfect as their Spanish colleagues did. Humor was the number one word for what they showed us. Videos that made fun of Italians themselves had a great success: we saw a short movie about an Italian who went to Malta and because of his poor knowledge of English and funny pronounciation he experienced different crazy moments of misunderstanding. In several sketechs we could find some usual stereotypes about Italy and its inhabitants. These were also very funny.
For the last evening we were looking forward to a French presentation, which brought us a video about Metz, the city near to which the exchnge was held, and posters with some important French landmarks and famous sights.
All national presentations took place in a spirit of common understanding and respect for one’s different habits, noone was persuading the others about superiority of his nation. The most time we were laughing thanks to great sense of humor of all participants.
Finally, thanks to these evenings we discovered different cultures and various ways of living in European countries, learned to understand the nature of each nation and the most of all – spent a wonderfull time with friendly people.
