Category: 09 Bonn/Dunkerque/Katowice

Like every morning, we started today with language animation. At first, we learned the numbers from 1-4 in the three languages present. After we mastered the three languages, to my and our surprise, the poster was unfolded, showing the numbers of 5-10. We then learned and pronounced these together as well.

The next part was working in Jaworzno, which started today. We take the bus to the school. Lucky for us, the bus stop is directly in front of our door, as it was raining very heavily. However, the bus was not perfectly watertight, which some of us found amusing.

After we arrived, we were told the rules for working on a construction site. Fortunately, the trainers also showed it, which made listening not quite so boring. I was aware that the rules for working on the construction site are important, however, I wanted to know what we will do specifically as quickly as possible. This was done in the next step. The trainers explained which tasks we had to solve together during our next few work units.

One group will build a garden, while another group will create a path of senses. These two building projects share an area, which has to be divided, as a total of 5 sections are to be developed: Garden, path of senses, a large garden, another path of senses, and a small garden as well.

We divided into groups, corresponding to the amount of work to do. The third group was for building seating. I decided on the group building the path of senses, as I though the reaction to the different materials, and how differently they felt, was interesting. My group, as well as the garden group, began with removing the weeds. The work took an hour, and we freed nearly all the area from the weeds. While working I noticed that I was gradually noticing the traffic noise on the road less and less, however my fellow participants more and more.

We worked well as a team, as we have a shared goal and we know that we can reach it only together. The work today was quite pleasant, as it did not rain, improving the mood in the group. I liked the work, as I knew I was doing it for a good cause, and it improved our collaboration.

Dominique, 19 Jahre

Today we learned the important words “Good day, Thank you, Please, Excuse me, and Good Night”in German, French, and Polish. This is for our groups to communicate better.

After that we talked about our main topic “Together for the environment” and learned from each other about the topic. There were five expert groups, which each dealt with a subtopic.

After all this brain training, we had time for international games including different parts. The teams consisted of two French, two Polish, and two German youths each. The teams always had to solve specific tasks in their group. After the award ceremony the whole group had to play a game which turned out to be quite challenging. But one has to say that, after initial difficulties, the group solves the challenge very well. The game was us youths lifting us over a piece of rope at about the height of the hips, without touching the rope.

This day strengthened our team spirit and furthered our communication.

Saidi Saskia, 21 years

After our shared breakfast, we all gathered in our meeting room. We played a number of language games in order to improve our skills in the respective foreign languages, presented our wishes and expectations for the two weeks, and finally discussed a number of organisational matters. Like for example our daily schedule.

Next, we went to the city (Olkusz) together, where we had a town rally, and after that we could explore the town.

Finally, we went back to our accommodation.

Thus, the day was very cool and a lot of fun.

Jessica, 18

The local media in Hazebrouck reports on our workcamp!

The article can be found here:

http://www.lavoixdunord.fr/region/flandre-un-chantier-ulturel-europeen-enrichissant-est-ia18b0n3624534