dinsdag 21 september 2010

Everything New


Leiden, September 20th 2010

This morning, at 8.45 am, the students met at Socrates to begin a busy day. At first the teacher said what they had to do and then they were divided into four groups. From 9.30am to about 10.15am the students had a speech course in which they had to convince other students of what they were saying, using as many rhetorical tricks as possible. After a small break there was an explanation of the Karl Popper debate and at 11.00am the students had a preparation for the debating match that there will be on Wednesday. In that way they improved their eloquence, trying to speak about dificul and important arguments, like the influence in the social behavior by architectural design and the taxes that the governments should or shouldn’t impose on pollution. In the afternoon Dutch and Italian people went visiting Nieuw Energy (New Energy) and Nieuw Leiden (New Leiden), where they were able to discover some examples of social sustainable building and neighborhoods. At “New Energy” they were able to see the homeless that have a chance to work and that can provide their food. At “New Leiden” the students discovered how the designers projected the new sustainable buildings. Those are examples of the solutions to “get people connected”, so to be social sustainable. The next step was to come back school and to try to design the square near the school and to relate Socrates school with the building and the people with which they would a relationship . After the students presented their projects they was able to come back home and to organize themselves.

maandag 20 september 2010

Matteo and Merel's story about the first day

Eep day one:
By bike to school at nine, a little bit slow but it went allright. first mrs. roos and mrs. reichart gave us an assignment to do in leiden. Then we had a cycling course, because last year there were some troubles with the italian people and the bikes. Jana and ocke, who participated last year, had made a parcours for us. After the course we went to town to do the poetry assignment. When we came back at school we chose one of the poems and made a poster of it. Then we had lunch with strawberries and mini-cucumbers. After lunch and finishing our posters we had some spare time. We went to the Albert Heijn with a very large part of the group. when everyone bought something to eat and drink we went to a parc and enjoyed ourselves for a few hours.. then everybody went home to prepare the dinner for that evening. for the buffet all of the dutch host brought something like pizza and salads.
At the end of the meeting in the evening the dutch prepared a ppt to introduce themselves to the italians and the italians sang a song for the dutch. To really end up the day everyone told something about their posters and poems. it was a very nice day!
Merel



Leiden, September 18th 2010

Italian and Dutch students met at 9.30 at school for the presentation of the program of the EEP project. Here, all the guys taking part in the project knew what they were going to do in the morning.
First of all, the Cycling Course: Italian guys just needed a little practice, so they did some useful and fun exercises. The first exercise was a competition between the six teams, just like a race. In the second exercise, two students had to “give each other a five” or throw a little ball while cycling. And the last exercise: how many people can you carry on your bike? That was the most funny exercise of all: you could see even five people on a bike at the same time!
Then, everybody left school for the poetry assignment: there are poems from all over the world written on the walls of the town and the students had to bike and find them. After exploring the city to find the most interesting poem, we came back to the Stedelijk Gymnasium for lunch.
Then, all the guys started the afternoon activity: they chose another poem from a foreign writer and they transformed the poetic language into a drawing that could explain it. Meanwhile, two students, an Italian guy and a Dutch guy, were working on the translation of the poem in their own language.
But the time was over and we had to leave the school. We had some free time in Leiden and the Dutch students showed Italian guys what a beautiful town Leiden is.
Then we met at Stedelijk Gymnasium for a buffet dinner. There was plenty of good food and everybody was very hungry.
After dinner, the day’’s activity was over: each group presented its own poem, by introducing both the two translations and the drawing.
The first whole day in Leiden had just ended, at least for the “school” part of it…

Matteo Bertero

Amsterdam Amsterdam...

Amsterdam’s trip

Yesterday the whole group of Italian and Dutch students went to Amsterdam. The train was a bit slow in the morning so everybody could sleep after a tiring evening..... It took 30 minutes to arrive in Amsterdam and first thing went on a boat tour all around the canals of Amsterdam. From the boat we could see many famous places of Amsterdam such as Anne Frank’s house a voice told us interesting information about everything we could see. After that our teacher decided to take us for a quick tour into the red light district because it is one of the characteristic things of Amsterdam. I can say that the boys had real fun in there but I don’t think so about the girls. After that we went to the Begijnhof , the Begijnhof is the only inner court in Amsterdam which was founded during the Middle Ages, and therefore lies within the Singel the innermost canal of Amsterdam's circular canal system. The Begijnhof is at medieval street level, which means a metre below the rest of the old city centre. Here we could see a placard that talked about the Pilgrim Fathers that is a subject that we studied at school.
After that we had free time in Amsterdam and we could do everything we wanted. Some of the student also stayed in Amsterdam for dinner. In my opinion Amsterdam is very cool because it’s the right mix of culture and fun. We really had a good day in Amsterdam and I think that all the students liked it very much and they look forward to going there again.

Giacomo Cantella

zondag 19 september 2010

eep 2010 has started


With a cylcing course (or rather a 'how to survive under very difficult circumstances riding on a Dutch bike..course), a poetry tour, a buffet with performances and two visits of the city, one in the afternoon and one by night, our project has had a flying and very energetic start!
A report about yesterday will soon be added.
Today we will visit Amsterdam. More about that you can read tomorrow!