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Most of us who went on this trip are learning German at school, although there were also some of us who weren't studying it. However, the German school is bilingual so we were able to communicate in English without any problems.
Many of the German students we did the exchange with already knew each other since they were classmates in an Art elective.
We did a lot of activities together during our stay in Germany. We went on a number of visits including to the Experimenta museum, the recently opened Phorms school in the same network and Heidelberg. We also had the chance to see and learn about lots of other places with our host families.
This experience has helped us all to improve and expand our knowledge of English and German and also find out about a different culture. We have learned different customs and ways of doing things, discovered new ways of living and celebrating holidays and experienced it all at first hand and not just on paper.
We have had the chance to share the everyday lives of our German classmates while learning new things all the time.
It was an amazing experience! As we mentioned before, we had a lot of fun visiting different places, such as Experimenta (interactive museum), Heidelberg (historical city) or Josef Schwarz Schule Heilbronn (new school from JSS). In the last location, we also had the opportunity to help some grades 11-13 with their Spanish classes and explain our culture to them.
The host families were very kind and they adapted us really well into their routine, as well as they organized some activities for us to be all together like going bowling. Some of them skipped their extracurricular activities to bring us to cultural places, while others enjoyed trying their exchange partner's activities.
The second day, we stayed at their school watching and learning what they usually do, which subjects they take and the differences between our school and their school. We did history, art, German and biology, for example.
Am letzten Tag haben wir den ganzen Tag Kunst gemacht, denn für die Deutschen war der Grund für den Austausch, Kunst als Wahlfach zu machen. Sie haben ein Projekt für uns organiztet, bei dem wir ein Foto von einem Denkmal opsehen sollten, das wir während unseres Aufenthalts gemacht hatten. Wir mussten es workbeiten und dann haben sie es ausgedruckt. Wenn sie uns in Barcelona visiten, werden wir eine deutsche Zeitung verwenden, um das Projekt fertigzustellen.
Wir freuen uns schon sehr darauf, sie im June wiederzusehen und ihnen Barcelona und seine Kultur zu zeigen.
Laura Sallarés and Cristina Nitschack
Sant Ignasi TQE students
