ProjectEDU in Estonia
5th - 15th of August
"I'm in love with Estonia!"Alin (Romania)
"I think it was the best time in my life..." Beata (Poland)
"I miss Estonia..."Ramona (Romania)
"Estonia a culture full of gracfulness and joy combined with ProjectEDU a real life experiment with happyness and space for being human. All this on one timeless place called Paatsalu with ppl who where reflecting each other like a mirror. simply great."Matthias (Austria)
On the 3rd of August the Austrian delegation, Roland, Matthias, Jakob (Vienna) and me, left warm Central Europe in order to go to Helsinki. We stayed there for two days, enjoyed the city and the "Finnish Fairies". It was great to see Saana again and I really want to say thank you for the nice sight-seeing tour.
In the evening of the 4th we went to Tallinn by ferry. We expected a normal ferry, but we received Baltic Princess: 212 metres long and 29 m wide, capacity for 2,800 passengers - quite nice ship... After exploring our Princess we had to try this delicious Finnish vodka. :)
At ten o'clock in the evening we arrived in Tallinn and went to our nice hostel in the middle of old town. Our first impression of Tallinn was just amazing, such a cute and sweet city...
Next day the conference started and we went to Paatsalu, a small village at the coast.
two members of the great OC-team
at the port in Tallinn
at home in Paatsalu
All ten days of the conference in Paatsalu and Tallinn were simply great: We had a wonderful chair, Marjam. I will especially remember her song "We are connected"...
I can't write here about every single session - ten days are quite long. But I really loved for example the workshop about
Intercultural Communication by Amy from China - I'd describe this session just as eye-opening. Another great thing was the session about
Modern teaching methods we had at the
Rocca al Mare kool in Tallinn.
We also had to work out a curriculum for a subject that isn't taught in school yet (or maybe not in the way we'd like to have it). For that we built teams and for example my team was working on a subject called "Politics and World Issues". We made interviews in the streets of Tallinn and tried to find out, what people from different countries (we interviewed people from India, Finland, England, Estonia, Russia and the USA) think about this issue. This was really interesting (especially because my team was so ambitious, motivated, open-minded and competent in this field).
Here's a short introduction:
The subjects of the other teams were: Art, Science, International Communication, Psychology, Soft Skills and Preparation for Future Life
Although the sessions were really good, I enjoyed most the "cross-cultural atmosphere" there. Altogether we were 28 people from 9 different countries. So you can imagine how intensive the cultural exchange was.
But of course we weren't working all the time. :) There was enough time for cool parties, an Estonian night, time to explore Tallinn by night and day, visit an open-air museum, go to a nice club and of course to sauna (ther's a sauna in the MC-office in Tallinn!!) and particularly there was plenty of time for great conversation.
Global Village
Unfortunately, on the 15th the confereence was over and we had to say good-bye to all that great and lovely people we met there.
But the journey wasn't over for the Austrian delegation. First of all we went accompanied by some other participants of the conference to Pärnu, the summer-capital of Estonia. There we spent one day at the beach in order to relax and recover our strengh - this was absolutely necessary!
Beach in Pärnu
In the evening we went to Riga by bus. Our hostel there was marvellous! The next day we did a sight-seeing tour. Well, Riga is very beautiful, but in comparison to Tallinn it's nothing. (But this is just my personal point of view.) :)
On the 17th we left our cute hostel at 5am and tried to reach the airport (yes, we had some troubles...) ;) But at the end we caught our plane and arrived safely in Vienna.
Altogether I loved this trip and I think we're all still somehow in Estonia...
that gets 100° C because of the afternoon sun. But fortunately I now have a fridge in my room. It is so small that you can only store sliced bread and one small bottle of water. And as if this wouln´t be enough, the heat the fridge produces as an external induces the thought it would be run by a middlesized nuclear power plant.
(the LC Trieste and his CEEDers - Ljupka and Stephan) are going to celebrate the birthday of our LCP at the seaside. Whoa!!! Party!!!
