ERASMUS+
Prejudices and Reality
Meeting 22-28 February 2015
Sunday, 22.02
In the evening of the 22 of February, 3 groups of students accompanied by their teachers landed on Lisbon Airport : the Italians, the Lithuanians and the Romanians. They were welcomed by some of the Portuguese students who were hosting, along with a teacher.
A couple of hours were spent in Lisbon, more exactly in the area of Vasco da Gama Mall. Students had the possibility to walk around freely and enjoy the view of the Vasco da Gama Bridge, with the Atlantic Ocean in its background.
When the time was up, the groups loaded a bus and started the trip back to Pedrógão Grande. There was still some time left, so on the way there, a stop was made at the Sanctuary of Fatima, which represents a group of buildings and monuments built in neobaroque style.
When the groups arrived at the school- Escola Tecnologica e Profissional da Zona do Pinhal, the students were received by their host families.
Monday, 23.02
The first morning started with a reception at school. The groups were joined by the Germans and a short photo session took place in front of the school, followed by an official ceremony at the cultural center. Pictures were taken, and the participants were offered a little snack and after that were allowed to visit the local market place.
Back to school, the first project reunion with teachers and students started. It began with a speech given by the principal of the school, Antonio Jose Figueira Domingues, who is not only the coordinator of the project in Portugal, but also the coordinator of the whole project. The program of the reunion was presented, along with a poster and the song created for this project. Also, the logo of the project was chosen.
All the participants had lunch in the schools canteen.
After lunch, the guest students took part in a peddy-paper organized by the Portuguese ones. This activity aimed not only for the students to discover the town by themselves, but for them to learn how to collaborate with new people.
With the end of the peddy-paper, came the end of the first full day.
Andrea created the logo
Tuesday, 24.02
From school, all the participants departed for a field trip to the city of Porto. They were given a quick guided tour, in which they were shown some of the attractions of Porto (like the Clerigos Tower, the gigantic tile panels inside São Bento Station and the São Francisco Church, which is completely covered in gold on the inside – unfortunately it was seen only from the outside) . When the tour was over, there was some free time to go and get lunch.
After lunch, both the students and the teachers went on the Douro River Cruise, the circuit of the six bridges crossing over the river. The cruise was followed by a visit to the Symington Porto Wine Cellars- Graham’s Porto Wine, where after a brief presentation of the cellars- which included wine tasting, the majority of people bought wine to bring at home.It was explained to the group that the wine has its special taste because of the method used for making. Different from normal wine, the this one doesn’t contain alcohol from all the grapes, but juice too. Also, it was specified that the white stones under the big barrels areen’t just for decoration; if they become red, the staff knows that one of the barrels broke..
In the afternoon, the bus was full and ready to depart from Porto.
Wednesday, 25.02
The day started with the presentations of the shows prepared by each country. Each country had to represent their prejudices in a different way.
The Italians expressed their opinion that people in Portugal are dark skinned, black haired, brown eyed and friendly, all by singing and dancing.
The Germans strongly believed that the nature of Portugal is rich in flowers and the weather is always sunny, that’s why they came with a huge painting of a landscape.
The Lithuanians formed their opinion on the culture: Portuguese is a soft language, seafood is the most eaten type of food- along with vegetables and the most representative 3 things are Porto Wine, Fado music and Cristiano Ronaldo.
The Romanians performed a shadowed theatre, in which they reminded of some historical facts: Portugal was ruled by a king, Vasco da Gama was an explorer and the largest religion is Christianity.
The show ended, and lunch came.
After that, the students and the teachers were divided into workshops, and everybody started to work for the final show.
Thursday, 26.02
This day was full of field trips to UNESCO world heritages.
Firstly, The Convent of Christ in the city of Tomar. It represents a Knights Templar’s Convent. After visiting the Convent, the group travelled to Alcobaça, where it was given free time to have lunch.
In the afternoon, a visit was made to The Alcobaça monastery, which was built by the first king of Portugal and also one of the first Gothic buildings in the country. The next visit was, of course, at another monastery: The monastery of Batalha, whose building took over 100 years.
After another couple of minutes spent by wondering around, the group returned to the school, where they were picked up by the host families.
Friday, 27.02
During the morning, each workshop made the final adjustments to their part in the show and all the students worked really hard for the end of the reunion, probably motivated by the snacks present in the informatics room.
However, before lunch, students and teachers had to complete a questionnaire about their experience in this reunion.
After lunch, the final show happened. And by the end of the show, all the participants received a reality check and realized that people in Portugal are not all brown eyed, dark skinned and blacked hair and that they are overly friendly with foreigners, treating them like family; they eat a lot of meat, not necessarily seafood and kizomba seems to be more popular than Fado.
With the show over, there was only one event left: the Farewell ceremony. Everybody had time to prepare for it and it actually was a fancy dinner at a restaurant, which ended with an emotional speech given by the principle.
After the ceremony, every student started crying and hugging and deep down each one knew it would be very hard to say goodbye to all those new friends made in this special week.
The Workshops
Inhabitants
In this workshop, the students had to create a song , with both the instrumental and lyrics part. The song was meant to be based on the character, gestures and manners owned by the Portuguese people. The melody was created only on the computer, by mixing different sounds.
After having the lyrics written and the melody created, the students recorded it and also sang it in the final show.
Natural environment
The students attending this workshop had to rethink the show made by Germany on Wednesday, in which the prejudices about nature were illustrated through a picture. Meanwhile, they discovered that:
The mountains aren’t grey and dull, but green and covered in forests.
It isn’t always sunny and hot, it can also be windy, rainy and cold.
The country is indeed full of flowers. So, in order to prove that, they went to a park and took pictures of different plants, like mimosa and trees: palms and olive trees.
Cultural environment
In this workshop, students focused on the prejudices about Portugal illustrated by the Lithuanians, the real facts and a show based on the differences between prejudices and reality.
The show:
In the end, the focus was on the following 4 interesting facts about Portugals culture:
There are a lot of fruits and vegetables, and oranges and lemons are very well selled. Although Porto wine is known as the most popular drink, the majority of people drink mostly beer. Even if football is the official sport of the country, a lot of people choose jogging or riding a bike. The most known music is Fado, but youngsters prefer kizomba – a style of music accompanied by a dance.
The characters taking part in the show are 2 tourists, an orange seller, a beer seller, a woman who practices jogging and 2 dancers.
Plot: The tourists are walking around the town and passing different places. They ask a woman what she’s selling and she gives them an orange. After that, they meet the beer seller and ask him if wine is really the most popular drink, only to find out that it’s not...beer is. The tourists continue their visit and see a woman who is jogging; asked if she practiced football, she said that the majority of people prefer jogging to football. Lastly, they meet 2 dancers who tell them about kizomba.
In the end, all students who took part in this moment went in the middle of the stage and danced on the song „Lepo lepo”.
Historical Conditions
This is the workshop dealing with the economic, social and the historical conditions of Portugal. The entire ideea around the activity was to create a play (show) in which to illustrate the aftermath of the visits: the reality Portugal and not the prejudicies the students had before.
The focus was on major points such as religion, immigration, economic status and form of government and the public was provided with scenes in which each and every subject was dealth with a truthful and open-mind, comparing it to the play Romanias team had to prepare beforehand.
Some of the elements used were fresh, giving a new perspective, like Salazar, the coloured immigrant or the banker theme, while others, such as the ball, the king or the tourists were adapted, as they were found to be elements which were part of the Portuguese society, culture and history.
Reporters
In this workshop, the reporters decided what should appear in the magazine : short articles about everything that happened, accompanied by lots and lots of pictures and also, it was discussed how it should look like. Also, the motto of the project was decided to be the one created by the Lithuanians, but with a brief change:
“One by one- we are small,
All together- we are strong!
…More or less…“
After that, the students from this workshop interviewed the others, in order to obtain information about what was being done in the other groups. All the information obtained was going to be used in the creation of the final product: the magazine.
At the final show, all the students from this workshop had to do was to present the ideas to the others, and to inform them that if they wish to send pictures or movies took during the project, they were more then welcomed.
In the end, the workshops provided opportunities for students to get to know each other better, to understand and use a frame of work common to them all, therefore the differences between them had to be set apart, and all the students gave their best in the creation of the wonderful moments. The props, set, screenplay, the music, were all taken care off by both students and teachers in less than 4 days. Fortunately, by working together, all managed to create a wonderful set that was welcomed with warm applauses.