We woke up at 5 am to take the plane.

We are now ready to take the plane!!!

We met our Turkish partners at Prague Airport just before taking the plane to Košice.

With our Turkish partners at the airport of Košice!

Before going to Poprad, we visited Košice, which is the second biggest town in Slovakia!
It was already dark at 4 pm!!

It was also freezing cold!

It's in Slovakia, more particularly in Proprad that the first meeting between the Slovaks, the French and the Turkish took place. This trip was also the first step of the Comenius project.

Our arrival at the railway station: we meet our Slovak partners for the first time.

This project was a good experience for each of us because it was a chance to make new friends, learn more about a country, and improve our English.

Our teachers offered us an unbelievable adventure: the opportunity to meet new people, other cultures and new languages.

First of all, we can say that we really took part in a culture exchange programme.

We started with a visit of Poprad.

   
Poprad: the main street and its colourful houses

Our first visit as a group: we stopped by one of the numerous churches of Poprad.

The connection between us began on the first day, when the Turkish decided to show us a traditional dance in the streets of the historical part of Poprad: Spišská Sobota. To take over, French and Slovak danced in turns their own dances.

   
A few dances... to keep warm!

The Slovaks and the French starting to mix

On the second day, we headed toward Stará Ĺubovňa to discover the first castle and the first legend.

Some of the Slovak students and one of their Turkish friends

The French people and their Slovak school mates during our visit to Stará Ĺubovňa Castle


The whole group during our visit to Stará Ĺubovňa Castle

The Turkish students outside the wooden Greek Catholic church of Matysová, in the open air museum of Stará Ĺubovňa

The Slovak and Turkish teachers

The bus was animated by our songs. In fact, everyone tried to share a song known in their country.

Many thanks to the driver, who put up with all of our songs!

The Slovak teachers and their students organized activities intended to make us share common moments. Indeed, on Sunday night, we played badminton...

...and also danced in their gymnasium. This is a moment we had all been longing for! "The disco in OUR gym!" as some of us called it! The teachers of the three countries also participated.

The Turkish people showed traditional dances from their country, and it was very special...

The next day "serious" things started! We had been ready for that big event for weeks! THE conference!

Here are the teachers present during this trip: Three Turkish teachers and their headmaster, two Slovak teachers, and three French teachers.

The French team after the conference in the Aquacity complex

On the Tuesday, we went to Kežmarok.

The castle was absolutely magnificent!

Well apparently the Turkish and the Slovaks were already inseparable!


One of the French teachers


We really enjoyed the museum inside the castle!


And so did our teacher!

Every evening we had dinner together at "Pension Denisa", it was also an occasion to talk, play cards and, of course, taste Slovak flavours.

...and mix with teachers!

Afterwards we spent our free time with our friends!

Our teachers apparently also enjoyed themselves!

   

Exactly one year ago, our teachers were meeting for the first time!

On Wednesday, off we went to the grammar school. You can go there from the age of eight to eighteen, so the school system is quite different from the French one.

We attended a French lesson and found it rather funny and entertaining! Some of the students knew how to speak French quite well and we spoke to them!

We also took a lesson of English with a funny teacher, the lesson dealt with superstitions!
Then we worked on various questionnaires aimed at evaluating our project!

And this is the school dining hall!

What struck us was that we couldn't just drink plain water. Yes, in Slovakia, they only drink soft drinks as you can see on the picture.
We ate several times in the school restaurant for lunch! At lunch or dinner, Slovak people always have soup to begin the meal! And finally, it's rather good!

Before leaving the school, all the teachers had a meeting in the headmaster's office.

After a day at school we needed some fresh air, so we went to The High Tatras, the mountains near Poprad (around 30 minutes by car).

There was some snow, so we threw snowballs at each other (and at our teachers!), it was great fun!

On the last day, in the evening, we went bowling to celebrate the end of this wonderful trip. We played together with all the students and teachers. It was a very nice moment!!

But the exchange was not only with the students but also with our host families. It was an opportunity to live in a Slovak family. All of them were very welcoming and they were eager to share their customs, their traditional food, for instance (soup, bryndzové halusky which is like gnocchi with sausage.), as well as films, music...

The first thing that we noticed about the Slovaks was that they eat at five or six pm. It seems very early for us because we eat between eight and ten pm.

They taught us a lot about their country. We spoke about its history, geography, Slovak stars, and TV reality shows but also we watched Slovak films and listened to music.

Our common language, English, was the only possibility to communicate together, so it is obvious that our English has improved during the trip.

We spoke English all day long .Even when we were with French people we forced ourselves to speak English so that everyone understood.

However, everybody learned Slovak, Turkish and French words:

Hello - Ahoj - Melhaba - Bonjour
Thank you - Dakuyem -Tesekkür ederim  - merci
Blackberry - cucoriedka - bögürtlen - myrtille