23rd to 27th Feb - Fourth week

First of all I would like excuse myself : I am sorry, I have to write much more shortly since now, because unfortunately I have bad backproblems and I can´t spend so much time on computer. Thank you for understanding.

Anyway, I am still enjoying time in Haderslev very much!
On Monday 23rd we had a lesson with Karen about Language and Identity. We were making our body-pictures according to languages. It was very interesting to thing about what the languages I know mean for me, how can I express myself in them and how I feel using them. I think I can use this activity at lower secondary school with my future pupils too.

On Tueday 24th we had a continuation of history lesson with our excellent teacher Jorn. :) Thas time it was more focused on Danish history (but still in very European context) in last two centuries. Therefore we learnt a lot about the history of South-Juttland area, which was very connected with Germans. There was even a referendum whether the inhabitants want to join Denmark or Germany after WWI - and the present boarder is made according to that referendum. Amazing!
In the afternoon I had my first piano lesson -- Annette had offered me some piano lessons and I started to work on some short Danish pieces of music with her. Thank you very much Annette! :)

I had also a two Danish lessons. Plus school-visits and optional English with Danish students too (more about that later ;) )

20th Feb - Carneval

We were all really looking forward to Friday evening, where the Danish February-tradition was to come - the CARNEVAL.
Last days my flatmates had been working in secret in their rooms, they didn´t want to say anything about - it was supposed to be a surprise :-)
And Friday evening the Danish queen (Zep), a bottle of beer (Máté) and an opener (Noemi) came out from the rooms. Wow! I was pretty surprised, how imaginative and skilled they were, really! :-)
Zep used her field of studies too - she sewed the dress on her own. You know - a fashion designer!:)

On midnight we saw a Danish carneval tradition - hitting a bag (filled usually with sweets) with a stick.

Unfortunately the party was a bit boring to us. Why? The two bands who were playing there were quite good for listening, but not for dancing. Erasmus students were almost the only ones who danced sometimes (when the music wasn´t too slow or too hard!), Danish people were only sitting, drinking beer and chatting. We were said that it´s quite typical for Danish parties. Oh, Czech (for sure Polish, Spanish, Hungarian etc. too) people can manage dancing too!
Nevertheless, I met with four more Czech people at the party - another Erasmus students in Denmark, who came to visit Míša and Vašek. Therefore we made a kind of Czech party within the carneval. I was glad to see so many Czech people after a long time, we enjoyed it a lot! :))

18th - 20th Feb - The Other Lessons of the Third week

We were pretty lucky, because our school started at 12.30 on Wednesday - therefore we could sleep enough after Kafka café. We had a very interesting lesson with Torbjorn. At first he explained us the old and new Danish evaluation systems. I was really surprised - it´s completely different from ours!Why?

I will explain the old one first:
There were grades (from the bottom): 0,3,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 and 13.
0,3 and 5 meant that the pupil hadn´t passed.
8 was the average that teachers could expect.
And grades 11 and 13 were special grades - to appreciate really good students. 13 meant very excellent, above expectations, the very special grade.

I think it was very nice to be able to give an extraordinary grade to an extraordinary pupil - to appreciate him. Unfortunately, this grade disappeared. The Danish system was changed - we were told that the old system was to confusing to the rest of Europe.

And the new system?
There are grades (from the top) :
12 -expectations
10
7
4
2
------------ passed
and 0
- 3 (which is rather exceptional - for example for students who were cheating during the final written exam and failed the oral exam)

Torbjorn said us that he thinks the new system was a step BACKWARD. The previous could appreciate extraordinary students, however the new one measures, how much you don´t fullfil the expectations (from 12 DOWN). I could agree with him, I found the previous system very interesting.

One more note considering evaluation.
This system is from LOWER SECONDARY schools.
At PRIMARY SCHOOLS pupils get "only" written sentences to parents (to avoid too much competition amongst kids).


Then we had a lecture about Learning theories - e.g. three types of curricula:
A) content driven
B) objective driven
and C) process driven

It was very interesting to GO MORE BEHIND the differences at school systems and school approaches. Since it´s nice to observe differences of my country and Danish school system, but then it´s very useful to think -WHY? And this lecture helped me to start thinking about "what I intend to expect from my future pupils. And why? What is more important for me - the content, abilities of pupils or the process of learning itself...?"

All the subects and projects of "Living and Learning Together - not only about school systems, but also cultures - makes me thinking more deeply, to go more behind, to ask questions...not only observe and compare. And that is what I really like about this study programme.

On Thursday we had pretty exciting lesson of History. I had never thought before that history could be interesting. However, it can! Jorn Buch persuaded me :-)! I thought we were going to have a boring lesson about Danish history - dates, people, events...How wrong I was!
Jorn involved all our own countries´ histories - and helped us to see that almost all European countries had very similar history. Christianity, Reformation, Romanticism, Nationalism... Do you see? He surprised us, because he had pretty good knowledge about our countries´history, dates (even better that we had!) - and showed us a plenty of connections.
Astonishing! :-)
And I have to appreciate that eventhough he had had an accident during tennis-playing and has his arm hurt the evening before, he came - because he really wanted to teach us. Thank you very much!


We had also Danish lesson on Thursday - trying to develop our Danish language skills in basic conversations. I learnt a very useful sentence: "Jeg taler ikke godt dansk".
(For understanding use: http://translate.google.com :-) )

On Friday we had a lesson with Torbjorn about Globalisation.
Globalisation and its pros and (mostly) cons has been a pretty discussed topic recently - however almost nobody has been able to explain well WHAT globalisation really is. Therefore I was very glad that we started to think and discuss globalisation from different sides. What is it connected with, what does it cause, mean and what are its both possitive and negative effects...we took it very complexely (or "globally", if you want to :-) ).

The interesting and surprising idea for me was - that this is not the first globalisation in history. Because there was one before - throughout "Christianisation" (- spreading christianity, latin language and ideas).

And then we started to speak about different parts of globalisation
- sociology and antropology
- international politics and economy
- citizenship and democracy
- trade
- and pedagogy
I am really looking forwart to continuation of this lesson...

17th Feb - Kafka Café

On Tueday evening we went together to Kafka café, I organised a schoolmate-meeting there :-). I think it´s good to spend freetime together from time to time (actually, I´d say - as much time as possible;-) ). We also invited our two new class-mates - Rene and Oliver, who were staying in Haderslev here for 14 days for their practice-teaching.
We had a lot of fun and we had also a nice reason for celebration - it was Maté´s and Noemi´s one-and-a-half-year anniversary of marriage. ;-) Congratulations!

16th to 20th Feb - Our presentations

On Monday we had an "Education" lesson with Torbjorn - presentations of our own countries´ school systems. It was very interesting for me. I found Belgium system very similar to Danish one, however, they have differencies in primary school system. In Belgium one teacher theaches all the subjects - he or she has the only class throught the whole year. On the other hand, in Denmark they have different teachers for each subject - though at primary schools. (The Czech Republic is more similar to Belgium system in case of primary schools. One teacher for one class, usually. However, I was shocked that pupils on primary schools in Belgium have 8 hours per day (from 8 a.m. to 16 p.m.)! It means 8 hours a day for their teachers (and preparations for next day afterwards!!!) "A min Gud!" (Oh, my God!)

I was also surprised that Turkish school system is very progressive, they are not affraid of new approaches and methods. Unfortunately in Hungary there is completely the opposite situation - the society and state are not open for inovations too much, changes go pretty slowly. And for instance if you say "alternative school" in Hungary - people still think pejoratively about that.

Anyway, it was very useful to hear about another countries´systems - the more you can compare, the more you can think about your own country system - what is good, what is wrong, is it easy to change this, why? ...etc.

In the afternoon we had a second music lesson - we listened to a Danish piece of music, sing some other songs and play different rythms...

On Tuesday the 17th in the morning we had a computer lesson - we improved our weblogs and learned about sharing photos via Flickr (www.flickr.com). I found the lessons with Hanna very helful - she initiates us into various useful internet possibilities for communication and sharing pictures from abroad. I can use it not only for school (as the weblog, you know ;), but also for my personal life. And maybe in some language lessons too?

And in the Tuesday and Friday afternoon we presented our countries! Hurray:)
I enjoyed presenting my own country to the others and also learning new things about my schoolmates´countries very much. Did you know that Hungarians are related to Mongolians some way and therefore they used to be connected with horse-riding and using a bow?
And that the average elevation of Turkey is more than 1100 metres above the sea level? Wow! :)
Some people even prepared tasting, therefore we could enjoy getting to know the countries via (almost) all the senses ;)






What´s more, Zep and Caynan prepared a puppet show, tiptop! :) I have to say that my classmates are very imaginative and interesting people, I like "living and learning" with them very much!

13th to 15th Feb - Second Weekend

We spend most of the prolonged second weekend with preparing our presentations about our country and our educational system. Unfortunately, I had a bad backache, because of spending so much time on computer. Maybe I would prefer having these presentations not so very close together, but it´s only my modest proposal for next years...
Anyway, I went for some short walks too - to breathe in some fresh air and to enjoy beatuiful Haderslev town.


















We also get some "snow delivery" :) during the weekend, but it was melt soon, unfortunately...


And one more picutre: as I said we change in cooking in our house. There is Zep with her really delicious meal - bulgur, fried pepers and chicken wings...Mmmmm :)
See her happy face - it is the first time she has prepared that meal on her own.
All of us started to cook national meals when we left home. It´s pretty good practise for live. ;)

12th Feb - Danish Lunch

On Thursday we had a special Danish lesson. Firt of all our teachers thought us some basic vocabulary we need for shopping (the most important thing in foreign country is to be able to feed yourself, of course! ;) ).
So we learnt numbers until tusind (I am sure you guessed right that it means thousand ;) ) and a plenty of words connected with food - kinds of fruits, vegetable, mælkeprodukter ;), meat and the basic conversation in the shop.
Some of the words are similar to English or German, therefore the written form is not difficult in some cases. However - the pronunciation! Oops, completely different!!! I think that is the most difficult thing about Danish language. We have to practice a lot;)

And the practical part came. Every group got a list of a few things which to buy in the shop. For instance our group had a task to buy:

• rugbrød (dark bread - it´s the basic of a typical Danish lunch - because the Danes eat cold lunch, the main meal is dinner then)
• mælk - at least three kinds including kærnemælk (=kefir). ( You can find different boxes of milk in Denmark: navy blue (3,5 % fat) milk, blue (1,5%), light blue (0,5%), but also grey milk (0,1%)-which is the cheapest, but horrible, it´s like white water.)
• spegepolse (salami)
• tomat

We went altoghether to Fakta and then to our teacher´s house to prepare it and EAT IT :). The best way how to experience real Danish lunch and try their various stuff (e.g. leverpostej and frikadeller (Danish liver pate and meat balls), yum yum! :)
We enjoyed this day very much. "Tak!"