Farní charita Česká Lípa

1. What subject or subjects do you teach in Nový Bor?

My specialization is English, French and Czech but this school year I am teaching only English.

2. How did you know about our project and the activities we do in the schools?

A colleague from a ZŠ in Česká Lípa has told us about these activities. Then we have contacted Gabriela Medwell.

3. Why do you think this kind of activities can be interesting for the students?

What is the most important thing is talking. Talking in a way that others can understand, not grammatical accuracy. You do not mark students. You do not correct their English.

You are young, so close to our students.

You break our routine.

English is neither their nor your mother tongue and the first real speaking English is easier with you than with a native speaker.

4. Nový Bor is a small town, how do you think we can impact in the way of learning of the children of your class? Do you think we will open more their minds to learn English and about other countries?

Definitely yes. We (teachers) are just a theory, you are a reality. Pupils do not believe us when we tell them about the importance of learning English. With you they can see that learning English is useful, that they can speak English with anyone, not only with native speaker (who seem to be far away from us). You do a lot for their motivation. And all the more so that Nový Bor is a small town where students do not have the opportunity to speak English with somebody else, only with us - teachers.

5. Are you satisfied with Czech educational system?

Basically yes.

6. Would you change anything in it?

Nothing comes to my mind.

Europe union is the biggest European organization where 28 countries are part of. Different nations and different cultures raised up to me questions like “ How does all this diversity work”? I thought long about it and decided to put this topic in the table and discuss it with my colleges. The seminar was all about human diversity, to understand more about it, to feel part of it and to find or give messages connected with this topic.

The seminar started with a brainstorming, where everybody gave ideas about what people are different, and found values that connect us all as human. There was an interesting game called “where do you stand”, which had the aim to show the fact we are so different but we are all the same.

The peak moment was when during seminar was played a video made from a Swedish tv channel. This video touched our hearts and maybe it made some of us cry, it was so beautiful to understand in the middle of us, that we are same, we have so many common things, so many things that unit us, so many things that make us equal.

It was great to feel part of our community, this time for real and so close. We have a very simple message for everybody out there “Don’t hate if you don’t understand”. It is time to learn that in Diversity there is beauty and there is strength. Let’s treat each-other with respect and no judgments.

In the end of seminar, everybody wrote a message in a small paper and it was just great to read it.

Thank you for reading this article.

During this three months we had a lot of workshop in Slovaka,in Euroshkola,in Partyzanka but this week we had a workshop in Tyrsova,it was first time that we enter this school.The topic was people around the Europe.We prepared a lot of questions and their task was to ask this  questions to us.

Our workshop we started with a little quiz,each volunteer spoke in their native language and students had a task to guess what countries we are from.Then we continued with an energizer.Main activity we did in 6 group,in each group there was 5 or 6  student and we spent 10 minutes in each group.For me it was no difficult because students were talkative and they gave us a lot of questions.

After main activities they gave us feedback,everyone were happy and they told us that they are happy to see us in their school.

For me it was also interesting and I spent good time their,I like when I speak about my country because there are a lot of people in Czech Republic  who don’t know about Armenia and it is very useful to give them more information about my old and small country,who had a huge history and interesting places to visit. J J J

I am going To tell you about florian café. In my opinion it is the best café in Ceska Lipa.

There is very good atmosphere  and very delicious cakes and coffee of course. Every day they have different choice and every day you can find different type of cake. I am sure you will be fall in love with this café.

One day we were in a office and it was time for lunch. We didn`t have idea where we wanted to go. And… One of our volunteer said that, in Internet she found one café, which is very beautiful and it would be very good if we visited here. And we went… For us it was little a bit difficult to find Florian café, because we are not from Ceska Lipa and we didn`t know all streets very well. Finally we found it and we were so happy. Firstly, our attention took wall of café, also there are very comfortable chairs to seat and the most important, outside they have veranda and in summer in will be perfect to spend time here. I want to add something. Also staff is perfect. They know English and if in your dictionary is only ,,dobrý den’’, ,, nashledanou’’ and ,,dekuji’’ definitely it is your place. For sure we had excellent time together and we were very happy that we discovered very beautiful place in Ceska Lipa.

Zahraniční dobrovolníci z projektu Erasmus+, kteří rozvíjejí své schopnosti a dovednosti od října minulého roku v České Lípě, mají napilno. Pro studenty základních a středních škol připravili v prvním měsíci nového roku mnoho workshopů v anglickém jazyce.

The 3^rd week of 2017 for EVS-volunteer was first working week in school.  Surprisingly for us, even 20 min activity for students needs a lot of preparation, so each afternoon after classes we were working hard.  Also, the weather was awful all the week: minus 10 degrees and frozen ice on the roads did not allow us to go somewhere.

Lucky for us, Česká Lípa can propose you a lot of entertainments: bars, restaurants, concerts, clubs, gyms, swimming pool etc. Of course after noisy classes we prefer to relax in bars and jacuzzi in the swimming pool.

What more helps us to refresh? Hobbies! For example, we are baking pies with Nicola, Santi runs, Nini goes to the gym. In the evenings of these frozen days we prefer to watch nice movies and to enjoy lazy everyday life of small town Česká Lípa. We still have 9 months to travel, explore and enjoy!

As a part of our EVS-project we already had 18 Christmas workshops during December. And it was pretty much easy for us, especially with the last sessions. But New Year brought new challenges and on the second week of January we supposed to create new workshop about our cultures for students from the technical school. At first this task seemed to be easy, because the topic and general structure were similar to previous workshops, but the age and number of students made the preparation challenging: 50 students who are in their seventeenth years, mostly boys (actually there were only 3 girls), sounds difficult, ha?

  But we love challenges! So we started to prepare all necessary materials in advance as always. Unlike during Christmas workshops, each volunteer made its own activity, which could help to discover his country.  And it was a really nice, because students were not bored with the same structure.

Picture: Preparation for the workshop

Our workshop we started with a little language game: each volunteer spoke in their native language and students should guess what countries they are from judging only on what they heard. Then we continued with an energizer just to make students feel more comfortable. Main activity we did in 6 groups (app. 10 students per group) for 10 minutes each group. For me first two groups were the most hardest to speak with because students were not talkative at all, they did not asked me questions, so it was just a monologue about Ukraine at the beginning. But with every next group it became more and more comfortable to work.

In conclusion, I would like to say that even though age of the students and their skeptical attitude, the workshop was good! I was scared in the beginning but I realized that all small problems could be solved with a smile and confidence!

Od počátku listopadu hostí město Česká Lípa již druhým rokem šestici mladých zahraničních dobrovolníků ze šesti různých zemí Evropy. Do dalšího projektu Erasmus+, Evropské dobrovolné služby, se tentokrát zapojili čtyři ženy a dva muži.

New Year’s Eve is a day of mixed feelings for many people,it is a time to celebrate the end of the year gone by and welcome what is in store in the New Year.For me it is very special day and I used to celebrate it with my family but this year I celebrated it with other volunteers and also with previous Evs volunteers in Ceska Lipa.First we decided to cook some dishes then,at 9 o’clock ,the party has started.We had champagne,beer,wine and defferent party food.It was interesting day and as we had different New Year traditions I learn a lot of new things, for example in Italy the star of the dinner is lentils, symbolizing money and good fortune for the coming year and at 12 o’clock you need to eat a lot of lentils if you want to have a lot of money for the coming year,,,so I ate more then other hope it will work :).After the dinner we decided to go club and we danced their till 5 o’clock.We were tired but happy J J