From March 5 to 11, 2023, the cast of five schools participating in The Future of Water project was in a hurry to travel to Romania. The host school, Scoala Gimnaziala Ioan Badescu from Bucharest, became a temporary home to guests from Finland, Spain, Turkey, North Macedonia and Slovenia for a week. Some of the participants in the project, both students and teachers, have known each other from the previous meetings, but for some it was a completely new experience.
The hospitable hosts of the Romanian school prepared a number of activities for us, which were in one way or another were related to the management and use of local water resources. The visiting students learned about how the Romanian primary school tries to bring the topic closer to their students through an interesting science lesson and prepared special workshops for us on the topic of saving water. We visited the Romanian national laboratory for water quality control and saw the process of extracting and filtering water from thermal springs in the thermal baths.
Participating schools also presented their work at the joint event which happened at Scoala Gimnaziala Ioan Badescu. Presentations on the quality of local water resources of individual countries and ideas for reducing water consumption, which is our great natural resource, were exchanged in English.
There was also enough time for us to get familiar with Romanian culture and habits. We took pleasure in visiting the tourist attractions of Bucharest, among which the palace of the Romanian leader Ceausescu stood out, and we also went to the countryside, where we visited a very special open-air museum. We learned a lot about various Romanian traditional crafts, including the making of colorful bracelets, clay products and witnessed first-hand a day at blacksmith’s workshop. At the museological workshops, we learned how paper is made and made ourselves our own pieces. We also saw the devices that were once used to bind books. We drove to the Black Sea and visited the Dolphinarium and Planetarium, where we watched a documentary on the melting of the ice at the North and South Poles as a result of global warming. That did not leave us indifferent for sure.
In the meantime, we spent some quality time socializing and engaging in indoor or outdoor sports activities. We visited the adrenaline park, where we tried our hand at tightrope walking, which left many teachers on the floor breathless! We spent our last day in a modern water park, where every descent down the slide was a very special experience.
As part of the Erasmus+ program, visiting students live with families of students from the host school, which is an exceptional opportunity to spontaneously learn about their customs and culture. During our Romanian adventure, we forged many new friendships in this way, which we promised ourselves to cultivate further. Until the end of The Future of Water project, we are looking forward to 2 more meetings in Finland and North Macedonia.
Until then: La revedere!
