4th Project meeting in Lithuania

The Ethno treasure hunters went hunting for ethno and cultural treasures in Lithuania in 9-16 October 2011.
It was an amazing experience.

During the meeting in Lithuania we had a very busy and interesting program. We had some technical sessions at school, where we planned the schedule for the second project year. We discussed details about the end products that have to be finished this year.

We visited the school and the teachers of English from partner countries held some English lessons with the Lithuanian students based on a plan our hosts prepared. Each teacher was required by the coordinator to write her/his activity and impressions from the classes they visited. There were also some school headmasters, who exchanged best practices in school management. The other teachers visited the school and some classes.

 Besides these activities, we were involved also in cultural activities: visits to the local museums, where we learned how traditional houses were organized and saw many similarities between traditional houses in Lithuania and Romania, Turkey and other countries involved in this project. We learned how traditional bread was baked and the rules that governed in the traditional Lithuanian families.

 We were involved in an educational activity in which we played the roles of different members of the family and had specific tasks and chores to do within the traditional homestead. 

We also visited an open-air village museum, where the houses resembled very much to the Romanian traditional wooden houses.

We organized a cooking workshop, in which all partners cooked traditional dishes and we shared them with our partners and with the guests at the traditional dance party our hosts organized. There we learnt some traditional Lithuanian dances and we had fun together. There were the students and teachers from all 6 partner countries, host families and local officials present at this cultural event.

The students were hosted by local families and they also had a very interesting program. They attended classes at school with the host children and had also sports and cultural activities with the families.

We all participated in a documentary visit to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, where we saw some more historical and cultural sites and admired the beautiful architecture of the city. Here, too, we could notice similarities in architecture with cities from our countries. This is proof that we are not so different; on the contrary, there are many similarities between our cultures.

We also saw the magnificent Hill of crosses, which reminds us a bit about the Merry Cemetery from Sapanta, Maramures, in Romania.

We had a dissemination session, where the local officials, the headmasters of the schools, teachers and students from the host school and the host families participated. On this occasion, the headmaster of the school presented us with the Certificates of participation and our host partner teacher presented the project, their school and the partners presented their countries and schools.

We appreciated very well the efforts our hosts made to organize such a varied and interesting program for the meeting in Lithuania and we all learned a lot about Lithuania and its warm-hearted and hospitable people and about the education system in this country.

Now we are waiting forward to meet again in Bulgaria next spring. :)