Friday, June 3, 2011

VISIT TO SPAIN (28 - 04 MAY 2011)









From April 28th to May 4th the members of the Comenius project “Your World, my world: differences that keep us united” visited Icod de los Vinos. Nineteen teachers and twenty-one students from Italy, Greece, Poland, Germany, Hungary and Bulgaria shared these days with the educational community of the Nicolás Estévez Borges High School, with the inhabitants of Icod de Los Vinos and with our customs and traditions.

The students, who were hosted by Canarian families, discovered the typical hospitality and affection of the Canarian people which will stay forever in their hearts. During their visit, they practiced different Canarian games (juego del palo y del garrote, carros, levantamiento de piedras, bola canaria, salto del pastor…), they discovered and made various types of ornamental motifs of the Canarian “pintaderas”, they danced and sang our regional dances and songs, visited the most emblematic places (El Teide mountain, La Laguna, Garachico, Masca, the Dragon Tree Park, Puerto de la Cruz, La Orotava…), discovered the history of our islands, tasted our gastronomy and the essence of our feasts and slid on the typical wooden boards of San Andrés.

There were unforgettable days which will always stay in our minds and in those of our visitors, days in which we have brought closer to Europe our Canarian traditions: the legacy of our ancestors and the idiosyncrasy of the Canarian people, a friendly and open-minded community.

But this has only been a temporary stop. In June we will meet again in Straubing, Germany, where four teachers and three students of our school will travel with a suitcase full with the cultural heritage of the Canarian people. Our aim will be to bring it closer to Bavaria, showing a different image of the Canary Islands far from the idea of “sun and beer” which has been often exported during the last decades.

This Comenius project comes to an end in Germany, but our story is actually an open-ended one in which those bridges that we have constructed will allow us to strengthen the friendships which have grown throughout these two years; where the experiences that we have lived together will leave indelible memories and those possible differences among people living far away from each other, instead of separate them, will make them keep always united.


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