Paris with the Erasmus programme
In September, we flew out to France, where we stayed in Paris for 6 days. For this trip, six European countries were involved - France, Italy, Turkey, Holland, Denmark and of course England. Only one school in each country is involved in the project, therefore the four of us had the honours of representing the UK. The aim of the project is to connect students across Europe to share cultures, values and ideas about each of our countries.
Monday to Wednesday we had writers, poets, journalists and other professionals come in to talk to us and widen our knowledge and insight on peace and democracy in the world we live in today. As we were the only ones who speak English fluently, I’m sure you can imagine a lot of pressure was put on us to not only lead group discussions, but also leave them with a good impression of British teenagers.
On Thursday we visited the Louvre museum. The Louvre is both the largest and most visited art museum in the world. The Louvre Palace, which houses the museum, was built as a fortress by Philip II in the 12th century and was later used as a royal residence. It became a museum in 1793, following the French revolution.
The louvre is home to artworks dating from the 7th millennium BC to the 1850s. The Louvre contains more than 380,000 objects and displays 35,000 works of art in eight curatorial departments over 5 levels. After we had lunch in the Jardin des Tuilleries, and then went to visit the Eiffel Tower. We then had a river tour and saw monuments including the Sorbonne and Notre Dame Cathedral.
Friday was our last day in Paris- we started the day off in the school and discussed the progress in women’s rights from the 1985 UN world conference on women to the present day. The conversation topics ranged from access to education to the gender pay gap to female leaders. We then visited the Champs Elysees and the Arc de Triomphe.
So as you can see the Erasmus Programme is not only focused on widening our understanding of the world , but it also aims to allow students from different countries to make life long friends with others from foreign countries, which my friends and we really did.
Matilda Strickland, Leonie Haddad, Annaella Lubila, Leonie Haddad, Nimue McDowell (Y12 students)
Posted on 21st September 2018
