FIRST EXCHANGE: MALIGNANI TO NORWAY
11th October 2004
Our journey started on 11th October. We met at Venice airport at half past eleven. We had to wait till half past one, when we started to board the plane. The flight was boring and we played cards. It was a low-cost flight. We arrived at Oslo airport at five o’ clock p.m., after three and a half hours’ flight.
After that we took another plane to Ålesund. The Principal of the Norwegian school and a teacher picked us up and one hour later we arrived in Brattvåg
, the small city where we were to stay for the following fifteen days. We got there at half past nine p.m. and had to wait until ten o’ clock p.m. when the Norwegian students arrived at school. We met the people that were going to give us hospitality. After that, each of us went “home” with a Norwegian student and went to bed.
12th October 2004
We met at school at 9.15 and the Norwegian students organized for us a special welcome in which they told us how beautiful Norway is and how different it is from Italy. At 10.15 we started to learn some aspects of Norwegian culture, like some typical games that all the students, Italian and Norwegian ones, played all together. It was a way to improve the relationships between the two groups of Norwegian and Italian students. At 11.30 we had our first typical Norwegian lunch: sandwiches and soft drinks. After lunch, some Norwegian teachers explained to us the program for the next days. During our stay in Norway we had to realize two kinds of projects. The first consisted in building a computer-controlled machine with Lego and the second was about energy. The idea was to build a wind or a hydroelectric power plant by using common objects, like pieces of metal or something from bicycles ... At 2.30 p.m. we had dinner and we learnt that in Norway the meal times are completely different from the Italian ones, because in Norway you usually eat four times a day. At 3 p.m. we made a nice project with a university teacher: we had to build a little ship using Lego and our memory because it had to be identical to a model one. We were allowed to observe the model but not to touch it.
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13th October
We met at school at 8.05 and started our classes of Norwegian language. The other students started to learn Italian.
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At 11.30 we had lunch, the same as the day before. At 12.00 we continued our classes and at ten past one p.m. we went to the school gym for a dance lesson with Norwegian teachers. It was funny because the students danced all together. At 2.30 p.m. we had dinner and then we continued the project we had started the previous day. Our group continued to work with Lego and the other groups worked on the other ideas of the project. At 7 p.m. we returned home because the school day had finished.
14th October
In the morning we went to visit a hydroelectric power station in Tafjord, not far from Ålesund. It was very interesting because this power station produces 2% of all the hydroelectric power in Norway. In the morning we visited the Museum of Hydroelectric Power, during the afternoon we visited a big dam and after that another hydroelectric power station.
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Before we returned home, we stopped in a bowling alley to play and ate pizza (someone ate it with ketchup).
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In the night we all returned to our families.
15th October
On the 15th October we went to school to continue our Lego project: it was a very interesting type of work!!! We made a lot of machines which were programmed on the computer. All the day long we worked in the same classroom, as you can see ...
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While one group was working with Lego, another group was working on the “power plant project”, which consisted in making a little windmill.
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16th October
On Saturday Italian and Norwegian students went to play football and teachers went fishing!!!!!
17th October
On Sunday we started a three days’ tour in the region surrounding Brattvåg. We left the school in the afternoon and went to Molde, where we went to see the view from the top of the hills. From the hills we had a very beautiful view, in fact we could see the city, the sea and the fjords.
For dinner we went to a Chinese restaurant and after that we went to see a First Division football math between MFK and HAMKAM. At the match we had a very good time but didn’t see any goals.
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After the match we took the bus and drove to Øksendal to sleep in a hostel for the young.
18th October
On Monday we got up, left the hostel and drove by bus to Sunndalsøra, where we had breakfast. After that we went to visit the Hydro Aluminium in Sunndal, which is the biggest aluminium company in Europe. The visit was very interesting and in the afternoon we left the factory to go to Smøla, which is the island where we spent the night. We stayed with the Norwegian students in three different houses in Dyrnes and had dinner in a restaurant.
19th October
We woke up at 8 in the morning and had breakfast in the same place where we had had dinner the night before.
After breakfast we caught the coach and went to visit the Windmill Farm on the island.
At the entrance a man got on the coach with us and explained how the windmills work.
After the visit of the windmills, the man showed us a presentation of the project of the new power plant and the new windmills.
We were divided into two groups and saw the project at two different times. After that, we returned to the coach and left for Bud,
a town not far from Smøla. There we saw a fort built by the Germans during the Second World War. There were many machineguns and cannons.
After that we went to the town centre and ate a fish soup in a restaurant on the sea. Then we returned home.
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20th October
We were at school from 8 till about 12 and worked on our projects. We spent the afternoon going to visit the city of Ålesund,
especially
the University College. We were shown over the laboratories and the nautical simulation centre; we talked with different teachers and were explained their teaching practices.
21st October
We worked on our projects the whole day, from 8 to 5 p.m. (also because it was our last
"project" day). When the work was over, we had dinner in the school canteen: we had some typical fish of the region, crabs and prawns. We returned home at 7 o'clock p.m.
22nd October
For the Italian group it was a difficult day because we had Norwegian classes! We learned a lot of words and phrases useful when giving a short presentation of
yourself,
and other phrases to be used in daily life. In the afternoon each Italian boy went with one of the Norwegian students to visit one of the factories where they are working when they are not at school and those visits were very interesting. A lot of Norwegian students work in shipyards or industries.
23rd October
The program for that Saturday included a visit to Ålesund aquarium, but, when we got to Ålesund, the coach had a problem. So we went around the city with the Norwegian students and bought a lot of souvenirs to bring back to Italy with us. That day we took a lot of photos, because it was a very nice sunny day and there were a lot of places from which we had a very beautiful view of the city and the harbour.
In the afternoon we returned home and at night we went to a party.
24th October
Sunday was the last day before our departure for Italy. Four Italian students and four Norwegian ones went to school at 2 o'clock to make dinner for the Italian and the Norwegian students and their parents: they had to cook a lamb dish.
The other students arrived at school at 5 o'clock. We ate a good lamb supper. After dinner a group of Italian and Norwegian students played some songs on the battery, the electric guitar and the bass; after that the Italian students sang some Italian and Friulan songs. At 8 o'clock a Norwegian teacher talked about our windmill and power plant projects and explained to the Norwegian parents what we had done. Then he gave each of us a certificate of our project work. At ten we went home.
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25th October
The last day we took the bus to Ålesund airport at 5 a.m. First we took the seven o'clock plane to Oslo and, at ten o'clock, we took the plane to Venice. From Venice we went back home with our parents.