Week 9

Personal Development

Well, here we are at week 9. I remember thinking when I wrote week 1’s blog entry how beneficial it was to write everything that I had done down; but being worried about getting to week 9 or 10 and running out of things to say…that is definitely not the case! Every week brings more discoveries, more pictures and more experiences. However, nine weeks later, when I discover somewhere new, I can identify the place in relation to other land marks in the city and it feels like the giant fragmented jigsaw in my mind, with small pieces scattered all over, is starting to come together to make a comprehendible picture in my mind!

We are now on our Easter break, and it is so good to get a rest! We had our final class on Friday evening which was a lovely way to end before the holidays. After finishing up our work, one of the teachers, Marcus, made us a big meal to celebrate. I couldn’t believe that he was able to prepare lamb, potatoes and a salad for 45 people without any help whatsoever. Marcus used to be a chef, so the meal was delicious. My favourite part has got to be the Danish Apple Cake we had for dessert. It was way better than the one we had prepared in our Danish Food Event – and that one was good! Seeing this was one of the last classes where our whole Erasmus group would be together, our teacher, Lillian, suggested we sit in the groups we used at our residential weekend. It was great spending time reminiscing over the past 2 months. We all agreed that on one level, it felt like a very long time had passed due to the amount of things we have done; yet on another level, it felt like just last week that we were sitting together at the hostel. After the meal, Lillian put on a ‘play’ for us about a prince and a princess. The cast were some classmates who had volunteered to help out and their script was random phrases that everyone had participated in writing up. The ‘play’ was very impromptu, and hilarious to watch! The occasion was such a nice way to end the first part of our trip here; and to begin our Easter holidays.

Now that I have been going to Kirsten’s church for nine weeks, it is nice to feel part of that community. The members of the church have always been very welcoming and accommodating, but I have always felt like a bit of a spectacle – coming to a Danish church, in the middle of a housing estate, all the way from Northern Ireland. There is coffee and tea after the service every Sunday, and I usually try to smile politely, and say hello as everyone around me talks really fast Danish. Sometimes Kirsten will interpret what is going on if something is funny or strange; however on Sunday, for the first time, I actually felt part of the conversation. Everyone was still talking in Danish, but they were explaining what had happened in the service, and I was able to be included in the conversation and keep up with what they were saying. I may have used too many facial expressions and hand gestures, but I felt so relieved to actually get it.

Cultural Development

On Friday morning, I woke up early to go and see a free concert that the Concert House was putting on. The concert was from 9-11am (very very early…) so you can guess what happened. I woke up around half past 8, a little tired. Seeing it takes 1 hour to get to the Concert House, I made a sensible decision to take my time and get ready and be at the concert for the last hour or so. When I got off the Metro I assumed the worst when I saw the queue of people trying to get back into the city. Yes. The concert was from 9-10am, not 11. Not to be disheartened, I entered the building, and the nice lady who just wanted to get home told me I had 3 minutes to look around. It was a short visit, but seeing I had only been on the bottom level of the building, it was nice to get a glimpse of the rest of it.

Once outside the Concert House, I bumped into a few friends from university who had got up in time to see the concert. They told me it was lovely… We decided to investigate some of the new buildings around the area as Islands Brygge is very newly developed. My favourite building was definitely the student accommodation, Teitgenkollegiet for Business students. Tietgenkollegiet was inspired by the Tulou style (ancient housing style from the Yongding County in Fujian Province, China). Designed by Lundgaard and Tranberg Architects, it is a huge round building with a communal garden in the centre. Each part of the building is coming out at different levels, and there are very little walls – all windows. I was very envious of the students coming and going to their homes, especially due to all the amenities they had, including a music room and sewing room. The building was incomparable to university accommodation at home, and so I took lots of pictures!

Seeing a small concert on Sunday afternoon made up for not seeing Friday morning’s one. The concert, held at a local church, was a collection of English, Danish, German and Swedish songs sung by a Swedish lady, Ulla-Mir Renöfält. Her voice was amazing, and she put so much effort into the stories of each of the songs. I was also amazed at Ulla’s talent in her accents to each of the songs. It was very clear that this amazing singer was very humble; reflected in the fact that there was no introduction to her – she just started singing, and she did not wait for applause after each song. I really liked the relaxed atmosphere of the concert, and I am very glad I got the opportunity to go.

Professional Development

As Globalisation and Professional Change was our last class before our Easter break, the teachers put a lot of effort into drawing some conclusions to what we had learnt from our sessions. The challenge for the evening was ‘How to deal with National citizenship, European citizenship and World citizenship.’ The class was split into three parts. The first was to reflect on the first challenge. Lillian, our tutor, gave us the task of making questions for a class member in ten years time. We then had to interview each other, pretending that we were ten years older and settled in a job. I found the exercise strange to begin with, as I really had to use my imagination as to what I would be doing in ten years time. After the activity, we discussed how we answered the questions. Even though we had made the majority of answers up on the spot, reflecting back, we all realised we would like to be doing that particular job. We had all mentioned that we would also like to be working with partnerships in other countries, which is very exciting and I hope that does happen!

The next part of the class was taken by two Belgian Education Lecturers who were over to visit some of their students in our class. They gave a very interactive session about making us aware of the challenges and opportunities we have in accordance to globalisation. We did some great activities such as story telling using pictures. We were split into groups and asked to narrate our version of the story using different languages. It’s amazing what you can pick up from just guessing voice emphasis and pictures! Afterwards we discussed how we could change the activities to make them suitable for the age groups we are teaching – this was really useful and I will definitely be using them in schools.

Finally, we watched a video called ‘I Am Because We Are.’ It connected countries and groups from all over the world with the aim of showing that we all have an influence on each other and are all part of a bigger picture. I have really benefitted from the challenges we have discussed on this module and am very glad I got the opportunity to become more aware of my citizenship in a globalised world and my responsibility as a teacher – wherever I end up teaching.