International Dinners

In the first semester we had international dinners irregularly, where people from different nations would prepare a dish and share it with the others. I didn't attend none of the dinners accept one of them because I couldn't cook and didn't like the idea of being a leech. This semester though I started to attend the dinners when we arranged to hold similar events.

The first international dinner was hosted by Manuela and Funda, it was the only international dinner that was held in a room instead of the university. I couldn't help carrying my not so portable speakers there for music. Because everybody was close at the table and cozy in a house environment along with Manuela's sweet playlist, it was intimate. Me and Funda were preparing the main dish, Imam Bayildi, one of my favorite traditional Turkish dishes. Sara, Christina, Stefan did the starter, Laurine and Manuela did the desert what I call "Swutch Desert". I had to go to shopping twice, once with Funda and once by myself, it took hours to prepare the dish, I was tired. But the food was super delicious and all the work was worth it. It was nice to be together and to have conversations after dinner. It was my favorite international dinner to today. I think the other one were just wasn't intimate enough, mostly because of the location and lack of anticipation and advance planning.

International Dinner #1

The second one was held at the university, on this one everybody could just make whatever they wanted, we just listed what we were going to cook prior to the day on group chat. My favorite dish was something made with toast bread.

International Dinner #2 starring pajamas

The Dishes

The last international dinner was held at the canteen, once again everybody could cook whatever day wanted accept the tutors were going to do the deserts, me and Funda didn't listen and thought everybody could use some more desert. It was a kind of a fake tramisu, basically layers of cream and biscuits with cinnamon. After the dinner, Lidia played violin. Later we moved on to the Friday's Cafe where we celebrated the birthdays of several people. Not one of my proudest nights.

International dinners were a great way to socialize and hang out with the classmates.

Teaching Observation in a Special Needs Class

Today we went to a Brøderup, in the middle of nowhere to a school that looked like red barn structures. Although it looked like it was a barn that was turned into a makeshift school from the outside, it was quite nice from the inside. We were greeted by a teacher who asked who we were looking for, Heidi our teacher arrived shortly with a couple of her students and lead us to the classroom. The classroom consisted of 9 students. Everybody has introduced themselves, we saw the ages of the students ranged from 14 to 16. There were only two girls who seemed quite happy in the classroom but we were told that there were two girls who were absent because that had some problems.

In the seats in the classroom were not situated like traditional classroom, there were for desks in the middle and there were desks in the corners. Students had computers, had some of them had headphones entire time when we were there. We were told that they needed a quite environment without distractions to learn. One of the girls didn't like it when she was criticized, just like me, she also had a painting in the wall.

Maybridge's painting

There was a fridge, a kettle and a sink in the classroom. They were allowed to eat as they might don't have enough to eat at home. There were some fatboys in the corner where they could take a nap if they couldn't get their sleep at home.

In the first lesson the kids worked with song, each student focused on two lines of the lyrics, they were interviewing one another, alternating between pairs periodically. The teacher were asking the pupils how they were doing instead of asking about the task specifically.

We had a fire drill in between the classes, luckily we were told prior to the drill. We evacuated the school and formed lines in school yard, and stayed there for a while and got back to the school.

The other lesson was history. There were pictures of different ages with their names on it, in the page that was projected to the board. The teacher was talking about the each era and then asking randomly about the era to the students.

Then there was a lunch break, we hadn't brought anything to eat with us but luckily there was a cake tasting competition and we had several extremely sweet cakes to taste, I couldn't anything sweet for two days after that.

Cake for lunch

When we got back to the classroom, we saw that it was a just a gathering that we socialized, students talking to each other about whatever they wanted.

Our teacher Heidi was really nice to us, the students were also really nice. A 14 year old girl handed her backpack to me and asked me if I could carry it, I was able to carry it but with notable difficulty, I was worried because I am 22 year old and even I would struggle having it strapped to my back more then five minutes.

Our commuted lasted more then two hours in total, but the beautiful scenery of Denmark made it all worth it, spring is a really nice time to visit the schools in middle of nowhere.

Trip to Berlin

During the Easter break I have planned a trip to Germany, spanning four cities: Berlin, Hannover, Hildesheim, Koln. I would meet with my friends in Berlin, after traveling Berlin for a 3 days moving on to Hannover, renting bikes seeing everywhere there moving on to the Hildesheim where my friends studied, and then to Koln then back to the Hildesheim and then back to Denmark. It sounded so good and we talked about everything. There was one problem though, my lovely friends had made the obscene mistake of letting me do the planning and organization. This lead to a disaster. I have decided to go to Berlin early, Funda also was going to come with me, she learned that she could come with me in the morning, and a 20 year old German couple would share their ride with us at Sweden because we were super cheap. It was quite an adventure, trying to reach the ferry at the right time, I saw Maria the driver driving a 160 kilometers an hour, it was crazy but thankfully we were in one peace at the end.

On board the ferry, we sit at a table by the window, boyfriend of Maria, I don't know what his name is, was a curious guy, smelling like sheeps, avoiding eye contact, not making conversations other then saying "if we were at Turkey, the food would be great". Maria was friendly though, she studied music in Berlin, she played piano. After long and tiresome journey we arrived at Berlin. We struggled to find transportation to our hostel, one of the strange things that happened to us in Berlin was the Turkish guy who was listening to some really bad music through his phone speakers helping us find an ATM. In the end we found our hostel. It was quite nice, stylish and clean. We had spent about an hour or two trying to find the hostel but later in our trip we found out that our hostel was just minutes away where we passed by in the car. That was another strange thing, German couple not knowing a central street name.

Brandenburg Gate

Our time in Germany consisted of walking, walking and then some more walking, and some sightseeing. I was shocked to see the resemblance to our own Ankara. The streets were dirty just like a Turkish city, but there were really nice spots and buildings that had great architecture, which we don't have because we didn't have a Renaissance era. I have been to Hamburg last year, and I like Hamburg a lot better as a city to live in, cleaner and nicer overall.

My time in Germany made me more interested in World War 2 history, which I was proud that we weren't a part of. Its interesting that such a trip could make so many differences in someones consciousness and interests.

Well, the last day I had some trouble with my planning, and that was having no plan at all, I have just purchased a flight ticket back to Copenhagen and flew in the night. My friends in Hildesheim were disappointed, but they made it to the Berlin by themselves and had some pretty cool pictures documenting it.

Berlin trip left me really tired, I was glad to be back at Vordingborg. When I was in Berlin, I have realized something, I was identifying Vordingborg as my home, and was looking forward to go back even if I was having a really nice time in Berlin. I never felt that about the city I was studying in Mersin Turkey, I think its because of the people and the ease of getting by everyday in Denmark. For a person not so social, it was a lot easier to interact with people and have subtle friendships. I loved going to school everyday and the life in Vordingborg in general.

Index for Inclusion

We had to work for a few weeks with the "Index for Inclusion" by Tony Booth and Mel Ainscow. The first week we had an activity that we would focus on an part of the index where we found interesting and present it in the class in groups of 4 of 5 people. We would alternate between groups and everybody would have a chance to talk about it. It was my first with such an activity, the alternation in people presenting the different parts made everybody focus on different points and sharing it with the class, everybody having an understanding of all the different points eventually.

And later we had to pick a statement from the index and use it to interview the school staff and students to see if the inclusion was used in the school. Our topic was: "The buildings and grounds are developed to support the participation of all." The purpose of our investigation was to find out if the school facilities were build to support the inclusion of the kids with disabilities.

Our teacher kindly arranged meetings with some of the teachers in a school that I have been to observe many times. Our groups' teacher had a traditional Southern American male name "Merle" but she is female. Although she was quite nice to us, we were worried that we were being trouble for her because she wasn't used to being interviewed in English, happily other teachers helped us translating some of our questions. The part of the questioner that involved the  school plan were related to school administration, we couldn't get an appointment with some one from the administration, so I have decided to go back to school next day and make a different questionnaire like survey with the teachers and parents. Comparing the teachers' and the parents view. After I have spend a couple hours at the school, interviewing teachers and parents I have realized that the teachers and parents had completely different ideas of the environment of the school. I have put the points where teachers and parents disagreed, the teachers seemed to be optimistic but parents were not content with the kids education environment.

Teaching Experience

Today we had a class of 6 graders as guests in our classroom. We had to teach them a topic of choice in 3 groups. The first group was ITEP students and the other two were ERASMUS.

We started with the teachers leaving the classroom, because the pupils knew them very well. The topic of the group was, “Fastelavn”, the Danish version of Mardi Gras as it was celebrated a few days ago. Couple students were selected to translate the teachers’ talk and instructions if some of pupils didn’t understand. Most of the students were involved in the discussion and the class ended with the group discussions of each teachers’ nations’ respective version of ‘Fastelavn’ excluding Scotland because they didn’t it. Overall it was a entertaining class, the costumes worn by the teachers added a fun layer to the class.

The second class had the topic of countries’ of the teachers. It started with forming of the groups. The abundance of personal traits and features that the groups were based on made me think that it was going to be a chaos. But the pupils did a good job of communicating and finding the group that they belong. It was nice to see that pupils could act on their own, but it could be better to control the process in order to prevent the possible chaotic situation. Again, the class ended with a group discussion about the teachers’ countries.

I was in the third and last group. This was going to be my first teaching experience and to be honest I was terrified. We started the class with a hangman game with the words of ‘all about me’ and ‘interview’. After we introduced ourselves and our topics, pupils had to interview each other and talk about themselves in pairs, and to fill out a worksheet about their pair. There were three different worksheets the pupils could choose from depending on their level of English. After the ‘workshop’ session we followed a similar path to the previous groups and each of us set in one of the 4 groups of pupils and let them interview us and talk with them. We ended the class with a game in the school yard where we formed a circle and used a tennis ball to draw to the person that we wanted to ask a question. Overall I think we did a good job of involving everyone in the class with the games and interviews. The topic also was a great way to get the pupils attention as everyone likes to talk about the things they like.

For me, kids being eager to share their thoughts and ask questions made the process of the teaching easier. While I didn’t interact with the whole class as one of my classmates mentioned, it was a good first teaching experience, because I got to work with my group of pupils and see that they were very active. 

Teaching Observation

Today we went to observe a class of 8 graders in a Danish school. In the first semestr I been in this school before for observation, it was a class of six graders. Even though it was the same school, there were significant differences bitween the classrooms. We were told that the school had different divisions. The classroom of 6 graders looked cleaner, more modern, the position of the seats were made to make it easier for the teacher to reach kids and vice/versa, the seats in the 8 grade classroom was in plane rows like a traditional classroom.

The first lesson was Danish, and of course we had difficulty following the class, the teacher translated and told us the plan for the class. The pupils were given a text had to answer the questions related to the text in 15 minutes. They talked about a trip to Berlin and where they wanted to visit.

The second lesson was German. The students were working with a pop song called "Monster". Strange choice of music perhaps but students were quite engaged with their task, they had papers to fill related with the lyrics.

We had to make snapshots about the students, the teacher and the student in foucs. I was focused to the students.

We had to make a presentation about our experience, changing the digital format of the snapshot was my toughest task, because I had mixed up the snapshots I had to redo them, and that took me more then other stuff I had to do for our presentation.

My snapshot pattern looked like this after the lessons:

The "If" Machine

This week in Democratic Citizenship class two groups made exercises from the book "The If Machine".

 First exercise was about having a ring of invisibility which made us invisible when we wear it, we were asked what would we do with the ring if we were 10 years old whether we would use it for the good of other people or just use it for ourselves and what would be the right thing to do with the ring.
Most answers were about the things like stealing candies, watching tv with the parents instead of sleeping. But I would use it to sneak around bad people and prevent them from hurting other people. While it sounds like I care about other people it was more about being the popular kid.
For me the right thing to do would be destroying the ring. Because if we take history in the consideration if people have too much power it is really easy to be self-righteous.

The second exercise was interesting because it was about freedom.

 We were asked to draw a prison room with everything we wanted in it with one person that we chose. I've picked everything that I do when I'm on my own, a guitar, music, books, and may be my best friend or Baron Davis the veteran basketball player who said that he was abducted by aliens. The question was if we would be happy in our prison cell with all those things. As you might expect no one said that they would. This sounded to me like a reduced prison sentence where a person who has done a really bad thing but is not aware of it, but is restricted to not hurt other people. While I can't imagine living in a prison cell and being happy, I wonder what would I feel if I grew up in a prison and didn't know about the world outside.
Some people said that to be happy was to have the freedom of speech. If we think about a medieval society where common people don't know about human rights and freedom of speech, people could still be happy and content with their lives.

For me happiness can not be measured with the amount freedom we have. While being free raises the odds to be happy there are other things that I feel that are necessary, like friends, family, health. I think freedom also includes security. I don't think freedom is possible without being secure. If you don't feel secure walking in the street like in a third world country where crime rate is high, your freedom is restricted.