The italian delegation in Kaunas
Labas! I’ve “just” come back from Kaunas, Lithuania, where I took part in the latest meeting of the ComTec (Comenius Project). I bet the most of you haven’t even ever heard of that. This project is so wide-spreading that I’ll focus my description only on a little part of it. The Comenius which I joint is a 2-year-lasting project (from 2008 to 2010) involving many high-schools from different parts of Europe: Italy, England, Portugal, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland. The topic of our ComTec is “Towards a European Citizen” and the specific theme of the Lithuanian meeting was the immigration/emigration process. Each school had to make a questionnaire about the roots of the kids and then a delegation (the Italian delegation was formed by Jacqueline Mala, proff. Pizzala and Seccia and I) was supposed to go to the meeting in Kaunas to explain the results of the questionnaire and the data of the immigration/emigration to and from the European countries.
Each school was free to organize the presentation as they please: for example the English schools arranged short dramas; the Portuguese and the Lithuanian showed videos and so on.
We watched two Italian movies about immigrants: “ Il nuovo mondo” by Emanuele Crialese, and “Lamerica” by Gianni Amelio and then we told the plots of the movies, using them by way of example of the Italian situation during the years. Although our hotel and the host-school were both in Kaunas, we had the chance to see the capital city, Vilnius, too. The first impression that I had of Lithuania was that of one of the typical East Europe countries: sad, cold
The presentation of our school
with grey blocks – each one looking exactly the same as the next. But now I admit I was wrong! The medieval centre of Kaunas is very characteristic and with all those Christmas trees is even better and Vilnius is an amazing city! As I wrote in the Italian article, it’s a perfect mix between ancient and new. It is clean, multicoloured, fresh and full of initiatives. The surrounding of the university is full of nightlife and there are a lot of nice places to have dinner or just have something to drink. But the best hour to see Vilnius is the early morning; if you’re lucky as we were, you will see the mild sun arising from the top of the medieval tower, which watches over the city from the hill.
The next meeting of the Project will take place in our Convitto, during the first week of March and it will be divided into two main topics: the European Identity and the Integration. In this occasion we’ll have the chance to host guys from all the above-mentioned countries and to carry on this path which will be brought to a close in Portugal with the last meeting in May.
Carolina Tardito (4C)