aces Kick-Off meeting 2010 September, Senec

This journey was amazing, because I learnt a lot of new things about ourselves, about other countries and about the topic: how to solve the conflicts. It was really great to see how much works are in this meeting, a lot of decorations, the tasks, the enviroment, and even about the service of the great hotel.

I met my teacher at 6:30 am in Budapest to ascend to our bus. The bus-journey took about 4 hours. Then, we changed to another bus in Bratislava, and a train to Senec. In Senec, the organizers waited us with a nice mini-train. In this mini-train, I met my older English teacher, it was a suprise, because we live in the same city but we have not met about 5 years. We were taken to the Hotel by the mini-train.

Int he Hotel, we checked in and we got our presents from ERSTE Foundation. Then we went to have lunch. It was really great too, because there was swedish table with lot of tasty and senctful meats. Then there was our free time and we had to wait our room-mates. One of my room-mates was 15 years old, she is really nice. My other room-mate arrived about 9 o’clock, she was cheery too. Then we had to go to the planery, there was a brief. After this, we went to have diner with our new room-mates.

The second day was opened by the organisers. Then we had to go to our group to the „Problem solving activity”. We didn’t know that what we will do there. First of all, we had to introduce ourselves by a dance. I really liked it! Then, Darko gave us the tasks. We had to do every 12 tasks within 60 minutes, it seemed like a Mission Impossible. But, we have done them!! We had to take a group-picture next to the castle of Bratislava. We had to make a map abput our birthplace and make a dessert. I really liked these tasks because it showed us that if we work in a gruop and help each other, we can do even a mission impossible too. Then, we had to make our own poster of the project-group. We wanted to make a poster which is really colourful, and shows our country and our love to each others. We done it! There were colourful hands ont he poster and the colourful title: Conflict Corner. Then, we  agroupped to students and teachers and we had to define and solve a conflict. It seemed hard buti t wasn’t. At the evening, there were the country-group meetings. It was bizarre to speak in my mother-language, some of us spoke eventually in english. It was really nice to get to know who camed from our country.

The motto of the third day was Ocean of Learning. We got 5 pictures, and we had to find a different picture to get in a group. Int he Hotel, there were a lot is „islands” where we could land and dne the task. Then we went back to the Planery and we waited to the group-photos. After that we went to the bus-stop to got in Bratislava. In Bratislava we saw the City Centre and the Castle. It was nice. Then we got back to our Hotel with a little truble.

The fourth day started with introducing the presentators. Then we had to choose two workshops. Our first workshop was Participation. There we had to argue with teachers like in a school-parliament. It was so difficult to me, because about these topics I can’t even argue in my mother tongue but I think I solved this problem well. The second workshop was horrible. I mean, there was an old lady who spoke about the speaking without judgement, but she was really serious, she hadn’t got homour. It was so boring too, because she read out her notes slowly and then she explained them. After this, we had time to speak about our projects with our group. In the evening, there were a party. The topic was ocean. There were a lot os pirates and sailors, but there were a lot of tourist and passangers too. It was nice.