Feldkirch – a place to be
Dieses Schuljahr hat die 6d im Rahmen des Erasmus-Programms einen Schüleraustausch mit einer Schule in Madrid durchgeführt. Elena, Iria und Henar – 3 Schülerinnen des IES Manuel Fraga de Iribarne in Madrid – berichten von ihren Erfahrungen in Feldkirch.
We didn’t know what to expect from Feldkirch, Austria, but it certainly wasn’t this. We expected it to be a little awkward, but we instantly felt at home. The truth is we didn’t expect people to be that nice. This includes our host families and every single person you could run into in the street.
This, of course, doesn’t mean that Feldkirch isn’t different from Madrid. We found that people in Feldkirch wear slippers inside the school, which we think is what surprised us the most. Moreover, everything there is so clean and tidy, and the pupils are all so quiet in class, whereas in Madrid chaos is another word for school. Another difference about school compared to Madrid is that work is mostly done at school and working in groups seems like it’s a priority to them, which we think is something all schools should encourage.
Furthermore, we wanted to take pictures everywhere we went. Every time you stepped out the door you would encounter mountains, nature and beauty, and we so wish Madrid had that kind of thing.
We also got to feel like Indiana Jones. Like adventurers. Like we were living inside a movie and we were the main characters. We got to experience this feeling during the climbing garden activity, which consisted in climbing trees and zip lines, and we’ve never felt so invincible.
To sum up, it was an awesome experience and even though we were scared at first to go, scared to leave our families and customs behind, we now realize that to live to the fullest you have to step out of your comfort zone every once in a while, because if you don’t, you might miss a once-in-a-lifetime experience like this one.
Elena, Iria and Henar
Students from IES Manuel de Fraga Iribarne, Madrid