[news] 22.05.2008
Visit to two primary schools
On Thursday the 8th and on Friday the 16th of May I, Cecilia, went to a friend of ours, Mrs Vicki (I don't know her last name) to two close by, primary schools. She is an English teacher in both of them, so the purpose of my visit was both for the pupils to get to hear some English and to learn a little bit about Sweden. Thursday the 8th of May I went with Mrs. Vicki, a friend of ours, to a school where she works, in the small village Skotusa approximately 20 minutes from Serres center. This is a primary school and has about 40 pupils between the ages 7-12. Vicki teaches English at this school and wanted me to come to tell the pupils about my country, Sweden – which I gladly did.
When we arrived I got kind of surprised. I imagined it being like the school I used to go to when I was in that age; with over 300 pupils and with many different school buildings. Instead the sight that met my eye was a pale yellow, pretty small, old building, and in the front of the house the amount of children which could have been one class in a Swedish primary school. I asked Vicki about where the other children were, but the answer I got was that there were no more children… I spent 4 hours at this school, meeting the teachers, children and making my presentation in four different classes.
The next week on Friday the 16th I went with Mrs. Vicki again, this time to a school called “Paleocastro”, old castle in Greek. This school was even more small than the previous one, but this time I didn’t expect anything else. The children of this school were really curios about “the ξένης” (the foreigner)! I made presentations about Sweden for two classes in this school.
My preparations for the presentation contained collecting pictures of different things from Sweden; famous people, the king and queen, pictures of our capital and my hometown, sportsmen etc. As the children don’t understand much English, pictures helps them to better stay focused!
The main thing that the children reacted on the most was the fact that we have a king and a queen. The moment after I’ve told them about it they started asking questions very eagerly. For example if the royal family had their own servants that gave them everything they asked for, if there were guards inside the castle, if the guards had swords etc. The funniest or maybe I should say “funniest” question in my opinion came from a boy named Janis. He asked if the king had the power to But it’s not so strange that they these questions, because the only way the children have heard of kings and queens before is from fairytales. Another thing Vicki before told me specially to tell them about was our Scandinavian phenomenon - “light nights”. They are really amazed by how in the summer our nights are light all night through. And that it’s the opposite in the winter; we have dark almost all day around. I had never thought about this phenomenon as anything special. I don’t even think I’ve ever thought about it at all it has just been there!
It was a nice experience going to these schools and to get an insight in how a primary school in this part of the world can look like. There are of course many differences between Greece and Sweden. The biggest one is the states of the school buildings. Both the schools I went to looked really old and damaged. Maybe because of the fact that they were small ones with a low amount of pupils, I don’t know. I do know that many children or not, a school in my country wouldn’t “be allowed” to look like that. But modern school or not, children both here and up north are very happy with what they’ve got. And extra fun was it for the Greek children when the Swedish girl came to visit, my frequent autograph signing can reveal that 
Cizi; 0 comments
print