October 9th, 2023

    October 9th 2023 marks the beginning of the “1 2 3 Action! Teaching English through Drama” Erasmus+ Project, in which Romania, France, Italy and Türkiye are taking part. That morning we gathered at the teacher’s room at “Nichita Stănescu” National College Ploiești, where the principal of our school gave a warm welcoming speech and many Romanian students surprised us with a few short artistic programs.

       We then split into 3 groups and explored the school and then reunited on the first floor for the presentations part. The delegations from each country introduced their country, region, city and school. The students who presented were all very nervous but everyone tried to be supportive and we ended up enjoying some wonderful presentations.

   Then came the lunch break, and we went back to the teacher’s room to enjoy some appetizers and desserts.

    And then we officially got down to business and started the activities. Before anything else, we wrote some of our expectations and wishes for this mobility and put them in a “memory jar”.

   Romania’s topic in this project is “Memories”, which are related to the Past Tense, and we played two games for this.

   For the first one, we had a bunch of pictures from each and every one of us’ childhood, including the teachers’, numbered from 1 to 39 (we forgot about 34) and we had to figure out who the children in the pictures were. Some people hadn’t changed much, while others were hard to recognize. In the end, it helped us learn each other’s names, and it was also a fun way to break the ice.

    As for the second game, it was prepared by Timeea and Ally, and it consisted of a spinning wheel, with yellow, blue, green, red and gold, and each color corresponded to a certain type of question or activity, that had different point values. We split into 3 teams, green, yellow and blue, and tried our luck. The questions were focused on our pasts, mainly our childhood, and many people shared their stories with us, some were more touching, while others were funny. When the spinning wheel landed on the gold color, some students chose to pass their turn to the teachers, and so instead, they had to extract and answer a question, mainly oriented towards their teaching career. Other students who had the luck to find gold, decided to play mini-games. One was about throwing paper balls into cups on different levels (hence different point values). As for the other mini-game, one student had to put on a bunny-ear balloon hat and another one had to throw some rings on the ears. I myself had the opportunity to embarrass myself by wearing the bunny-ears.

    After this, we left the school and proceeded to tour the center of the city, all on foot, but it was worth it. We visited Michael the Brave’s statue, St. John the Baptist Cathedral, the Central Halls and the Palace of Culture.

    As it was getting late and some were pretty tired, we decided to end the tour, but some of us wanted to spend some more time together, so what better choice than to go to KFC together. And so 20 people speaking English entered the small KFC at the heart of the city. We sat down at 4 tables, ate, laughed and talked about various topics.

Writer: Florescu Ruxandra

Editor: Florescu Ruxandra