At the gate
Airport Brussels
On our way to Milan
Special arrival from Milan
Our Italian friends have arrived in Belgium today. They started their day at 10 o’clock this morning and then waited for 3 hours at the airport. In those 3 hours they visited shops and looked for food. They ate a sandwich with cheese and ham. The plane took off at 1:15pm and landed at 15u00. At the same moment the Belgian people received the last information about the train station, where we had to pick our Italian friends up and what at time we had to be there. The Italians were lucky to receive their luggage quickly at the airport. Within no time they were ready to take the train to Roeselare. After 2 hours they changed trains in Bruges, although they had to run a bit. After 20 minutes our new Italian friends arrived in Roeselare, where they left their luggage to the host family to took a group photo in front of the RSL letters of the city (you can see the picture below). After everybody had talked to everybody and had gotten to know each other better, it was time to leave and spend the rest of the evening with the host family and to explore Belgium a bit more, especially the habits of the inhabitants of Roeselare.
Flore Ballyn
Landed
About an our ago the Italiaan exchange landed at the airport in Brussels. They are on their way by train to Roeselare. We’ll meet them at 6:03pm at the station in Roeselare. We’re ready for a marvellous week in Roeselare!
School life in Tichon Hadash
School life in Israël is very different compared to ours. The students have more freedom, they don’t have study and can leave the school at lunch time. Every month they can choose a new song as bell signal, this month they chose the famous song ‘Roxanne’. The relationship between the teachers and the students is also very different. They call their teachers by their first name and have a lot of phone calls with their teachers. The school looks a bit old and less beautiful than ours but it is very practical. A completely new school building is being built next to the other building. During every break time the students have football matches and I have to say they play quite aggresively, or put differently, with a great competitive spirit. We wanted to play but we did not get the permission to play football, so we watched the games instead.
Elections
Monday was Election Day. Everyone from Israel had a day off.
The right-wing Likud party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won exactly half of the seats in the Israeli parliament according to the exit polls together with like-minded parties. It was the third election this year. Our exchange partners were not so happy about it, but it didn’t ruin the vibe.Mien
Project work
Today we started the day with the 5th project session. We had to finish our logo and start to make our presentation on PowerPoint. It was a really stressful session and we had a lot of discussions with our group. We had to work efficient and fast, because we didn’t have a lot of time. Some groups made pictures and little clips to illustrate their project in their PowerPoint. After that we had to start writing our text for our presentation tomorrow. Normally we would rehearse all the speeches of each group but we hadn’t enough time to do the rehearsal. After our hard work we got a delicious surprise, we got a lot of pizza and pasta. Looking forward to our final results on Friday! Rania
Jaffa
Today we went to Jaffa. Jaffa is the southern and oldest city of Israel and there are about 46.000 people. We have seen a lot today and there is a lot to talk about but I’m going to pick three symbols that are the essence of Israel and the people in it. First we saw the ‘Suspended orange tree’. It’s a tree in a clay construction and the artist of the art work is Ran Morin. It symbolizes the victory of planting trees in a place where it’s not that simple. Ran chose an
orange tree because it’s the symbol of Jaffa. The second is a bridge where all
zodiac signs are depicted on. The guide told us to put our hand on our zodiac sign, close our eyes, look at the sea and make a wish. Only then our wish would come true. At last we have seen ‘the gate of faith’ it is a very important gate which is on the top of the Peak park, in Jeruzalem there is another gate which is called the gate of Jaffa. It was really fun and I will never forget the trip to Jaffa!
Jerusalem
This afternoon we went off to Jerusalem. It was a drive of about 45 minutes. First we went to the Holocaust museum. It was a very special experience and everybody was visibly touched by the guided tour. Although we were there for only an hour and a half we did the whole museum and learned a lot. Then we drove further to the centre of Jerusalem. When we arrived we had a short walk to the church of the Holy Grave. It was not that busy so we could visit the grave of Jesus. Then we walked on to the bazaar wh
ere we had some falafel. We ended the day with a visit to the Western Wall. It was an amazing day.
Simon Bruneel