Ehrenamt Ukraine
Last weekend, our first mid-term seminar took place in Hamburg.
Ten exchange students arrived in Hamburg on friday afternoon to discuss the past months, their experiences and challenges regarding school, family, friends and social activities in Germany.
The seminar started with presenting their current picture of Germany. They were asked how they would present Germany to the new exchange students coming in September 2018. This task was intended to see how their picture of Germany changed during the past months.
We then asked the students to present their current life in Germany and talk in front of the others about their host family, their school, their new friends and whether they have found some leisure activities. The evaluation showed that they liked to hear about the others experiences a lot.
The next step was to find out more on how they integrated in their host family and school, how they made new friends and how they have found some leisure activities and the challenges they faced. It was great to see how they dealt with these topics in group work, shared their experiences made and gave tips to each other how to solve problematic issues. Those solutions and typical challenging situations were presented in short theatre sequences.
On Saturday evening, the students were asked to prepare a dinner for their host Family with a given budget. In this situation, the participants, Bert and I represented the host family and the students had to buy groceries, prepare the dinner and do the dishes afterwards. They cooked a pumpkin soup which was delicious!
On Sunday, it was all about the upcoming time: the students were asked to re-read their motivation letters they wrote during the preparation course in Hamburg and name the aims they achieved already and write down what they would like to achieve until the end of their stay.
The last task was to write letters about what they wish for the other participants.
All in all, the mid-term seminar was very successful! Everyone was involved and shared their experiences and was thankful for tips. During the whole weekend, we talked to every exchange student one-on-one. This gave us the possibility to talk about specific topics which we hope the exchange students understood well.
We are looking forward to a wonderful and successful second half of the exchange!