Reflections on intercultural living and learning: What I have learned in Slovenia and how it will influence my future plans

            What was the most useful thing that we have learned in this first LTTA in Slovenia? Well...we think that everything was useful.

On the first hand, we learned how to make new friends in a foreign country. We learned about the differences between our countries. It was good because we learned new words in a new language, we compared our ideas and we saw that even though we are not from the same country, we have almost the same ideas and conceptions.

On the second hand, we learned a lot of different, new and interesting things about astronomy and the Solar System. For example, in our third day in Slovenia, we learned how to measure the distance from the Moon to Earth using two photos from different places of the world, we learned that Japan is one of the first countries on the west of the International Date line- we understood about the rotation of the Earth, but we have not realised the implications and effects that this has on the time zones in different countries. We discovered new points of view about why we should or why we shouldn't go on Mars.

In our fourth day, we experimented with how the craters are made on the Moon by putting a layer of flour in a box, then a layer of coffee and after that we threw some stones in it and we saw how craters are made. We also built a rocket from a plastic bottle, then we filled it with water, we pomped some air in it and we launched it. We did this to see how Newton's Third Law works. We were told that the Moon will never fall on Earth and we found out that some scientists believe that the Moon was originally a part of Earth.

We also improved our writing skills because each day we wrote a report of the day and we also wrote a final report. We developed our communication in English and our social skills because we talked with our friends from other European countries. All those skills are useful for our Cambridge exam and for our future personal and professional life.

We also had to do an Enterprise project in which we developed our negotiation and leadership skills and we also improved our teamwork skills because we worked in a multilingual and multinational environment. This project gave us the opportunity to develop job-related skills (like research, working to a schedule and meeting deadlines) and also the managerial skills (like flexibility, patience and understanding). All those skills will help us very much in our future careers.

We also had a stargazing session in which we discovered a lot of constellations and how to identify them on the sky.

It was an unforgettable experience because we had the chance to make new friends and also to find about new things about astronomy in a European context.

ISTRATE Maria-Emma and CIOCOIU-BUNILA Ioan-Vlad (ROMANIA)