PSHE tutor Luke helped create the opportunity for some of our students to visit Poland in the Easter holidays. As you can see from the reports on this page, this was a great success and something we’ll be encouraging more students to undertake.
My trip to Gołkowice Górne
Poland 11th - 19th April 2019 via Krakow
I was encouraged by my PSHE Tutor to apply for an opportunity to attend a youth exchange in Poland based on exploring self-development as a tool for inspiring change at a personal and societal level.
It was a relaxing and fulfilling experience where I met 40+ other people mostly from other countries. We spent the days doing workshops and learning about each other and each other's cultures.
The nights where spent similarly however with a more relaxed vibe and with a lot more partying.
We were split into groups of 5 per cabin and where given the key, we had to choose 1 member of the group to be as my group called the “key master” which I graciously accepted and upheld the title of.
I was grouped with 2 Italians, a Georgian and luckily another student from LAMP who I of course knew prior to the exchange. The first night I had a weird nervousness but after talking to the others I was staying with in the cabin that went away, this was mostly because one of the Italians father was from the same town in south east Italy as my grandad, it was also partly to do with having someone I knew prior to the exchange to talk to inside jokes and all.
One of the highlights of the exchange was when we went up into the mountains that are inside of a shared national park between Poland and Slovakia, we hiked for miles, stopping a few times to eat or drink. Everyone quickly moved into groups based on speed, I stayed behind with some of the people at the back because I got along with them like a house on fire. We ended up making the joke that we were the fellowship of the ring, trying to reach mount doom and destroy the one ring. This was partially because we had sticks to help us traverse the terrain and partially because the Greeks and the Italians seemed to absolutely adore lord of the rings like me.
Another highlight was nearly every day we would play/sing music with instruments and the use of tables and hands for drums/beats. This went surprisingly well, we were in time with each other and only a handful of times did someone miss a beat or go slightly out of time. It was both fun and acted like a bonding exercise.
In overview, this was the most fun I’ve had so far in my life, I met a ton of people, learnt about multiple cultures, had a lot of good food, saw some great views and now have at least 50 more inside jokes which I can laugh about and remember the great times I had.
This was the best experience I could of asked for and I hope that anyone reading this can experience the same or something similar.
It really has helped me to improve my confidence
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