A new city, sunny days and a lot of fun. From the 1st to the 7th of Februrary, three students (Greta, Maya and Michi) from the 6k got the opportunity to travel to Murcia (Spain) with an ERASMUS+ co-funded mobility organized by the Kluseman Erasmus team and gain new experiences. Students from Poland, Czech Republic, Austria and Spain met to get to know different cultures while learning something about human rights and volunteering. We all felt very welcome in our host families from Spain, even though it was a bit hard in the beginning because it was the first time for all of us. Thanks to our stay in the host families, we improved not only our ability to speak English but also Spanish and got a feeling about the Spanish culture.
However, the most important skill we all improved during this time was how to approach strangers. All of the people we met were really kind and open-minded which simplified the first contact and gave us much more confidence to try again. With that newly gained competence we met a lot of new people and found friends that also visited us in Graz about a month later.
In Graz we worked to a similar topic with the motto “Shaping the Future“ and were assigned the task of creating a political party. This part of our experience took place at Klusemann, where we connected with the Austrians that visited Benidorm and Askim and, of course, all of their exchange students. At the end of that week, we were challenged one more time and presented our party, including some fabulous speeches, to a great audience and finished the week with a farewell buffet.
In conclusion, with this exchange we experienced two separate weeks full of discoveries of culture, communication, democracy and volunteering. But, of course, also the different sceneries captured us. In Murcia we got to know its great architecture and style, however, also showing our peers around in Graz opened up a complete different kind of perspective on our city.
(Michaela, Greta, Maya, 6k)
