Busy as a bumble bee and far away from home

OK, so I might as well admit it: I am exhausted! The last days have been busy from beginning to end. I have just returned from Holland where I spent a week with my colleague Anne and a group of 21 students from my school. We were invited in an exchange program at Grotious College in the city of Delft, and I must say, this school really knows how to take care of their guests. We were taken around in Delft and also to Amsterdam and Zeeland, and we also had the time for lectures and workshops at the university. The topic of the week was “Water management”, and it is fascinating to see how the Dutch actually deal with the fact that such a great part of their country is below sea level!

All our students lived with Dutch families this week, and the feed back they have given so far is united: they loved it! Some had, of course, seen that there are cultural differences between Norway and the Netherlands, even if it only takes us a couple of hours getting there. The overall impression, however, is that they had met great people, and some have, I am sure, made friendships for life. Today they told me that they had been busy on the MSN during the weekend, and they have already started planning what to do during the return visit in September.

For me, this was the first time ever going abroad with students, and I am sure it will not be the last. During the week in Delft we also had the time to talk to not only Dutch teachers, but also teachers from Rome and Milan, and hopefully, the result of these talks will be more exchanges for Sandvika Upper Secondary.

Two days of recovering from the week in Delft was not enough for me (maybe Norway’s triumph in the Eurovision Song Contest and the celebration of Norway’s national day also are to be blamed), and coming back to school was harder than I had expected. No time to rest, however; 13 of my students will be doing their English exam on Wednesday and they had a lot of questions to ask their teacher today… There are also more papers to correct, presentations to assess and new projects to plan. – Must be a sign summer is not too far away!