Long-Term mobility in Mataró
Summary
It was very late in the evening of the 11th January 2022, and parents, students and our Erasmus coordinator Maya were in T2 at Barcelona’s International Airport El Prat, ready to welcome our Lithuanian partners who have hosted us the previous three months . We missed them and we wanted them to meet our people and our school.
All of them love Spain. Whenever they saw a palmtree they thought they were in Bahamas or in an exotic country. Our tanned skins and sunny weather catch their spirits! Hopefully,for three months they might avoid taking D-vitamin pills!!!
Tutorships with Maya were done on a weekly basis via videocalls and with Inga presential tutorships once a week according to schedule. Fall came; lesson started to be harder, new acquaintances, outings with families, parties with new friends, basketball games and shopping at Akropolis and days became shorter and shorter. Cold arrived at the end of October and Maya visited them to see how they were doing and took them some home food cravings they had!!! Some parents also visited for All Saints’ Festivity.
Time flew as fall became cold as winter and the first snow flakes covered Kaunas. They couldn’t believe it was time to go back home. They didn’t want to. Now they felt part of Kaunas and they had got used to their routines. Paula knew exactly how to use Bolt and move around all the town, Carla had got her autonomy and knew exactly how to cope with problems, Aina was our traveller student; she went to Latvia, Cyprus and Nida peninsula, Arlet was told to continue learning Lithuanian and Adrià became the chef of the group, surprising his host family with his “natillas” and “tortilla de patatas”.
On the 10th od December 2021, Maya accompanied the five students back home. Nobody wanted to come back. They said: “Three months is not enough. We need more. Now we are situated in this culture. Now we can absorb and take advantage of what we’ve got”. But the experience was over. They had to come back to their reality.