Wales excursion "follow-up" meeting

On the evening of July 8th all the GLC IIb students, the excursionists who joined the trip to Wales and even some friends of the participants came together once more for four hours to present the results of the group projects. The GLC IIb students who were not able to go on the trip had one more great chance to get first-hand information about what had happened abroad and to have a look at the many different pictures. As every student participated in a project on Wales related to the country, its people or the excursion itself, everybody was involved in the program of the evening. Cathy and Phil brought tasty snacks and drinks so that we all felt really comfortable.

The first highlight was Brandy who made an excellent start and read out one funny day of the diary he wrote in Wales. He succeeded in making everybody laugh as he himself had so much fun in presenting it. After that we listened to Brandy's interview with Welsh people about their views on the euro, their relationship to England and their views on learning Welsh.

Hanno, Susan and Phil were the lucky ones who had been allowed to interview Prof. Colin Baker at the University of Bangor on the future of the Welsh language. They recorded the interview for the rest of us and showed the little movie. It was very interesting to hear what an expert like Prof. Baker thinks about this difficult topic that the GLC students had already started to discuss in class.

The "pirates on the Welsh coast" group had worked out something very special and during their lively and exciting presentation all the others learned about the Welsh pirates and buccaneers, Black Bart Roberts and Sir Henry Morgan.

The most exciting highlight everybody was waiting for was the 30-minute excursion film. The excursionists could hardly wait to see it and those who had to stay at home gained a very good impression of what it must have been like to go down into the slate mine, to stand in front of the smallest house in Wales or to discover new castles all the time.

Another highlight quite close to the end of the evening was the sound collage. It is very hard to describe what the sound collage looked and sounded like. The group used their laptop and showed some nice pictures and provided a musical accompaniment for them. Many of us had been in suspense about this project by BS students, and were all very enthusiastic about it at the end.

One group had decided to work on the Welsh film culture and on Wales as a film location. During their presentation we all learned about different Welsh actors that we had not identified as Welsh before. The most famous ones may be Richard Burton and Catherine Zeta-Jones. At the end the group had prepared a creative quiz for us which was fun. They had posed for pictures at unusual venues in Cardiff, each of which represented a typical scene from a famous film and we were really good at guessing the names of the movies.

Close to the end Henner and Alex presented what they had found out themselves about cultural events in Cardiff. They had created a power-point presentation with individualistic music that gave us the impression that the nightlife in Cardiff must be worth a trip.

Furthermore, there was a group that was interested in Welsh literature and especially in Dylan Thomas. Lisa read out a nice poem by Dylan Thomas after the group gave us some interesting and useful information about what Thomas had written and what his life had been like.

The "Wales and the Sea" group created a wallpaper for us with all the beautiful beaches in Wales, among them the one where the excursionists had sunbathed. Other groups had dealt with all kinds of Welsh sports and sportsmen, with Welsh myths, legends and fairy tales and last but not least with the capital of Wales, Cardiff. The Cardiff group had produced an online travel guide which can be seen on our excursion website. The “school visits group” has presented its findings on the website as well.

At the beginning of the General Language Course IIb in April 2004 Phil had distributed a quiz on Wales among the students with 50 tricky questions. He honoured those who were able to answer all the questions and gave them some exclusive little gifts like an original Welsh biro.

Every time I go to the room AR-D 6104 I am reminded of this wonderful evening and of the excursion thanks to the huge wallpaper with photos and little texts on it which can be seen in the hallway. I have always regretted staying at home and not joining the excursion but this evening made me feel part of it and succeeded in making me dream of Wales.

by Inka Zahn