Spanish Festival

Two A level Spanish students, along with Miss Roderick and Mrs Madsen, took a trip down to Portobello Road for a fabulous, culturally
immersive and enriching experience. The Portobello Spanish Festival aims to “bring a taste of spanish culture” to the streets of London, and it delivered. We explored the vast array of street stalls, the most popular in our case being the one selling churros con chocolate! There were interactive flamenco performances throughout the day, with live singers, but our highlight was later on, when we had the pleasure of experiencing a live Cuban jazz band, complete with the necessary flair and hip-shaking rhythm, as proven by Mrs Madsen and her son, Jago, with whom we had met up with earlier, taking to the floor to show us how it’s done! It was a fitting finale to a great day, enjoyed by all!

Le Touquet 2018

Year 9, recently returned from their fantastic trip to Le Touquet. During the week the students immersed themselves in French culture, food and history. They had fun cooking traditional bread in wood fired ovens at an artisan Boulangerie and tried snails after visiting an organic snail farm. Other activities the students tried included Opalaventure high ropes course and exploring the caves at Arras where soldiers stored food and lived in during WWII. Students said they felt it had been the best trip they had been on.

Willkommen an die Deutschen!

On 14 September, our German exchange partners arrived for the second part of the exchange. The partners spent the weekend with host families and went to places like London, Ely, Cambridge and more, seeing local tourist spots and learning about British culture and lifestyle.

Day activities included a day in school, a day trip to Cambridge and a town trail around Bishop's Stortford and Saffron Walden. They also went to London, seeing landmarks such as St. Paul’s and the London Eye.

They learnt so much about our culture while they were over here and we got to compare German and British
customs, looking at the differences in our attitudes and habits. It was fun to learn about the difference in language, especially when one of us played Dobble, a picture-based card game with our partner.

At the airport at the end of the week, hugs and farewells were exchanged and many tears were shed, but everyone had a fantastic time and we hope that lifelong friendships were made!

The students would love to thank Mr Bowman, Miss Roderick and Mrs Dixon for organising the exchange, as well as to those who participated from the Peter-Joerres Gymnasium and would fully recommend it to the next set of GCSE German students!

You can see more images of the trip on the Birchwood MFL Twitter page, @MFLbwood.

Mr Bowman

Modern Foreign Languages