This past week I've had the privilege of spending six days in Strasbourg in the company of a fantastic group of young people from schools in East Dunbartonshire. The students were taking part in a Euroscola activity, a day of debate and discussion organised by the European Parliament. Throughout the day the students were mixing with their counterparts from across the EU, discussing the future of Europe in a mixture of French and English.
While the formal discussions during the day itself were of huge importance and value to the students, I feel that in many ways the most memorable discussions were in the more "social" parts of the week. The photo above shows two of our students getting to know two of the Belgian students who happened to be sharing our accommodation, and the excitement and genuine interest in respective cultures and languages shared during these moments was, in my opinion, what it's all about. It's just a shame that more young people can't benefit from these opportunities.
In addition to being one of the accompanying members of staff and helping out linguistically on the visit, my main responsibility was to maintain the official trip blog and podcast which was posted to EuroscolaOnline.com, receiving over 4,500 hits from parents, friends and teachers during our week away. There are lots more images on the site, and indeed on my Flickr set.
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