JOURNEY TO ANKARA

6th March – 12th March

INTRODUCTIONThe Özel Altin Eğitim Okullari is a little but very nice school, there are less students than in San Vito and the relationship between teachers and students is very friendly.The school starts at 9.00 a.m. every morning from Monday to Friday and finishes at 4.00 p.m..Every 50 minutes there are 10 minutes break, where they can do whatever they want.Each Monday morning and Friday afternoon they sing the national hymn. This is a private school and there are 70 students in it.The classes are very small and colorful.In the same building there are three different schools: the elementary school, the scientific high school and the final art school.

1ST DAY: FRIDAY We met all together at school at 9.00 a.m., took the bus and then we arrived at the mausoleum of Atatürk called Anitkabir. Atatürk was the founder of Modern Turkey, and he’s still very popular nowadays. We came back to school, had lunch and then some students organised a musical concert for us but also our teacher, Maria Clara Rivieri, sang: “Stand by Me”.After the concert we went to the top floor of the school for the ceramic laboratory. We made lots of ceramic sculptures.

2ND DAY: SATURDAY We met at 9.30 and then we took two different buses.We arrived at Beypazarı and saw a dinosaurs rock.Then we went shopping and bought lots of typical handmade items like silk scarves, carpets and silver rings, necklaces and bracelets.After that we had lunch in a typical Turkish restaurant.We visited a museum of typical , old, Turkish occupationsThen we stopped in a café about 1 hour waiting for the bus home.All in all, some groups met at Goksu Park in the evening.

3RD DAY: SUNDAYWe had our free day: everyone stayed with the host family. Someone went shopping, someone visited the city or just relaxed at home.

4TH DAY: MONDAY We went to visit two factories: MESA and PLASTIKA.Mesa is a factory that produces concrete panels. We went there to see how they produce them.There, the working time is 8 hours per day, from Monday to Saturday. It’s a big factory, there are 445 workers in it. English and to know how to use a computer are required and the management need technical experience,too. They send their products to Istanbul, South Arabia, Russia, France and Algeria.Plastika is a factory which produces plastic items for dishwashers, the employees work there 48 hours per week and they don’t work on Saturday. There are 122 people: it’s a small factory. The administration people need to know English and how to use the machines. Then we returned at school and went home.

5TH DAY: TUESDAY We met all together at school at 9.30 a.m. and then we took the bus to go.First we visited two museums and then we went to a traditional bazaar very interesting and with a lot of good luck charms, where all of us bought something for our parents.After that we went to the castle where a very kind and poor old woman told us something about the history of that town and the castle.All in all we went back to school and the headmaster gave us some gifts to remember the good week spent in Ankara.A lot of partners went to Ankamall shopping Centre and all went to their home to prepare their luggage.

6TH DAY: WEDNESDAY We met at school at 9.00 a.m. and we filled a questionnaire about our week and our impressions. We played volleyball and basketball. We took the bus and went to visit a Turkish newspaper, called Habertürk.We went to the airport and sorrowfully we had to say goodbye to our Turkish friends.