Project Meeting at TUME SECONDARY SCHOOL, Latvia

On March 25-30, 2015 Tume Secondary School hosted the Comenius project meeting. We were delighted to welcome 36 students and teachers from Comenius partner schools in Turkey, Italy, Romania, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Estonia, Finland and Lithuania. Everybody was happy to get new friends or meet someone met before during previous project meetings.
Participants arrived at different times and were met at the airport or Riga and taken to Hotel Tukums or to host families. 17 host families took care of our foreign guests and tried to show Latvian lifestyle and hospitality during these six days spent together.
The project meeting started with the concert at Tume Culture Club situated next to our school. The concert started with a video material presenting our Latvia and song “Welcome to My Country”. Students and teachers had a possibility to see our children dancing our national folk dances, listen to the sounds of our national instrument ‘’KOKLE’’ played by Year 8 student Elza Vasermane and hear our language in songs sung by our school choir. The presentation about Latvia helped our guests to get some information about our country. 

The principal Inga Dāvidsone welcomed everybody and wished all the students and teachers a pleasant stay in Latvia enjoying our beautiful nature and culture, tasting our food and taking part in different activities. Then our folk dance group showed a national dance and everybody was able to dance it. Everybody tried really hard and the dance was perfect. We had invited the reporter of newspaper ‘’Neatkarīgās Tukuma Ziņas’’ whose article about the project meeting was published in Saturday newspaper.
After welcome concert, the students attended two workshops at our school. During the food workshop students had the possibility to make Latvian apple pie. Everybody worked as one team and the result was really delicious apple pie.  
The next workshop was ‘’Art’’ workshop but in the afternoon students discussed ideas and possibilities to care about nature and people, participating in charity activities and volunteering. International teams of students made four posters showing their ideas.
In the meantime, teachers were shown the school and attended meeting to discuss project issues. They got acquainted with the education system in Latvia, educational work done at Tume Secondary School and charity and volunteering possibilities at school. During coffee break we tasted national food from 10 countries. Everything was so delicious. In the afternoon teachers discussed issues connected with our project. During the reception at Tume Council teachers were able to taste the products of local farmers: apples, cheese and sea-buckthorn juice. Sea-buckthorn is grown in our area by a farmer who specializes in growing it, storing and offering juice to local people and shops. Meanwhile students visited our local kindergarten and gave them small presents showing that we care about small children.

In the evening students had a time together playing games at school. Teachers enjoyed Latvian dinner at restaurant ‘’ Smukausis’’. Thanks to Portuguese musical colleague we could enjoy the meal in musical atmosphere.

 

The next morning the project work started by attending classes and students presentations “We care about food’’. We learned about national food, typical food, healthy food, local food and even learned new recipes. In the afternoon students organized sport activities for Year 3-5 students who enjoyed the time spent together with older students from different countries very much.

In the afternoon students worked together to learn two Latvian songs. They were really good and their Latvian was so perfect that some of them were even ready to sing solo part in Latvian. Meanwhile teachers discussed the ideas of the project web page, final report and the next meeting in Germany.
Students went skating in the evening. Their skating skills were totally different from really excellent skating to first try on the ice. But they helped each other and enjoyed the time spent together. Teachers had a meal at TLH and watched their students skating and later supported the local hockey team ‘’Tukums’’ playing against ‘’Riga’’. Thanks to so many supporters from different countries our local team won.

On Saturday we visited Pure Chocolate museum where visitors were acquainted with the history of cocoa and chocolate. It was a fascinating excursion focused on extraction, treatment and use of chocolate. We were able to taste chocolate and create a chocolate figurine. We also bought a lot of chocolate.
Our next trip was to Jaunpils Castle. Jaunpils Castle is one of the rare medieval castles, which has preserved its historical look. It was built in 1301 as Livonia Order fortress. More than 350 years the palace was inhabited by von der Reckestrain. The castle had stone walls in some places up to 2.1 m thick. Jaunpils castle served as fortress and residence for a small military unit, order’s monks, and aged knights belonging to the Livonian order. Under the velvet ceiling, in one of the oldest parts of the Castle there is the Knight’s dining hall, where tourists can find the Jaunpils Castle medieval tavern and enjoy delicious meal by candlelight with the accompaniment of ancient musical tones. So after these two trips teachers enjoyed Monk’s feast eaten with wooden spoons but students were enjoying bowling at Hotel Tukums.

On Sunday we had a long trip to Kolka and Kuldīga. We were really lucky to have the sun shining for us. Our first stop was Kaltene- an attractive stony seacoast with boulders, dune pines, and beautiful scenery. We were lucky to find a small piece of amber and to take a photo of a seal.  On the way to Kolka we explored Nature trail “The White Dune of Pūrciems” which is created along the banks of the river Pilsupīte. This ancient place, which is located 300 – 600 metres from the sea was the home for fishermen of the Stone Age. This place gives evidence about the settlement place of Neolithic people.  

The White Dune of Pūrciems is about 20 metres high. The length of the nature trail is 900 metres, and visitors need up to 1 hour to complete it but we did it in half an hour. Our next stops were Ēvaži Steep which is the highest steep of the entire coastline of the Gulf of Riga and Kolka Cape- the place where the waters of the Baltic Sea meet the Gulf of Riga. 
We also visited Kuldīga and saw ‘’Ventas Rumba’’- the widest waterfall in Europe and Kuldīga Bridge-the old brick bridge across the Venta river which was built in 1874 and is the longest bridge of this kind of road bridge in Europe. 
Our farewells were said in the evening after Latvian meal prepared by our school cooks and a big surprise cake. Students had activities in school hall but teachers had their final meeting at school library with singing songs in several languages and tasting some more Latvian food. Estonians said goodbye to everybody on Sunday evening but others had a guided tour in Old Riga fighting with rain and cold on Monday morning and then said goodbye to Latvia. We really enjoyed hosting the visit. 

We hope everyone enjoyed the meeting and we all gained in knowledge and experiences from each other. We are looking forward to our next visit in Germany.

The Latvian team

We care about food

The topic for our presentations in Latvia was 'We care about food'. Here is the content of our presentation:

Over 100 million tonnes of food are wasted annually in the EU (2014 estimate). If nothing is done, food waste is expected to rise to about 126 million tonnes by 2020. About a third of all food produced globally for human consumption is lost or wasted - around 1.3 billion tonnes per year, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation.

 

Causes of food waste

Food is lost or wasted along the whole food supply chain: on the farm, in processing and manufacture, in shops, in restaurants and canteens and in the home. The reasons for food waste vary widely and can be sector-specific.

Factors contributing to food waste include:

• Insufficient shopping and meal planning and promotions like "buy one get one free" leading to too much food being purchased or prepared; 
• Misunderstandings about the meaning of "best before" and "use by" date labels leading to edible foods being thrown away;
• Standardised portion sizes in restaurants and canteens;
• Difficulty in anticipating the number of customers (a problem for catering services);
• Stock management issues for manufacturers and retailers;
• High quality standards (eg. for produce sold at retail);
• Overproduction or lack of demand for certain products at certain times of the year; product and packaging damage(farmers and food manufacturing);
• Inadequate storage/transport at all stages of the food chain.

Underlying all these problems is an overall lack of awareness, by many actors, of the sheer scale of the problem and the benefits that come from reducing food waste.

1 Plan your shopping: Menu plan your meals for a week. Check the ingredients in your fridge and cupboards, then write a shopping list for just the extras you need. Take your list and don’t shop when you’re hungry — you’ll come back with more than you need. Buy loose fruits and vegetables instead of pre-packed so you can buy exactly the amount you need.

2 Check the dates: If you are not planning to eat a certain item with a short “use by” date, look for one with a longer “use by” date or just plan to buy it on the day you require. Be aware on the meaning of date labels: “use by” means that the food is only safe for consumption until the indicated day (e.g. for meat and fish); “best before” indicates the date up until whenthe product retains its expected quality. Food products are still safe to consume even after the indicated “best before” day.

3 Consider your budget: Wasting food means wasting money.

4 Keep a healthy fridge: Check the seals and the temperature of your fridge. Food needs to be stored between 1 and 5 degrees Celsius for maximum freshness and longevity.

5 Store food in accordance with the instructions on the packaging.

6 Rotate: When you buy new food from the store, bring all the older items in your cupboards and fridge to the front. Put the new food at the back to reduce the risk of finding something mouldy in your food storage compartments.

7 Serve small amounts of food with the understanding that everybody can come back for more once they’ve cleared their plate.

8 Use up your leftovers: Instead of scraping leftovers into the bin, they can be used for lunches the following day, go into the next day’s dinner or be frozen for another occasion. Fruit that is just going soft can be used to make smoothies or fruit pies. Vegetables that are starting to wilt can be made into soups.

9 Freeze: If you only eat a small amount of bread, then freeze it when you get home and take out a few slices a couple of hours before you need them. Likewise, batch cooked foods so that you have meals ready for those evenings when you are too tired to cook.

10 Turn it to garden food: Some food waste is unavoidable so why not set up a compost bin for fruit and vegetable peelings? In a few months you will end up with rich, valuable compost for your plants. If you have cooked food waste, then a kitchen composter will do the trick. Just feed it with your scraps, sprinkle over a layer of special microbes and leave to ferment. The resulting product can be used for houseplants and in the garden. 

(Source:http://www.recycleforgreatermanchester.com/reduce/food-waste; http://ec.europa.eu/food/safety/food_waste/index_en.htm; http://www.soscuisine.com/fr/blogue/article/le-marketing-des-legumes-moches)

Marliese & Khiet Tam (Year 10)

Unser Besuch in Lettland... / Our visit to Latvia...

... ist nun auch schon wieder vorbei. Wie immer waren es erlebnisreiche Tage mit unseren europäischen Freunden. Es gab viel zu sehen, zu essen, zu besprechen in Tukums.... und bald berichten wir hier auch genauer.