EYEstartup

Yesterday was the last activity day of the 5th and last mobility. In the morning students had time to discuss and think about 21st century soft skills and how this project had helped them to improve some learning, literacy and social skills.

They also had time to have a lesson on Slovak, which is a beautiful but difficult language for us, and another on traditional cooking.

In the evening we were honoured with a delicious dinner and a warm farewell. It’s really been a fantastic experience!

We started a guided tour at Bratislava Castle and walked down the centre, while the guide explained a lot of details and anecdotes to us. We learnt about the history and saw some of the main landmarks the city has to offer. After lunch and some free time we took the bus to Devin Castle and enjoyed the beautiful views of the Danube and into Austria. We finished the day having a typical Slovak dinner in a traditional tavern. It was a great day that everybody enjoyed. It was fascinating to see more of Slovakia and the students from different countries mixing and getting to know each other better.

Off we go to Vienna, our plane lands there and then we’ll be driven to Piestany, where we will complete our two-year ErasmusPlus project.

Farewell time is always the saddest part! Anyway, our journey back home has started very well, the meeting point to say goodbye to our families is a beautiful spot in Sciacca facing the sea. After thanking the Italian families and teachers, we set off to Catania Airport, we had the chance to see Agrigento Temples on the way and the sea on our right. Flying back home we saw the Etna volcano underneath!!!

Sicilia is a place where you always get a warm welcome. We saw it first-hand yesterday at the social evening, where we were all very well treated! We ate traditional food from the area, wonderful ‘arancine’ and pizza ‘a tutti pleni’, of course.

We were also very lucky, as Sciacca’s famous carnival was was on. We could see the parades and magnificent floats!

This is getting to an end, so students have one more task before we finish this mobility, now it’s time to interview their startup target audience so they can avaluate if their ideas could become true one day. In order to find out more information about what to start a business means, they’ve had the chance of meeting a local entrepreneur and have been able to exchange ideas and a few words about their proposed startups.

On Thursday we went on our second trip in Sicily. The first stop was the ‘Enchanted Castle’, a peculiar place in Sciacca. It’s a garden with an infinity of mysterious faces carved into the rock and in the trunks of Saracen olive trees, made by Filipino Bentivegna, a man who showed unusual creativity and personality. As the French and sculptor Dubuffet stated, ‘Real art is where nobody expects it, where no one thinks or speaks its name. Art is about vision, an vision often has nothing to do with intelligence, or with logic ideas’.

We were also very lucky to listen to traditional Sicilian songs and music performed by two local artists.

On Wednesday, we kept working on our project. First thing in the morning we had a lesson on promoting products.

Nino Sabella, an Italian filmmaker expert on documentaries, short films and videos for the web and TV revised the assignment each team had brought for this mobility and gave us some useful advice on how to improve our ads. He spoke of the importance image language has nowadays and how to attract the audience’s attention.

Here are some pics we took in Palermo. We spent a very nice time there. Guided tour in the morning, where we visited outstanding buildings and sites, such as the church is San Giovanni degli Eremiti, Villa Bonanno, Palazzo dei Normanni, as well as The Cathedral. In the afternoon we saw a performance of the Opera feo Pupi (marionettes).