In September, seven German students and two of their teachers spent three days in Brussels, visiting the European parliament with  David McAllister who is a member of the European Parliament from Bad Bederkesa. He is also the Chair of the European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee..

​On Saturday 11th May 2019 at 00:30am, 10 students and 3 teachers met in the school car park ready to leave for Germany. We travelled throughout the night to Heathrow airport where we caught a plane to Hamburg at 10:15am. After safely arriving at Hamburg, we were all ready to head to the train station when, Alex realised he had left his phone on the plane. We were not impressed. Luckily for him, Miss Grayston is an expert at speaking German and so an hour later we got it back and finally caught a train.
We were all so nervous and excited to meet our host families that nobody noticed the little German girl putting Pringles in Alex’s hood. He was having a great day. Finally, we stepped off the train to meet our host families. Everyone was very welcoming and we were soon on our way home to play games, eat food and finally get some sleep.
Sunday was Mother’s Day in Germany; some of us made cakes and gifts for the host mums, others went to the beach and enjoyed a lovely meal out in a local Italian restaurant. In the evening some of us went to a party while the others went to sleep ready for an early start for school.
On Monday we all met in the gym to play games to help us get to know each other. It was hilarious! One game involved organising ourselves in height order while being blindfolded. This pretty much ended up with a pile of students on the floor. Then we all received Erasmus T-shirts and went to get started on our businesses. We spent the afternoon with our host families learning German games or sightseeing.
On Tuesday we spent the morning finishing off our products and marketing before heading out for a boat trip and shopping in the afternoon. We also happened to get shouted at by the tour guide for being too loud, however, he was speaking German so not many of us understood what he meant.
Wednesday morning was a practice business fair where we opened for the students of the school. Then, in the afternoon we all went back to our host families to do more sightseeing and get an early night in preparation for Thursday.
We spent a couple of hours on Thursday morning setting up the stalls again and then the business fair started. It was very busy and very hectic but also really fun! We got to meet new students, watch our businesses thrive and enjoy a day of fun with our new friends. We all slept well that night.
Friday was our last full day in Germany. We spent the morning with all our friends tidying up from the successful fair and practicing the Erasmus Anthem. Then we went home to enjoy the rest of the day with our host families before heading back to school for a performance and final party. It was an amazing evening spent with amazing people and- although at times we were very upset about leaving- we tried to make the most of the evening. We all sang songs around the piano, crying and having an amazing time with each other. It was pretty perfect.
Suddenly Saturday came around way to fast. Nobody had got much sleep as we were all trying to make the most of our time together but, somehow we still managed to get up early ready to make the long journey home. Yet, first we had to say an emotional goodbye to all our friends.
It was hard!
The journey back was tough as we were all upset but, somehow, we managed to cheer each other up enough to enjoy the last day of our trip. Although we were travelling and we were all exhausted, we still enjoyed the trip home.
 So Thank You to everyone who made this trip possible and for all the students that made the memories we all share amazing.
 
 
By Olivia Hodnett