Saturday, June 20, 2015

FOR KEEPS


Dear WAH friends,
I wanted to take this opportunity to let you know what a pleasure it was to work with you all and your entire team in the “Warm at Home” 2013-2015 LLP-Comenius project these past two years or so. Thank you so much. You were all so kind, accommodating, understanding, professional and warm! The 2 years went like clock work, and it was so great to work along side all of you in your magnificent countries.

Please send a big thank you to your school colleagues and principals for their support, understanding and imagination that helped us work in this project together. Also, a huge thank-you to all the hosting families. They were so wonderful and made all the WAH students feel right at home. Hopefully, we will have another opportunity to work together once again in the future.

Thanks again from all of us here in Poland!

Joanna Wilczyńska
The main coordinator of the project



Denizli, Turkey, May 2015 a.d.


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POLISH SIMPLE EDU GAMES MADE OF RECYCLABLES


Durind the Night Picnic at the Polish school in winter 2014, we have prepared some simple edu games. We used our hands, materials from recycling and our imagination. This is what we came up with.













Sunday, June 14, 2015



NAME TAGS AND PROJECT DIARIES

During each of the meetings we have been given name tags and diaries designed and prepared by our WAH partners. 

Here are some of them:








PRESERVED FOOD FOR WINTER

ITALY







BULGARIA



POLAND



HUNGARY






SPAIN






TURKEY








A COLLECTION OF STORIES

Some of you wrote some nice OLD TIME MEMORIES stories once for the SUN AWARD competition. Since you haven't had a chance to read them, pelase do it now. I have collected all of them into one word document. Maybe it will be interesting for you. There are two versions: English and your mother tongue. 
Enjoy reading!

TURKEY WAS THE WINNER - 1ST PLACE
ITALY SCORED 2ND
POLAND SCORED 3RD





TURKEY

ORAL HISTORY OF MY GRANDFATHER

I miss my childhood and my village. There used to be a large square in the middle of our village with a large plane and a willow tree. There were shops and coffeehouses around the square where you can satisfy your need to socialize in the street, drink a glass of tea, breathe pure air, and with the warm sun on your back forget the time. Villagers used to sell food and hardware in front of it. 
The streets were paved with stone. We used to chat with each other for hours, leaning out from our Windows. The houses were not placed close to each other. They were independent houses and there was a considerable distance between each house They had spacious courtyards. But all were leaning against the mountain.
Oleanders were everywhere, the only plant that the cattle avoid. White, pink and purple bougainvillea was also as abundant as the grass of the earth. Then there were the yellow flowers that spring out of the stone walls and which no one cared sufficiently about to give them a name. The only trouble is that you can hear nothing but the sounds of nature.
The soil was very productive. It was like heaven with the orange trees, figs, citrus trees, tangerines and gigantic pines. There were vegetable gardens, olive-orchards and tobacco fields. The produce was excellent. When our own workforce was insufficient, people from other villages used to come to our village to earn a living. Most of the villagers had a thousand hectares each. Not everyone had a field, though. Those that did not own land worked for others. Sometimes they got money in exchange for their work in the field and sometimes they got wheat. We were good at breeding animals. We had sheep, horses and cattle. We We used to carry the newborn animals by donkeys. The shepherds had built sheds on the mountain. They used to stay in these sheds in winter time. They took large quantities of milk, cheese, butter, yoghurt, clotted cream, meat and wool to big towns. We got a good product from our beehives. We also had a water mill. The spring at the top of the hill was very strong. This was the source of our drinking water. There was a brook right in the middle of the village. There was no bridge over it. The spring was somewhere high up, we used to call it 'the Fountain'. Women used to wash their laundry in 'the Fountain'.
The roads outside the village were very muddy. Therefore all men used to wear long boots to their knees all winter long. We had great difficulty in the winter; we had to travel on horseback. We used to go to the town and to the fields on horses.
Strips of cloth tied to the tree branches, strips tied by the people, wishing luck and the sick, hoping to be cured. We had a market every Friday. Once or twice a year we went to the Town for seasonal shopping.

ONCE UPON A TIME
Those were the times when we didn’t used to have television at home. People used to live with large families. They always had their dinner altogether after all members of the family had arrived home at the end of a tiring day. Instead of sitting at the table, they used to sit around a larga round tray and eat their meal from a single plate. There used to be frequent electricity cuts and people had to be prepeared for this. There were candles and oil lamps in every house. People generally stayed at home in the evenings if they didn’t went out for a visit to a neighbour or relative in their houses. Those evening meetings in one of the neighbours’ house was the favourate activity. The host used to offer tea, cookies and dried fruits. During the long summer days, they never stayed indoors but sit in their courtyard or in front of the main gate to spend their idle times. The kids of the neigbourhood would gather in the street and play traditional child games or self-invented, creative games. At the begining of the farming season in the summer, families used to move to the cottages in their orchards. These large farms were far from the village where they grew fruits, vegetables and crops. There were canals alongside the roadways or fields for flow of the irrigation water. During cold winters, all family members gathered and chatted in a single room which is heated by a stove. Grandparents told stories and their anecdotes to the kids around the stove. All these interactions built bridges for cultural crossover between generations.
BİZ ESKİDEN…
Daha bırakın bilgisayarı televizyonun olmadığı yıllardı. Bu yıllarda aileler geniş aile şeklinde yaşardı.  Akşam yemekleri ailenin tüm fertleri eve geldiğinde, hep birlikte yenilirdi. Salonun ortasına kurulan yer sofrasında oturulurdu. Yemekler sininin ortasına konan tek tabaktan yenilirdi. O dönemde elektrikler sık sık kesilirdi. Bunun bilen aile bireyleri tedbirlerini önceden alırlardı. Evde mum ve kandiller hiç eksik olmazdı. Komşulara gidilmediği akşamlarda vakit evde geçirilirdi. Eğer mevsim yazsa evin içinde oturulmazdı. Bahçe varsa bahçede yoksa evin kapısının önünde oturulurdu. Mahallenin çocukları sokakta bir araya gelir, oyunlar oynarlardı. Hatta bazı aileler yaz aylarında bağ evlerine göçerlerdi. Bu bağ evleri şehrin ya da köyün biraz daha dışında yer alırdı. Geniş bahçelerinde sebzeler ve meyveler yetiştirilirdi. Önlerindeki küçük kanallardan sular akardı.  Eğer mevsim kışsa tüm bireyler sobanın yandığı tek odada oturur ve burada sohbet ederlerdi. Dede,  torunlarına ve çocuklarına anılarını ve ilginç hikayelerini anlatırdı. Bu bir araya gelmeler bir milletin kültürünü oluşturuyordu.