PUPILS REPORTS

Pupils reports about their trip to Malmö (Extracts)

In collaboration with La Région des Pays de la Loire

The City :

 

By its size, The city of Malmö looks a bit like Nantes. It's a really beautiful town because, after all the houses, there are only trees, and a great foot path for horse-riding. The library is very big and beautiful, just next to a nice park. There are lots of immigrants in this part of Sweden. The weather in pleasant, as it is in the south of Sweden, and its by the seaside.

Céline

 

Families and family life:

"My" family is composed of the father who leads of an agricultural farm and the mother who is a German teacher. She also works as a translator. I lived in a very smart house out of Malmö. My correspondent explained to me: the further you live from Malmö, the richer you are.

François Xavier

 

Let’s see the organisation of a typical Swedish day. First, they wake up at 6:30. After, they have a breakfast similar to the British. Then, they go to school and they have lunch at eleven. The last eating time is dinner at seven.

Matthieu

 

The Jönsson family was very welcoming. The first day I arrived, the mother squeezed me in her harms. I felt strange but I got used to it very soon.

The father, Bertil, was really friendly, he told me about some French people he had met when he was working in Kosovo as a policeman. The mother spoke French very well, she learnt it at school and she was pretty good at it. My sister’s partner was 12 and she spoke English better than me!.. I forgot to talk about Tarsan ! The Guinea pig ! He lives in a small and nice house in the kitchen and was always telling me "fnuifh!" I don’t know what it meant but I thought it was a Swedish word…

They live in a big (big, big!) house, (3 toilets ! What for??), many rooms, and also many TV sets! They have a small garden where they sometimes eat when the weather is fine.

I felt really integrated in that family because they were so friendly and relaxed!

Sophie

 

"My" family was really welcoming, and friendly. They were pleased to meet us. They were quite interested in meeting a French boy, it was quite unusual for us because they were not used to welcoming "pen friends" in their house. For me it was the same, it was my first time in Sweden.

Life in Sweden isn’t so different but there are a few differences in their way of eating. First, for breakfast they eat cheese on bread with some herbs, with and vegetables. Some typical Swedish food is meatballs and soup. But in fact, Sweden isn’t really different from another Western country.

Yann

 

The father is Tunisian, he speaks French very well, because he lived in France. That's where he met Sarah's mother who is Swedish, and she also speaks good French. Sarah's little brother is called Alexander, he is 14 and loves horse-riding. I couldn't meet the eldest brother because he is studying in Stockholm. I liked talking with the parents because they were so friendly …

Céline

 

Pen friends

 

Her name is Claudia, she has a brother, her parents live together. She has a lot of friends. I was very surprised because in the street, in the shops, everywhere, she said to me : "it was a friend, I thinks it’s a friend…". She is very close to her father. Her parents are Polish. They escaped when they were almost 20 to come to Sweden where Claudia was born. They were fleeing communism.

Claudia is blond with quite long hair. She has big brown eyes and she wears glasses when she works. She has a thin face, she is slim and quite tall. She wears strange dresses, maybe following the fashion. She loves Snoopy so she has Snoopy everywhere in her room or on her clothes. Her room isn’t really tidy but she is very nice and generous. Her hobbies are rollerblader, shopping, cinema, going out. She often goes to private parties with friends or in a café.

At school, her favourite subject is foreign language. She learns Swedish, Danish, Polish, English, French and Italian. She is very open-minded and thoughtful. She would like to become an interpret. She loves travelling. On Monday, she will be in Florence. She has already been to Italy, France, Poland, Denmark, England and to the States.

She loves cheese. She doesn’t take breakfast during the week. She loves Mexican food.

Finally, she always laughs about my English accent but she’s nice.

Rémi

 

Helena, my partner, was nice, she used to ask me if everything was all right (of course it was!). We slept in the same bedroom, and I think it was a good way to learn to know each other, because each evening, before sleeping, we would speak about many things, about ourselves, and I really liked it. Helena was very fashionable like almost every Swedish girl in fact! But even if she was, she had something really cute. By the way, some French guy used to call her Cameron Diaz!

Every Saturday and Sunday she works, she delivers newspapers, but she told me that it wasn’t too easy to get a job in Sweden when you are under 18.

I appreciated spending time with her, because she was very talkative and… I’m not, so it was easy to communicate.

Sophie

 

Her name was Sabina, she was really friendly and welcoming. We had interesting discussions of course in English about French and Swedish culture. We had time to compare our different way of living and thanks to her and her family, I know Sweden better. This trip was an opportunity to meet new people and to understand their culture better, that’s why it was better to stay with a family than in a hotel.

With all the Swedish people, we really had time to discuss and have a lot of fun.

Yann

 

My family was really nice. My pen friend is called Sarah, she is 18, we had the same taste, she likes music and angels (there were plenty in her room). She has a lot of friends, and her mobile phone doesn't stop ringing. We really got on well together.

Céline

 

Céline's diary :

Friday 4th May. The group met at 9:45am in the airport. The plane was a bit late, we left Nantes at 12:30am. We arrived in Brussels at 2:30pm and the plane to Copenhagen was at 2:35pm, so the luggage couldn't follow us. We were in Copenhagen at 4:30pm, we didn't get our luggage, then we took the train to Malmö and arrived at 6:15pm. Everyone left the station with their family, I had dinner with mine. The parents spoke French, so it was easy to have a good conversation. In the evening, we all met each other, except François-Xavier. We had a hot chocolate in a coffee shop called Expresso House, we sat outside with blankets to warm us. I went home at 11:30pm.

Saturday 5th May. I woke up at 10:00am and had a typical Swedish breakfast : egg, toast, cheese and tomato. I met everyone in town at 12:30am, and we got our luggage back. The Swedish girls left us for 3 hours. We had lunch and we went shopping. I went home with my pen friend and I had dinner. In the evening we went bowling.

Sunday 6th May. I woke up at 11:00am. We met in town and the Swedish girls went around in Malmö with us. We visited the design center. Then we had a picnic in the park, next to the library, and had a little trip around the river by pedal-boats. I went home, had dinner, and I went to Sophie's pen friend's house to watch a movie on television.

Monday 7th May. I woke up at 7:30am, we went to school by bus, it started at 9:00am with an English lesson, then geography. We had lunch, and met the teachers for a brief meeting. In the afternoon, we had a French lesson, we had to talk with groups. We also had a meeting with the French and Swedish teachers. In the evening, we went to the cinema, and to the coffee shop.

Tuesday 8th May. I woke up at 6:30am, school started at 8:00am. We had lessons, made interviews and talked with groups about stereotypes. We went shopping, and in the evening, we all had dinner at a Mexican restaurant.

Wednesday 9th May. We met at 8:00am, at school, and went to the station at 9:00am. We waited in the Danish airport for an hour and a half. We took the plane to Brussels at 2:30pm and the plane to Nantes, we arrived at 4:50pm.

Céline

 

The school system in Sweden

We can’t say that the Latinskola and the Loquidy are the same ! On the contrary, they are the two most different schools I’ve ever seen. First, Latinskola is not a private school, so differences are large ! No supervisor, no bell, nothing (!). I mean that pupils can be late without being punished, they can go out when they want …

Sophie

 

During this trip, we noticed that the Swedish school system is so different from the French one. Indeed, we felt it is very flexible and that it is well adapted to students. Namely, a lesson lasts only 45 minutes, so, it’s easier to be concentrated during the whole lesson. Moreover, the students have a 10 minute break between two lessons, therefore, they can relax.

Another positive point is that if they finish the program of a subject, they won’t have anything to replace this subject. Finally, they have a very big library with a lot of computers connected to the Internet and they can use it when they want.

Matthieu

 

The Malmö school has more equipment than Le Loquidy, whose library only has three computers.

The classes in Sweden are more efficient because there are composed of only 20 and 25 students. It is better to work when you are a small number of students.

However, the problem is in the system of work. For example, I was in a Spanish lesson and the students spoke about a text but they did not do any grammar like the tenses in Spanish.

I think the school in Sweden is based on languages particularly English because in Sweden, the children start to study English when there are 10.

François Xavier

 

In Sweden the school system seems to be more free than in France. In their school (Latinskola) they have a sort of cafeteria, where they can meet to play cards or listen to music. Between each lesson of 40 minutes, they have a break of 10 minutes. If they don’t have any lesson for one hour, they can choose between going to the library and working, or going to the cafeteria or leaving school. According to some teachers, it is not good for students because they can’t concentrate. But for us, it’s better than the French system!

They can choose a lot of options like languages… what’s more, they finish school at about 3 or 4 in the afternoon so they have more free time, and they can practice sports.

Yann

 

The practise of English in Sweden

The whole family was really good English speakers. It’s normal for them because they have English or American shows in the original version. What’s more, in the cinema, the American movies are in English, it’s only subtitled in Swedish and not dubbed like in France. So thanks to this process, each Swede or most of the Swedish people are able to speak in English quite correctly and fluently and certainly better than the French. I don’t speak Swedish, they don’t speak French so the English language was our way to discuss

Yann

 

To complete this idea, the Swedish TV broadcasts lots of films not in Swedish but in English, so this is another opportunity to learn English.

When you come from France like us, you are very surprised to see the very good level in English that the Swedish students have.

François Xavier

 

Decisions about future

During this trip, some decisions were made in common between Le Loquidy and Latinskola. These decisions are :

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To my mind, these decisions are very good since there will be different steps in the exchange. This progression will be also good because we will have to exchange with our pen-friend before meeting him / her. Finally, the project of the end of year 3 will be very interesting.

Matthieu

 

As a conclusion

 

As a conclusion, I would like to say that Sweden is a very different country from ours, and that even if we have almost the same way of life, there are many little differences which show us how much people can be far from each other and at the same time so close.

Sophie

 

En partenariat avec la Région des Pays de la Loire