23/02/2020
Portugal
participants
- Show international students a bit more of our portuguese culture;
- Promote national visits to other portuguese cities;
- Promote students' interest in visiting the best rural and hidden nature spots of Portugal;
- Promote intercultural dialogue.
We took the international students on a weekend trip. This is one of our biggest trips, including about 100 students. We rented a whole youth hostel that is located in a very beautiful place, surrounded by nature. During these 2 days, we prepared a lot of activities, games, and chill for everyone to get to know each other! We had some ice-breaking games, a whole new family to get to know, (un)forgettable warm-up parties and thematic night parties, a visit to "Termas de São Pedro do Sul", picnics, a city tour and some trekkings such as "PR9 Trilho do Vouga" in order to be directly in contact with our Mother Nature!
This event was a success considering we took our international students to a beautiful place located in an interior part of the country that is not famous internationaly. The weather was amazing for february and the hostel was incredible. The fact that we had the whole hostel reserved for us was really amazing and allowed the international students to take the most out of this experience and social gatherings to get to know each other. We made some last minute changes to the original plan but it ended up adding a lot of good points to the event. On the other hand, it was a little hard to control and organize 100 international students and sometimes we had to cancel some activities due to people's delays. Also, we were not very lucky at the "Termas" because there was a flod and for that reason we couldn't visit the museum. This area is also not so big, so, next time, we will probably take a smaller group of people. But as an overall, we think the trip went great.
