November 15-18 a delegation of our school , viz. the four ‘Comenius Youth Forum’ members (Maud van Stijn, Max Stokvis, Marijn Miller and Myrthe Peeters), principal  Harry Balk, and teachers Gerda Bruls, Mark Fijen and Susanne Trommelen, participated in the Comenius Conference on Water and Environment in Drancy, one of the Parisian suburbs.

On Tuesday and Wednesday means of communication and cooperation between all the different countries were discussed. Guidelines were drawn up to be followed in order to make the CYF successful. Although it was hard work, we managed to get some good results to prepare for the final conference in Salamanca in April 2011.

CYF conference in Drancy.                       

From 15 to 18 November our CYF-delegation spent a week in Drancy, a suburb of Paris. In Drancy we discussed on the theme water together with students from Denmark, Spain and France.  We stayed at a youth hostel together with all the other students and the Danish teachers, our teachers stayed in a hotel (like thing).

We spent our first day in Paris with a sight-seeing tour, provided by our guilds Mr Feijen and Mr Balk. After rummaging around all day we met up with the Danes and were supposed to meet the French teachers. Fortunately they were only two hours late. We ate at a restaurant and our chauffeur (Mr Balk) drove us to our youth hostel, where we unpacked and went to bed only to be awakened by the Spanish at around 1 o’clock.

On Tuesday we got up, ate our breakfast and followed the Danish teachers to the school. Due to the Danish sense of direction we took a shortcut and got lost. Somehow we managed to find the school and were finally introduced to our fellow French students. We discussed on the CYF-forum the rest of the day and had dinner at a restaurant in the evening. Pancakes with mushrooms, bacon, egg and onions. Which turned out to be really delicious. After we had finished we returned to the youth hostel where Marijn and I watched a movie together with all the Danes. Of course we didn’t have any alcohol.

On Wednesday we got up again and walked to our school. This time we found out it was only a five minute walk, while we really had walked for at least 20 minutes yesterday. Still we arrived and spent another day discussing on the CYF, after which we went to a water museum. Very interesting, but completely in French.

Next we had several hours of spare time, the Dutch and Danes joined up and we rummaged through Paris for several hours. In the evening we arrived at an Italian restaurant where I had a delicious pizza (although slightly burned). We said goodbye to our French hosts and thanked them for the lovely time we had and returned to the youth hostel.

On Thursday our teachers came to collect us and we said goodbye to the Danish, Spanish and French teachers. Soon we were on the road again, laughing at labourers ‘working’  and were even making steady progress when Mr Feijen realised he had forgotten his bag. We turned around and passed the workers for a second and third time and decided to wave them goodbye, fortunately we didn’t have to turn around again and arrived in Weert without any problems.