Visit our flickr, there you can find the photos of both of the recent excursions.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!

Visiting Navy's Arsenal.

Yesterday Monday, 19th December 2011, students who take part in the Comenius project accompanied by the teachers Esperanza, Meli, María José and Miguel, visited the Navy’s Arsenal of Ferrol in order to contemplate the architectural elements that make up the so-called “Ferrol of Enlightenment”.





And the next day, it means today morning, some brave students, challenging the weather, visited the Navy's Water Tanks in order to check where the water of river Belelle is stored and purified before being distributed to the Navy's Arsenal.

The legend of Aurena's spring

This legend takes place in Artabro Gulf, on Ancos mountain near the city of Neda, which was called Libunca by Roman historians. From the summit, the view is awesome, and, you can see a unique scenery, Ferrol's bay shape and its narrow entrance. Among the many legends about this mountain, where there was a ‘castro’ (a kind of Celtic fort), several ancient springs, nowadays dry, were located in its slope. Formerly, this place was a swamp, where the accumulated water was turned into a pond, which would not dry on hot days. Around, moss and ferns and colorful wild flowers grew wild. Although there was never a tube to drink comfortably, people stopped to ease their thirst off and relax because of the beauty of the place. It was told that, if you approached quietly, you could see the silhouette of a girl living just under the water. People said she was delighted and steeped in sadness. As she had long, beautiful golden hair, she was called Aureana. On Saint John’s Day, at the shortest nights of the year, Aureana left the waters at dawn, and she climbed up to the top of Ancos Mount. There, with her beautiful hair drying in the breeze, she looked at the entrance of the estuary and she cried. She waited for that boat, sunk a long time ago, to be back with her boyfriend.

There is another version of the legend: Once upon a time there was a man which had three daughters: Laureana, Aureana and Ana. When he became a widower he married to another woman who was a witch and, besides she abused her young stepdaughters. The witch decided to get rid of them and, with a spell, she became the three daughters in three pieces of cheese. One day the witch cut a piece of one of the cheeses; suddenly a thunder stroke a tree just in front of the house, turning the three pieces of cheese into three horses. In this way, the three girls, converted in horses, could flee from the witch. However, only two horses could run away trotting fast, the third one was lame: She was the piece of cheese cut by the witch and it couldn't walk. The lame horse had to stay in the place, and it turned into a fountain. This is why a prisoner of one of the sisters, Aureana, still remains in those waters. On Saint John’s, she leaves the fountain and walks out looking like a beautiful young girl with golden hair or, sometimes, like a golden hen with her chicks.

Ferrol nominated World Heritage Assets by UNESCO

These are the list of buildings that form the so-called "Ferrol of the Ilustración"
Plane inside the Navy's Arsenal.This is the place we have to walk on Monday.

World record ! Surfing a 30 meters wave in Nazare, Portugal

Nazaré is in Portugal about 500 km to the South from Ferrol. Enjoy the movie:


or this another one:

Stormy waves this afternoon in Ferrol

The four partner schools.

Partner schools

ESTONIA: Kehtna Primary School is situated in the village of 1,200. There are no big towns nearby, although the capital Tallinn is just 60km to the north. We are surrounded by forests, bogs, farmland and therefore paying extra attention to nature studies and the environment is important to us. We are a school of the Green Flag and a Health-Concious school. There are 155 students and 20 teachers in our school. Students are aged 7-17.


ITALY: Liceo Classico "Megara" con sezione scientifica annessa is a secondary school for students aged 14-19. It mainly offers three different courses for classical, scientific and social science studies. The school mainly serves students from Augusta. Our school is located in a very important area for its nature, history, archaeology and tourism. Our suburban town of Augusta is very near to Siracusa, one of the oldest and most important Greek colonies in Sicily. Our students are all members of "Legambiente" which is a national leading environmental organization which offers educational programs in schools. We live by the sea and our area is very rich in waterways, rivers and ponds.

FRANCE: College Claude Bernard is in a suburban city (Grand-Quevilly) with about 30,000 inhabitants. A town with 400,000 people called Rouen is near to us. The area has little industry nowadays following the closure of the chemical factories and the Renault car plant.

TURKEY: Tepeköy Ilkögretim Okulu is a public school serving children aged 7-15, starting from pre-school till the 8th grade. It is a rural school and caters for 226 students and 18 teachers. Our school is in Nevsehir (Cappadocia Region), being situated in agricultural region. Our region does not have sufficient water resources and we need to focus on environmentally-friendly options.

SPAIN: IES Concepcion Arenal is a secondary education centre located in Ferrol, a town with 70,000 inhabitants in the region of Galicia (north-west of Spain). There are 85 teachers and 700 students in compulsory (12-16 years old), post-compulsory (16-18 years) part and in vocational training.

Visita al Arsenal de la Ilustración.

El próximo lunes día 19 de Diciembre, si las condiciones meteorológicas nos lo permiten, los alumnos inscritos en el proyecto Comenius nos desplazaremos al Arsenal ferrolano con objeto de visitar, entre otros, todos aquellos elementos arquitectónicos de los siglos XVIII y XIX que conforman el denominado Ferrol de la Ilustración.



Son obras de especial importancia:

Del siglo XVIII
- Cortina, que incluye una polvorera, garitas, troneras...
- Foso defensivo por la zona de tierra
- Dique sur de abrigo en la dársena interior y su espigón de cierre
- Muelles de las dársenas
- Cuartel de la Compañía de Guarda Arsenales
- Sala de Armas, con sus almacenes contiguas porticados y la plaza que se abre sobre el mar.
- Fuente de la Fama
- Puerta del Dique
- Portada del antiguo cuarto de Ayundantía Mayor
- Despacho-residencia del Almirante
- Museo y Biblioteca de la Zona Marítima del Cantábrico (antiguo cuartel de Presidiarios de San Campio)
- Oficinas de la Comandancia General (antigua Tenedoría-Almacén General)
- Sala de Proyectos de la Empresa Izar (antiguo gran tinglado de maestranza)
- Herrerías antiguas
- Portada del antiguo edificio de Ingenieros
Añadidas en el siglo XIX:
- Residencia del Capitán de la Compañía de Guarda-Arsenales
- Oficinas de la 31 escuadrilla
- Fuentes-algibes en Puerto Chico y Herrerías
- Laboratorio
- Puerta del parque
- Despacho-residencia del Ayudante Mayor
- Edificio de la despensa
- Dique seco de carenar San Julián
- Puerta del astillero antiguo
- Cuartel del Tercio Norte de Infantería de Marina
- Edificio de la antigua Capitanía General

Barnacles

Barnacles ('percebes in Spanish') are a very popular and tasty type of shellfish in Spain. They are captured in the clifs near Ferrol by experienced fishermen with great difficulty and risk of their lifes.

We can photograph water drops at 4000 fps

If you're an amateur photographer see what you can get:

The Beauty of Mud (4000 fps) from David HJ. Lindberg on Vimeo.

Cuatro Channel Spanish TV reports about Ferrol

Paula Vazquez is a very well-known Spanish TV presenter who was born in Ferrol. In this splendid documentary she describes the town and its geographic area with wonderful images and landscapes. I think, it would be good if we subtitle to make easier to our partners its understanding.

The Fountains Of Our Cities

We have started a new project on the fountains of our cities:

http://thefountainsofourcities.blogspot.com

We want this blog to be a compilation of photos, comments and historical aspects of the fountains in our neightborhood.

We call for the collaboration of all the participants of this Comenius project. We'd like to know fountains in the regions of  our partners.

If you want to participate, send us a comment in the blog with your e-mail in order to register you as editor. (You need a Google account.)

Wallace Fountain (Ferrol)

The sea of the end of the world

At this link you can see an excelent documentary in English created by José Irisarri about Galician sea and its fauna. I hope you enjoy it.

http://www.newatlantis.net/index.php?option=com_jomtube&view=video&id=86

Water dictionary and glossary

At last we started to work with water dictionary. We have selected the topics and the levels in which we are going to work with them. The levels are 12-13 years (first year of compulsory secondary education) and 15-16 years (last year of compulsory secondary education). In the lowest level all the students have to describe the selected topics with their own words and their science teacher will select the best to uploaded to our blog.

The best definitions will be translated into English in English classes.

We have not clear how to develop this activity in the upper level.

We are waiting for Evelyn's instructions about the definitive format of the dictionary.

Galicia's lighthouses

Here you can see a beautiful video about all the lighthouses around Galicia.

WATER IN THE UNIVERSE

Water is a very common element in our Solar System and also in the universe, especially as ice and vapor.

It’s also a big part of the material which comets are made up of and recently, some important ice deposits have been discovered in the Moon, Europe (Saturn´s satellite) and Enceladus (Jupiter’s satellite).

Some of them have got possibly liquid water under their thick ice layer. This allows them to have got a kind of plate tectonics where the liquid water would represent the magma in the Earth and the ice would be similar to the Earth’s crust.

The biggest part of the water in the universe is thought to have been caused by stars formation that expelled the vapor after explode. The birth of stars usually causes a strong movement of gases and cosmic powder. When this material crashes into the gas from external areas, the shock waves caused because of it compress and make the gas get warm. Water is thought to be created inside this hot and dense gas.

Water was even detected in interstellar clouds inside our galaxy, The Milky Way. These interstellar clouds may condense in the shape of a solar nebula. It’s also thought that water may be abundant in other galaxies, because its components (hydrogen and oxygen) are ones of the most common elements in the universe.

However, it’s known that water, on its liquid state, only exists in the Earth (71% of its surface), in The Moon (in 2008, small quantities of water inside volcanic pearls were found and brought to the Earth by the “Apollo 15” expedition from 1971), and even, as I said before, in Enceladus (Saturn’s satellite) and in Europe (Jupiter’s satellite) there are signs of some possible liquid water.

Ana López Durán (1º “G” Bach)