Today Friday 9th March was a day that my European partners in Italy, Estonia and The Czech Republic had planned for a week or so - we had arranged to take part in a Skype Conference Call at 9.30am (UK). This needed a bit of re-arrangement in Cefn Fforest as we had to miss a special Merit Assembly in order to be in class for the 'Phone Call'. On checking I found that all of our friends were online however Killi in Estonia appeared to be going off-line occasionally. Just after 9.30 the call came from Daniela in Lazio, we had a chat while she tried to contact Estonia - however all Kylli managed to say was 'Hello!' then her link disappeared. We were quite frustrated in Wales when we could just see our friends briefly before we lost the signal!!!
We called Allanah King in New Zealand in the meantime in order to check that the fault wasn't with our link - we could talk to NZ over 13,000 miles pefectly, however our European link was still poor.
We did however manage to re-contact Daniela and we sang some of our favourite songs to Daniela who was very pleased by our singing. We finished chatting with Daniela and then settled back to work ( spelling test !!!!!)
Luckily for the pupils Killi seemed determined to get through to us, and we both tried several times to link. It was at around 10.15am that Estonia finally made a good contact - We could see our friends in their classroom in Estonia (Hurray!!!)- sadly they couldn't see us but we soldiered on and sang songs to each other, ours in English and Welsh and theirs in Englih and Estonian it was great fun, my pupils certainly enjoyed singing and listening to their new friends. They asked us about our weather- wondering whether we still had our snow, their snow is still on the ground however temperatures in Estonia were above freezing for the first time over their winter today and their snow began to melt a little. ( they still have plenty of snow though ).
We found out also that they begin school at 8.00am, have their lunch at 11.00am and go home at 1.00pm, they do have some after-school sports clubs however most students go home then.
We concluded our chat just as our playtime bell rang, agreeing to talk again on Monday 12th March at around 9.30am (UK). On Tuesday 13th we hope to contact Irena's class in the Czech Republic as part of a Conference Call with the help of Daniela.
A very busy Friday indeed, topped off by the visit of Jan Woodward an author who has just published her first book 'The Five Fairies go on holiday' which can be found at Amazon illustrated by Jan's colleague, and our Local Police Liason Officer ( more on a podcast coming very soon)