Wednesday 30th October

Yesterday we did many different things. When we arrived at the workplace, Lenno (the Dutch teacher) showed us different ways to brainstorm. We applied the methods to our concepts and presented our results to the workshop. This took mostly all the morning. 

Lenno Verhoog

At 1pm we had lunch and started preparations for our Catalan party we would host the following evening. In Liepaja there are lots of dishes with potatoes but you can find different kinds of food. In fact some of the students ate sushi from a wooden ship for lunch! 

We spent all the afternoon working on our concepts. The focus this week is mainly on idea development, and in the next few days we will work  results. We will present next Wednesday during the iWeek conference to a public and professional audience. Then we attended a workshop about electric bicycles and also had the opportunity of trying one. 

We ate dinner at 6pm, which we find a little earlier than we are used to! The restaurant is the best reviewed by TripAdvisor users of the entire city, and serves a range of dishes, deserts and soups. In the evening, we went to the British party and sampled traditional cakes and tea, and learnt English traditions and phrases.   

Tuesday 29th October

Hello Everyone!

Today Tuesday 29th October has been a different day. We woke up in the same time that the other days and we went to have breakfast in the same hotel. At nine o'clock all the students were in the school and we started to do a workshop with Andris. He is teacher in Lieapaja. 

He talked about a method “six hats”. Each colour means a different thing. For example, the red colour represented the feelings, the yellow colour are positive's ideas, the Green colour are the original and creative part. The objective of this workshop consisted in use that in the concepts and we presented in front of the students.

At 11:15 Martin Thayner the teacher of Lincoln explained the applications and the technology and we have done that for designed application with our group. At two o'clock we have gone to lunch. Each group a different place. 

At three o'clock everyone was in the school for continued the Project and changed or modify these ideas. 

At five o'clock the classes finished. At six o'clock everybody was in the restaurant to have dinner. At Finally at seven o'clock until nine o'clock we went to school to celebrate the Finnish night. We were doing different activities, we watched a video, a Quiz and Pau sung a song in Finnish. We have enjoyed to the typical meals as Finland as salmon, beer, Vodka...

We liked a lot the day, was very funny and the time passed too fast. We enjoyed a lot and improved our english.

We are Alba and Ares.

GOOD MORNING!

Today we woke up at 8:00 a.m. and then we had breakfast all together.

When we arrived at the School of Art&Design, we surprised a curious art exhibition!

University of Liepaja, Latvia

Fontaine Hotel Royal, Liepaja

Sex Shop under our hotel 

Unexpected art exposition

Students presenting their stereotypes

9:00 a.m. – Self awareness of multicultural matters 

by Rosa Pons

Rosa Pons, our teacher, started the first presentation of the project. She did an interesting workshop about the multicultural stereotypes. Every team said different types of stereotypes like: “Catalans are prides “, “British drink a lot”, “French are rude”, etc.

Students presenting their stereotypes

12:00 p.m. – BREAK of 15 minutes (a necessary break, after a hard work)

When we came back to work, Rosa continued her workshop until a lunch time. At 13:00 p.m we had lunch in a fantastic restaurant, like a Spanish people says: “Bueno, Bonito y Barato”.  

Students presenting their stereotypes

14:00 p.m. – Smart things, smart homes, smart cities. Smart people? By Anna Trapencierce

She explained how new technologies influence society. Then, we shared our ideas to the MediaCulture 2020 team. There have been some ideas like: Network social privacy, the recommended minimum age, if technologies are necessary or not, etc.

Each group have applied the workshops on their concepts until at 17:00 p.m. After, we have rested until a dinner time.

18:00 p.m. – DINNER TIME (usually potatoes!)

19:00 p.m. – 1th EVENING PARTY:  LATVIAN PARTY!

The Latvians prepared a party with a typical Latvia customs: they project a video explaining his country, after that they show a couple game. Before eat the typical food from Latvia, we play a guessing game and the Catalan people wins the “consolation award”!

Typical food: milk Kaiser, sweet drink, some biscuits, candy and “burn peas”.

23:30 p.m.- NOW

And we, Maria and Meritxell, are writing this blog while we take a beer.

Good night and see you tomorrow!

First day of work

Day 27/10/2013
Today was a exhausting and laborious day. In the morning we ate the breakfast in the Fontaine Hotel and later we went to start the work in a classroom where we would work this days. First of all, we started with an individual presentation of each other. Just after we splited with our groups of work. We began the work and all of us tried to contribute as much as possible. Just one hour later we started with the presentations of each group. We only had time to do three team presentations because we went to have lunch. Some of us were really confused because we didn't know where and what to eat. Some of the catalans team were not hungry because it was too early to have lunch. In the afternoon we continued with the presentations. After finishing the presentations we carried on working with the group until 6 o'clock, the time when to have dinner. Then we came to the hotel and had a shower. The feelings are good, at least for now. We hope that it continues this way.

Day 26/10/2013 Arriving to Liepaja

The adventure of Media Culture 2020 started on Saturday 26th of October at 5am. At that time was when all the catalans students met at the Aeroport del Prat. The plane took off at 6.55am on his way to Frankfurt. There we would take another plane that would bring us to Riga the capital of Latvia. We finally arrived in Latvia at around 1pm.  After 3 hours of plane we were all hungry and decided to go to eat something in Pilot's Club, a Restaurant near the Airport of Riga. There we enjoyed a good meal although we had to wait a little bit. Afterwards we went to meet with our teammates from England, Netherlands and Finland in front of the airport. The bus was waiting for us, so we got on it and spent more than three hours in it to reach Liepaja. The bus driver left us next to Fontaine Hotel, where we would be staying the following two weeks. We settled in the hotel and walked to a restaurant called Pastnieka Maja, there we had the welcoming dinner with all the Media Culture participants. Finally we went back to the hotel in order to recover energy for the fisrt day of work.