A few days ago I walked to the nearby Pasteleira Park, planning to visit the city museum at the Reservoir. Walking through the park I noticed a large group of young people gathered in a circle, engaged in team-building activities.
My days in education attuned me to the spectacle and piqued my interest, so I sat on a nearby bench and watched as a succession of enthusiastic students ran to the center and started an activity, which all the others joined enthusiastically. What sort of group would this be? A typical high school class would include a portion of disinterested teens, and others only half-heartedly participating. This crowd was unanimous in their excitement. I also noted that the leaders were speaking in English, though the breeze muffled the words.
I walked around, found a couple of older participants on the side, with official-looking lanyards, and asked: this was an activity of European Youth Parliament, similar to Model UN (which I started or chaperoned in four different schools). Several university students are mentors (there were only 1 or 2 obviously-older adults present) to the 80 high school students from various European countries, here for a long weekend of parliamentary practice. And yes, English is the lingua franca of the EU, and of teenagers everywhere.
Later I walked up to the Reservatório, the old reservoir recently converted into an archaeological museum, to find that our neighborhood by the sea was annexed into the city of Porto in 1885, and the reservoir was then built to provide city water to the newly-annexed neighborhood. The reservoir was gradually replaced twenty years ago.
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