On 17 September, 15 Calamvale students from Years 8 – 10 embarked on a cultural study tour of China with a jam-packed itinerary planned for their 17-day trip.

This tour has received significant financial subsidisation from the Jiangsu Educational Services for International Exchange (JESIE). Calamvale Community College has qualified for this support through our sister school affiliation with Nantong Senior High School.

Our students will travel around Beijing and visit many well-known locations including the Great Wall of China – an unmissable world wonder, the Forbidden City – the largest ancient palace in the world, the expansive grounds of Tiananmen Square, and the imperial gardens of Summer Palace.

The group will then move on to Nanjing in the Jiangsu province for sister school immersive activities at Nantong Senior High School. The students will also visit educational and cultural sites throughout Nanjing, including Xuanwu Lake, Mendong Old Town, Dr Sun Yat-Sen Mausoleum, and attend the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival.

At Nantong Senior High School, students will participate in sister-school immersion activities over four days. Then, they will travel to Shanghai whether they will venture to World’s Finance Centre, and explore education and cultural sites such as Yu Garden, Old Town Market, Nanjing Road and experience a Chinese Acrobat Show.

This cultural tour will broaden the cultural mindedness and awareness of our senior students, and allow them to make memories that will last a lifetime.

Back at home, our students were also afforded the opportunity to mingle with international peers, with Kaohsiung Municipal Kaohsiung Senior High School students visiting Calamvale on their 2018 study tour in late August. This tour maintained a specific focus on STEM – our guests participated in an on-campus STEM lesson, visited UQ for a laboratory experiment, and enjoyed excursions to ACU and Griffith University.

It is hoped that the College will further its productive connection with Kaohsiung through a collaborative research project between the respective schools through the live video classrooms platform. This project – with a tentative focus on natural disasters such as droughts on flood – will be discussed further in Term 4 and launched in 2019.