Last September, our dear member Liisu decided to get a Mediterranean breeze and leave for a 11-month ESC volunteering experience in Terrassa (Catalunya) with our colleagues from La Vibria. We have asked her to share with us some insights of her life in Spain so far, and the result is not dissapointing at all! Enjoy the reading!
Did you miss the first part of Liisu’s story? Click here
Greetings from Spain!
A big thanks to everyone who managed to get to the end of my previous blog entries. That was about my experience from September to January. Now it’s time to let you know what has been happening from January to April. I really can’t believe I’ve been here for 7 months!
How is work going?
It is still hard to describe what I do (an answer that normally would annoy Estonians) because I have been able to participate in a lot of new things, like practicing my project writing and brainstorming skills by being part of two teams with whom we submitted two project applications in the last Erasmus+ deadline.
Even though I promised myself that never again would I do this, I guess this smart philosopher called Justin Bieber was right: “never say never“. So here I am again, hoping that these projects will get approved, because in this way we will be able to facilitate them already this summer, before my volunteering ends. And if they do, Estonian participants are also welcomed (a not-so-subtle hint)!
I know that project writing might sound super boring, but actually it was one of the things I wished to practice during my volunteering.
The more you do it, the easier it gets, so I am very happy I was given the opportunity. During this time I also learned a lot about how to work better in a team and what to do during very unexpected situations (for example if the trainer you have chosen as part of your team gives birth a few days before the deadline and you have to find a new person with the time ticking above your neck as an ax).
Since January I have also been working in a team that manages the selection, promotion and sending of Spanish participants to international projects, something that I wanted to have experience already before coming to do my ESC, so a great opportunity! It is a different experience to select people based on the target group needed, to prepare them for youth exchanges and training courses, to make sure the group has a good dynamic and to hear their adventures and emotions after they come back from a project. It is not the same as being just a participant in projects.
Together with a Macedonian volunteer we also had the chance to go to a local school in Terrassa and share our national fairytales in an English lesson with 6 year old kids, something I would never have dared to do before. I was afraid of the language barrier, but amazingly, the kids understood a lot more than we hoped for. I chose Dusk and Dawn (Koit ja Hämarik) for the Estonian story.
The funny thing is that only during the storytelling itself did I realize that maybe it does not give the best hope and moral for love (for those of you who do not know this story, the moral is that the best thing for two lovers is to stay away from each other and only meet once a year, to keep their love fresh and happy). So I edited this part and improvised a little, to give the kids a more traditional happy ending and not scare them for life…
Then I had the chance to participate in another holiday: St.Jordi’s day, which is like Valentine’s day. Traditionally the girls get roses, the boys books, but nowadays of course it can be whichever way. We worked in Vibria to sell roses in shifts but also had the chance to go discover the celebrations and decorations. I must say, it feels nicer than Valentine’s day, the vibes in the air are not so depressed or desperate, like they describe in the Hollywood movies, but actually friendly and chill.
I was also super lucky to join a kickoff meeting for a long-term project called “InvideogamesJAM”. The project is about teaching young people how to create educational virtual reality (and normal computer) games and we will have a few events, one also in Estonia, where young people will try to create a game on a given topic. What is even more cool: I got to meet Olalla again and rejoice and catch up. Another important bonus (the most important thing for a volunteer): I got to enjoy the free meals! 😛
Here in Vibria Intercultural, every three weeks we have an event called the Intercultural meetings where two volunteers introduce their culture, traditions and food to the open public. In April it was time to present Estonia and Germany, so I finally had the chance to introduce the customs and traditions of my culture, which was a lot of fun. We had a competition of whose family potato salad recipe is better (my mothers recipe won!) and I managed to even teach some Estonian dances (that I learned the night before) although for some reason the personal distance in these dances offered some amusement to the southern people.
The cool thing about these events is that the volunteers have free hands in managing and organizing them. When these events started, we only had a small budget per event for the food, so we had to get creative in how to get more funding. So after doing thorough research and analysis about what would work, the answer appeared in front of us: why not start a bar and sell drinks, to earn a little profit to use for food supplies? From this it has grown into a “Sombrero bar” with a selection of beers, cocktails or even special cocktails (when I am part of the bartending). So not only are we learning how to introduce our culture and identity, we have actually learned event management and even a mini-business side of it, because now the events are almost self-sufficient.
Other matters
I work around 28-30 hours a week, but in addition I still have to go to Catalan classes 4 hours a week. Besides, now for 10 weeks we also have 2 hours of Spanish class (where the teacher actually explains things in English!). Unfortunately, ESC does not give the funding for in-person language courses if the language is on an online platform (like Spanish). Fortunately, La Vibria is awesome and offered us another set of Spanish courses, using their own money for this. And to be fair, my Spanish has been improving: I understand around 60% of what is being said. Now I just need to learn how to actually speak and make sentences, so for this the courses are super useful.
I can not stress this enough: how important it is to open yourself up to all the possibilities when you are volunteering, and not just stick to your specific project or given tasks.
If you are a volunteer, you normally don’t have a boss-paid worker relationship, so it is welcomed and expected that you take initiative, propose activities, and try out new things rather than just sit and wait for instructions. It’s also completely normal and okay to fail utterly in something you try to do, because no-one expects you to be a specialist. The important thing is to extract the learning moments from every experience you have.
In March, most of the volunteers from our group who started at the same time (in September) were also invited to go to the ESC midterm meeting close to Malaga (in the south of Spain). This is an event where (ideally) all the ESC volunteers from Spain who started around the same time are put together in a big house and have a few-day training, to meet each other, talk with the national agency, reflect on our projects, learn about youthpasses and so on, with free food (!!!). So that was a nice chance to meet other volunteers all over Spain (and make contacts to perhaps have free accommodation when traveling in Spain) and also hear how other projects are managed.
I knew our project is good and well managed, but after hearing some of the horror stories from others (when you have a shitty hosting organization or they cancel your project or refuse to bring you food and so on) I was more than happy to come back and just appreciate again how lucky I have been with my situation.