EVS in Santiago de Compostela

During the Christmas time, our hosting organization organized Bosco Nadal. It was a camp for kids during their holidays, which is very helpful for a lot of parents who have to work during this period. It lasted two weeks, from Friday 22nd of December to Friday 5th of January. During this time our center organized a whole bunch of activities during the mornings from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

For the Christmas time, every volunteer decided to stay in Spain. As we wouldn't be able to see our friends and family, we decided to celebrate this fest with our family of Santiago, the European volunteer family. The first surprise we got Friday before Christmas. ETL Don Bosco, our coordinating organisation, gifted us with baskets filled with food and drinks and wished us Merry Christmas. It was really nice  of the people we are working with and all of us were very thankful, especially to see how much they care about us and our happiness. As for the Christmas days some of the volunteers would leave Santiago to visit some friends in Spain, we decided to keep these baskets until the 27th and have a little after work Christmas dinner together. Furthermore we played the secret friend game, so every one took a name and had to get a small present for this person, but this also had to wait until everybody returned on the 27th.

Two months after our arrival in Santiago, the last 7 of us, who arrived the latest on their project, had our On-arrival training. It took place in a small village called Bergondo, situated close to A Coruña. In the morning of the 10th of December we took a train to Coruña where we should meet at the bus station with other volunteers. It would be the first time for us to get in contact with volunteers living in other cities of Spain, so everybody was quite curious to find out where they were from, what they would be like, if there'd be perhaps somebody from ones own home country etc.. When we finally arrived there it was crowded, 30 - 40 people waiting for us, all stranger to each other, but united in the decision to take part on an Evs project. After we took the bus to Bergondo, we got our rooms. Everybody got a room with people from other cities, so that we would be forced to socialize a little. We had few minutes to put down our stuff, greet each other and exchange a few words b