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...

When I first arrived in Santiago I was a little bit nervous. I didn't knew exactly what awaited me, so it was in some kind the moment of truth, the moment where my choice to participate in an EVS project for seven months got real. A lot of questions shot threw my head, like "What will the city be like?", "How are the other volunteers?", "Who are these people from the Hosting Organization I only know threw Email contact?", "Whats my flat like?", "Whats the work about?" or "I don't even know Spanish, will I get along?".. Now after two months, I know the answers to all of these questions that appeared to me some seconds after I climbed out of my plane. So I can say the city is beautiful and I love the galician lifestyle, the other volunteers, as well as the people from the Hosting Organization are really kind, the flats are nice as long as we keep them clean and I really like my work here . As I think, that these are...

Participating in an EVS is an once in lifetime experience. On the one hand, it is a huge decision to take in a young age, to quit home for a long time, to go to a place you don't know, where you are in confrontation with a new culture, perhaps a new language you don`t understand, unknown people and for some the new situation of living alone for the first time and carrying more responsibility than ever before. On the other hand it's an immense chance, to get to a new place, to improve your intercultural understanding, to learn more about the world and more about yourself by taking you out of your all day life and putting yourself under completely new circumstances. It's a possibility to improve many different skills, participating in projects, working in teams and giving your own input as part of the group. Furthermore it can be a great possibility to learn a new language. During this post I wanted to give the volunteers, staying in Santiago de Compostela, the possibilit...

Few days ago, we (volunteers of Santiago) came up with the idea of  making an international dinner. We considered this as a good idea, to learn more about each others cultures and also to  benefit  from our different origins to get a huge multicultural dinner, which leaded us to discover new tastes and new meals. Furthermore we saw it as an act of  " team-building" as it leaded to strengthen our relationship as flatmates through a nice evening. As we are from different countries (Luxembourg, Ukraine, Turkey, Serbia, Austria, Czech Republic, Greece, Belgium and Belarus) there was a huge field of different courses that could be cooked.

Our first training was in Bergondo (A Coruña). My flatmate Pavel and me were two volunteers from Santiago who went there. In Coruña we met with all other volunteers and together we went by bus in Bergondo. They showed us our rooms, and very soon after that we started with activities!  Each day we had activities from 9.30-21.30 (including coffee breaks and breaks for lunch and dinner). Alber g ue center (youth hostel) in Bergondo is very nice center with a lot of sport fields and it´s just next to the big and beautiful beach. We were so lucky that we had wonderful weather in October! Every day we spent few hours on the beach (of course most of those hours were at night) and the bravest ones even went for a swimming.  Staff from Alber g ue center are absolutely wonderful! Each day we had nice meals and great snacks. Coffee, milk, tea were always on the table, and also Nesquik lovers were very satisfied!:)