Another of my “cheat” books to complete my 2015 Reading Challenge. That said, I wish all cheats and tricks the world over were this beneficial and had this positive a net value as the existence of this little book and me taking the (little) time required to read it in order to complete my Goodreads challenge.
What I have to say about TTIP and all agreements similar to it (CETA, TPP, whatever) is that in all the wickedness of the masterminds behind it, they envision a future that’s so unsustainable, so unnatural, so anti-everything that’s good, just or progressive in this world, that my hope is that these abominations, even in the event they come to pass—which, in one form or another, they probably will—will collapse under the weight of their own profound and inexcusable arbitrariness.
Good thing the mega-corporations, the only ones who will benefit from these deals and have lobbied sufficiently to have infiltrated various administrative and legislative national and international bodies, such as the European Commission itself (one wonders if that really did need any lobbying at all), are becoming more and more blatant with all this; unbeknownst(?) to them, they are giving us a blessing in disguise: in these times of widespread uncertainty, passivity and double-think, having a deal such as this where there are zero benefits for the common people, for Europe, for democracy, all those things we’ve come to think are sacrosanct (no matter if they really are), having a deal which pulls the curtains like this in the name of profit, control and inequality… it all leaves very little room for doubt and alternative readings: TTIP is corporate greed in paper form, no questions asked. It really is that simple.
It is precisely for that reason it looks like it’s serving as a call for action to people of all kinds of political beliefs. It’s working similar to how “We are the 99%” could have worked and is absolutely in the same spirit of mass participation. One look at the Stop TTIP petition, which gathered more than 3.3 million signatures, should convince you. Us. Them. Everybody.
This post is a combination of two fantastic pieces of work: Daphne’s article on Erasmus+ she wrote a few months ago which comprises the bulk of this post, and Giorgi’s collection of Greek organisations that run European Erasmus+ projects that is a bit more comprehensive than the one Daphne put together. You will find that list at the bottom of the article.
It can be a bit difficult to navigate through the vast, decentralised and chaotic field of European Youth Programs. That and the fact that lot of it can sound too good to be true sometimes might discourage potential participants. Stick with it: it is true! The European Union’s allocation of funds might certainly be questionable in some areas (let’s not go there at this time, you know exactly what I’m talking about ), but there’s no doubt they’re investing tons of money in education and the future with Erasmus+.
Not all of it finds its way to the right hands, which could be said about all sort of freebie European Union money that’s come our way. However, you could definitely make the case that the same holds true for money as a concept in more general terms. But I digress—sorry, difficult to resist.
These big investments are part of a bigger picture, a plan so devious, its scope so ambitious, its goal so far-removed, it could only ever have been spawned in a bright, sterile meeting room in Brussels, in the incandescent depths of the HQ of the European Commission itself. Their goal, behind all of these lifelong-learning and informal education bells and whistles, is the creation of nothing less than a common identity among young Europeans, a veritable European identity for the people who will have to deal with this shitstorm of gargantuan proportions heading our way, the true proportions of which we’re just starting to understand. That’s us, by the way.
I can’t tell if it’s working or not yet, or if perhaps creating this identity could be forming a barrier against the millions of non-Europeans that have started once again to enter European societies. But it can work; these programs teach tolerance and coexistence, after all. I do believe identifying as European can also mean accepting as European people who previously were not. It’s not, or at least it shouldn’t be, a limited-membership club. It wasn’t so in the past, and there’s no reason it should be now. That’s not how I look at peoples and nations at least and I’m glad I’m not alone.
Anyway. If we want to pull through this, all of this, as best we can, we need (informally) educated, internationally-oriented, risk-taking, adaptable and sensitive young people with a spirit of co-operation and participation. Erasmus+ programs are incredibly good at inspiring all these qualities in participants, and more.
Ahem. This was supposed to be “just” a guest post. With this introduction of mine I was certainly planning to be shorter, I leave you to them. I hope this information proves useful to you. In fact, it can be quite life-changing, if you want or can allow it to.
Erasmus+ and youth opportunities resources for Greeks and the general public
This post has been long overdue. Since my first youth exchange in June 2013, I’ve talked with an ever-growing amount of people about what I do abroad, how I managed to find these projects, how it’s possible to do so many of them if I’m always broke as fuck and what exactly do I even get from them.
The last conversation I had was with the guys from the coding course I attended this week, and some of them showed great interest in what I had to say, since I already know a lot about these things. I absolutely despise talking, I get nervous and awkward and am unable to explain things properly, so writing is a much better way to get all this information out there.
So finally, here it is. A resource post with all the info and organisations I know about that have to do with youth mobility. Please, feel free to comment under my post if you are part of/know an organisation that you believe should be included in the list! Of course, I recognize that even my knowledge is quite limited compared to people that are actively involved in Erasmus+ as part of an organisation.
First things first: What on earth is Erasmus+? (here is a bit more detailed page)
When people hear the word “Erasmus”, they instantly think that it’s all about the student mobility thing. Well, guess what. In short, Erasmus+ is the EU’s new programme for boosting skills and employability through education, training, youth, and sport. Before that there was Youth in Action.
The funding for the whole project is channeled to each country through the National Agencies. Through their pages you can find projects and information in your own language and contact them for inquiries.
So the lists that follow include NGOs that are either Sending (SO), Hosting (HO) or Coordinating (CO) organisations, or even all of the above! As copy-pasted from the programme guide, these mean:
Applicant organisation from a Programme Country: in charge of applying for the mobility project, signing and managing the grant agreement and reporting. The applicant can be a consortium coordinator: leading a mobility consortium of partner organisations of the same country aimed at organising any type of student and staff mobility.
Sending organisation: in charge of selecting students/staff and sending them abroad. This also includes grant payments (for those in Programme Countries), preparation, monitoring and recognition related to the mobility period.
Receiving (Hosting) organisation: in charge of receiving students/staff from abroad and offering them a study/traineeship programme or a programme of training activities, or benefiting from a teaching activity.
Intermediary (Coordinating) organisation: this is an organisation active in the labour market or in the fields of education, training and youth work in a Programme Country. It may be a partner in a national mobility consortium, but is not a sending organisation. Its role may be to share and facilitate the administrative procedures of the sending higher education institutions and to better match student profiles with the needs of enterprises in case of traineeships and to jointly prepare participants.
These may all sound kind of (or largely) unclear, so what essentially happens is, you find a SO in your country of residence, you apply for one of the projects they are offering (could be an EVS, or a training, or a youth exchange), you get accepted (or not), and you get to go to the country where that project is taking place. You’re hosted there by the HO. How to explain with clear, precise ELI5 wording what the CO part is still a bit unclear for me as well, so I would appreciate corrections and help here.
Personally, the crown and pride and glory of the Erasmus+ programme is European Voluntary Service, or EVS for short. It’s what I’ll be doing in the Netherlands from September 2nd.
Again, in short, if you are between 17 and 30, have spare time from two weeks up to a year in your hands, want to do something creative with your time, have no money to fund your interests, travel, meet other cultures and a horde of other like-minded people, EVS is for you. I strongly recommend it to people who are fresh out of university or school, have been unemployed for some time or just love travelling and experiencing new things. Or all of these! Important:
You will receive free accommodation, food, insurance and pocket money. The only thing you might have to pay is a small part of your travel costs.
Also important, you can only do EVS once in your life. If it’s a short-term project, you may be eligible to apply for a second EVS, but the time you spend abroad must be in total one year. Consider the possibilities carefully, because not everything is rainbows and unicorns. There are terrible projects out there, and people who just want to eat up the funding money. But don’t be discouraged like this – talk with people, do your research, ask me for recommendations and you’ll have the time of your life.
You can find ALL of the EVS projects here. You can search by country/town of preference and type of the project you want. The themes are extremely diverse. For example, I was a mentor of EVS volunteers who worked in TRAG, including therapeutic riding sessions for disabled people and of volunteers who worked in the offices of Greek Forum of Refugees.
In this European Youth page, you can also find other volunteering opportunities here, but I’ve never really participated in something like this so I can’t be of much help. Here you can find their Facebook page. I like organising things in lists, so I have put every page I’ll mention here in special list on Facebook. Good that it’s kinda worth it for something other than hoarding friends and stalking people.
Here we go then. It’s a clear list of NGOs that help you get involved with all the things I mentioned above!
Greek NGOs and other amazing groups of people:
This is not the best time for me to post this, because the Greek Nation Agency’s funding has been indefinitely suspended since April. You can probably discover the reason if you think about the state of the Greek political scene since the beginning of the year. What the suspension means is that there can be no projects implemented in the country whatsoever – no new EVS volunteers, no trainings, no youth exchanges, etc. The problems started way back of course, I remember the NA having financial difficulties for more than a year. BUT, you can still contact these NGOs to projects outside of the country – which I strongly advise you do. Most or all of these post regularly about new opportunites, be it short- or long-term. Keep in mind that even though I’m writing this in English so it can be accessed by everyone, a lot of the NGOs below have projects and information in Greek only.
You can also find some of these in the EVS database I linked above, if you search them by name.
I’ll start with this one as an honour, because I went to my first youth exchange through them. Everyone, meet
Based in Crete. I went through them to Finland, for a youth exchange called Creative Photography in the Finnish Wilderness, along with Garret and Dimitris. Gotta thank him for this whole business, cause he was the first to discover these things and went through Nuestro Mundo to Olde Vechte in Ommen, the Netherlands for a youth exchange in March 2013. That’s incidentally the organisation I’ll be going to for EVS.
Continuing with the organisation I was (am?) an EVS mentor for.
The Greek branch of Service Civil International. They will be my SO for going to EVS in Olde Vechte. They also organise a lot of workcamps which you can find out about in the page I linked here.
I know a couple of the guys involved here personally, and I love them. 😀
(Of course, there’s a lot more, and quite a few that are just Hosting/Receiving NGOs — meaning they can’t send out Greeks but only receive foreigners as EVS volunteers)
Other European organisations:
I will start with my favourite, since I’m going there for EVS in a couple of days. For a whole year! Woo!!
I strongly recommend attending at least one training/project happening in Olde Vechte, because you’ll start seeing your life change before your own eyes. I started with a youth exchange, and the place inspired me so much that I went back for a personal development training. From then on everything fell slowly into place and I decided it would be the best place for me to go to right now. There is an amazing amount of people who are working there, including the EVS volunteers and the trainers that come back several times per year to shake a bunch of young people up with their wise teachings.
OV is part of the Synergy Network, that organises trainings (either open calls or funded by the EU) for personal and professional development.
Right now the Spectrum Synergy project is ongoing.
Continuing in the Synergy business, I’ve also got to know some of the guys involved here. They’re real good! (They also have a wonderful partner page)
Moar Synergy. Their team has some amazing members and I’ve wanted to participate in some action with them for a long time, but I never got the chance. Soon, I hope!
More Balkan stuff, specifically Bulgarian. I went back and forth so many times in 2014 that it will always be in my heart, even though I wasn’t closely involved with any NGO there. Most of the info is in Bulgarian.
Cyprus! I visited (and was hosted at the volunteer’s places) both of them when I was in Nicosia (thanks to Toni :D) and later got to know Iliana from YEU in a training course in Bulgaria. Small world!!
A network of eight Resource Centres working on European priority areas within the youth field. As part of the European Commission’s Training Strategy, SALTO-YOUTH provides non-formal learning resources for youth workers and youth leaders and organises training and contact-making activities to support organisations and National Agencies within the frame of the European Commission’s Erasmus+ :Youth in Action programme and beyond.
The Alliance of European Voluntary Service Organisations is an International Non-Governmental Youth Organisation that represents national organisations which promote intercultural education, understanding and peace through voluntary service.
The European Youth Foundation (EYF) provides assistance and funding for youth activities which promote human rights, democracy, tolerance and solidarity.
I don’t have much more to say about the 2nd book of Conversations with God than what I did in my review of the 1st one, at least not as far as the whole concept goes. It was on the same wavelength as the first one, with an emphasis on world politics, social topics and economics, suggesting for example that a good way to end income inequality would be to have all money-related data public and visible—“nothing breeds fairness faster than visibility”.
An analysis I particularly enjoyed was on the subject of education and how it should teach children how to think, not “memorise” facts (right now I’m reading another book, which is on memory, and that one says that it’s not even proper memorising we’re doing at school, which makes what most children and youngsters do there even more useless. But I digress).
On the other hand, I was rather surprised to read that God thinks we should have a world government as a solution for stopping wars and competition for resources. The idea was that once upon a time, the precursors of the United States, before they were unified that is, were competing between themselves and could not co-operate, however, their unification proved that it was possible to have a working federation which would go beyond nationalism, which is really tribalism on a larger scale. Hey, it was a matter of fact of the mid-’90s zeigeist that the US had to lead the march of progress of the civilised world, no doubt about it. God was speaking through the writer, with all cultural filters in place, don’t forget that.
I do wonder what God would have to tell Neale Donald Walsch about the current European crisis and how much of a success the EU has or hasn’t been. In a way, it’s been more successful than the US, since it’s covered a lot of ground towards federatio in a short period of time, considering it had both world wars fought on its soil. Today, no matter the shape of current events, it still is possible to envision a world where the benefits of having a completely united Europe would outweigh the downsides. I should know: the EU has granted me with thousands of euros on its intention to make me feel stronger about my European identity than my national one(s), and while it hasn’t completely succeeded, I must admit I can see where they’re coming from.
As it is now, however, twenty years after this book was written, a world government, or a more integrated European Union, would not be a good idea. I said before that I wondered what God’s comment would be. Allow me to rephrase: having read the book, I can easily imagine what God would have to say about all this, as well as about our freedom of actions and that we have everything we need on this planet to make it work, we’re just choosing not to. Huh, maybe I should go write my own version of this book. No; God would say I’m already doing so! I’m exiting this loop before it’s too late.
Here are some indicative quotes I’m copying from my Kindle’s clippings file, something I kind of regret I didn’t do for my review of the first book. These quotes will end up being quite a bit lengthier than the review itself, but I’d like to share them with you anyway.
“…It may be normal, but it is not natural. “Normal” means something usually done. “Natural” is how you are when you’re not trying to be “normal”! Natural and normal are not the same thing. In any given moment you can do what you normally do, or you can do what comes naturally. I tell you this: Nothing is more natural than love. If you act lovingly, you will be acting naturally. If you react fearfully, resentfully, angrily, you may be acting normally, but you will never be acting naturally.”
“Practice saying this ten times each day: I LOVE SEX Practice saying this ten times: I LOVE MONEY Now, you want a really tough one? Try saying this ten times: I LOVE ME! Here are some other things you are not supposed to love. Practice loving them: POWER GLORY FAME SUCCESS WINNING Want some more? Try these. You should really feel guilty if you love these: THE ADULATION OF OTHERS BEING BETTER HAVING MORE KNOWING HOW KNOWING WHY.”
“As Americans saw how good it was possible to have it, they sought to have it even better. Yet there was only one way to have more and more and more. Someone else had to have less and less and less.”
“Not just in matters of sexuality, but in all of life, never, ever, ever, fail to do something simply because it might violate someone else’s standards of propriety. If I had one bumper sticker on my car, it would read: VIOLATE PROPRIETY I would certainly put such a sign in every bedroom.”
“Appropriate” behavior is not always the behavior that’s in what you call your “best interests.” It is rarely the behavior that brings you the most joy.”
“Betrayal of yourself in order not to betray another is Betrayal nonetheless. It is the Highest Betrayal.”
“It is only through the exercise of the greatest freedom that the greatest growth is achieved— or even possible. If all you are doing is following someone else’s rules, then you have not grown, you have obeyed. Contrary to your constructions, obedience is not what I want from you. Obedience is not growth, and growth is what I desire.”
“It’s time to make friends with your mind again. Be a companion to it—it’s felt so alone. Be a nourisher of it—it’s been so starved.”
“Programs calling for children to develop abilities and skills rather than memories are soundly ridiculed by those who imagine that they know what a child needs to learn. Yet what you have been teaching your children has led your world toward ignorance, not away from it.”
“- As I keep saying repeatedly here, taken a look at the world lately? – You keep bringing us back to that. You keep making us look at that. But all that isn’t our fault. We can’t be blamed for the way the rest of the world is. – It is not a question of blame, it is a question of choice. And if you are not responsible for the choices humankind has been making, and keeps making, who is? – Well, we can’t make ourselves responsible for all of it! – I tell you this: Until you are willing to take responsibility for all of it, you cannot change any of it.”
“On your planet you have created a society in which little Johnnie has learned how to read before getting out of pre-school, but still hasn’t learned how to stop biting his brother. And Susie has perfected her multiplication tables, using flash cards and rote memory, in ever earlier and earlier grades, but has not learned that there is nothing shameful or embarrassing about her body.”
“Your first question, always, must be: What do I want here?—not: What does the other person want here?”
“Be a living, breathing example of the Highest Truth that resides within you. Speak humbly of yourself, lest someone mistake your Highest Truth for a boast. Speak softly, lest someone think you are merely calling for attention. Speak gently, that all might know of Love. Speak openly, lest anyone think you have something to hide. Speak candidly, so you cannot be mistaken. Speak often, so that your word may truly go forth. Speak respectfully, that no one be dishonored. Speak lovingly, that every syllable may heal. Speak of Me with every utterance. Make of your life a gift. Remember always, you are the gift! Be a gift to everyone who enters your life, and to everyone whose life you enter. Be careful not to enter another’s life if you cannot be a gift.”
“(You can always be a gift, because you always are the gift —yet sometimes you don’t let yourself know that.) When someone enters your life unexpectedly, look for the gift that person has come to receive from you.”
“Know that every thought I am sending you, you are receiving through the filter of your own experience of your own truth, of your own understandings, and of your own decisions, choices, and declarations about Who You Are and Who You Choose to Be. There’s no other way you can receive it. There’s no other way you should.”
“The year is 2051. CONTROL, the government of Europe, keeps everyone happy in a virtual reality. This is a world where it is too hot to go out, and where wonderful music made by dolphins gives everyone pleasure. It’s a world which is changed forever when music critic Saul Grant discovers what makes dolphins sing and sets out to free them.”
Wouldn’t this back-cover tidbit catch your attention immediately if you stumbled upon it while browsing through used books? I know it caught mine. It was in the open-air book market in front of Sofia City Library, where I’m doing my EVS. If anything with either 1) dolphins, 2) the Web or 3) dystopian sci-fi is easy enough to pique my interest on its own, imagine my face seeing them combined.
The book itself is only 96 pages long and, regardless of the simple language because the book was written specifically for EFL students of around FCE level, I found it to be quite enjoyable and engaging; not pretentious yet interesting; simplified in language but not messages, and quite relevant ones, too.
To tell you the truth, I find telling a story in the easiest words possible quite charming. Something in the style just makes my heart softer, like ice cream with warm cookies. It’s like watching children’s cartoons and being able to appreciate the simple beauty of it just because you’re an adult. If a universal truth were spoken, I’m sure it would be closer to such language than to the kind reserved for high philosophy. They say that life is complicated; that’s true, but it’s also fantastically simple.
For what it is, Dolphin Music is really good. I started off by giving this book three stars but writing about it made me happier. I can’t see what should stop me from giving it four.
This post has been was a work-in-progress ever since I got back from France in August. A major contributing factor for this delay has been a certain game I’ve put close to 4 full days into in the past month. Another has been my enduring inability to prioritise my activities, declutter my life and put my thoughts and feelings in order. I have found that creation is what I need, a positive step in the right direction. Writing more and returning to Cubilone’s Dimension will prove to be, I hope, a step towards solving these problems. Actually, solving them sounds a bit alien; I can’t really imagine myself living without these aspects of my personality. Is this my personal story sabotaging my development? Have I made a self-fulfilling prophecy out of trying to form or carve my identity? Hmmm…
As the months pass by and my post-study period grows longer, the dilemmas grow larger and scarier and often I feel as if I’m stuck in the middle of two worlds.
The first one was that, after many years of thinking it over, I finally did my CELTAcourse, which means that I’m now an internationally certified English teacher, or at the very least I’m elligible to teach pretty much anywhere in the world. For four weeks, eight hours each day, I learned how to teach the English grammar, vocabulary, phonology, various methods, what one should and shouldn’t do… At least the basics, for it’s of course a lifelong process, as is everything. The toughest part was that my 9 colleagues and I each had to teach eight lessons, totalling six hours, which we had to plan thoroughly beforehand as well as execute the best we could in the classroom, teaching real students (who by the way did not have to pay money to learn English because it was trainees teaching them) and later receiving feedback on those lessons from our colleagues and tutor.
The Received Pronounciation phonetic alphabet.
Oh, the things I heard about my teaching! I had never taught before, at least not in this “official” sense, and it showed. I was extremely nervous, kept staring at the whiteboard while writing my nonsensical teaching aids, had great trouble explaining in simple words things like the form and function of the present perfect or the lead-in for exercises… If those students hadn’t been as accustomed to other confusing teachers before me, they would have surely performed completely different tasks half the time, which they sometimes did. The tutors were brutal with their criticism at times, but it was all beneficial in the end: it helped me realise that one of my main and enduring weaknesses has been explaining things in simple and unconvoluted words even though, ever since (I remember having the same problem as well many times before), every time I realise I’m explaining something awkwardly or maybe unintelligibly, the self-consciousness still makes it almost impossible to explain in an empathic and efficient way. This will come with experience I suppose but it was one of the most important lessons. On top of that, we had to complete one assignment each weekend, which left us next to no free time at all.
My tutors, Alexander Makarios, George Vassilakis and Marissa Constantinides were all exceptional in their own ways and did an excellent job in making me kick off my teaching career. Thank you guys! My colleagues -Vaggelis, Daniel, Ioni, Chrysanthi, Pedro, Panayota, Margie, Theo and Kelly- I grew sick of and am glad I didn’t have to spend any more time together with them. Just look how much we hate eachother’s guts in the pictures and video:
Left to right: Margie, Pedro, Ioni, Vaggelis, Dimitris (that’s me by the way), Marissa, Kelly, Daniel, Chrysanthi, Panayota, Alexander, Theo
Four weeks of hard work; at least as many glasses of wine to make up for it.
After I was done with the CELTA I was pumped to leave Greece and go teach English somewhere in the world with the coming of the new school year, preferably at a place in which I would be able to communicate with the locals in their native language. That was something that would exclude Japan -it’s a whole different chapter and dream- but would include Spain, Latin America and Germany/Austria, my B2 certificates for both languages fresh from early last summer and making me eager to get some real life experience with them as soon as possible!
But then the second thing happened.
Even before I had hugged my colleagues and tutors goodbye, desperate for some rest and some time to either think or not have to think at all, at the very least until the time I’d have to leave Greece to do my English-teaching duty, right then came the call for the Trip to Heterotopia. “For 21 days in Southern France we’re going to be a caravan visiting eco-communities, festivals, solidarity projects and groups. We will be wildcamping, so bring your tents, sleeping bags and headlamps!” At first I was very sceptical. I was tired and longed for doing nothing, as I mentioned above. It was only little more than a month since I’d been abroad last and, frankly, I felt as if I’d had enough flying around with backpacks, having to wait in airoports and making new temporary friendships, for the year at least. I reluctantly applied anyway; the idea seemed just too good to skip altogether.
To my surprise, I was actually selected, albeit at the last moment. When I talked with Chrysostomos, the head of European Village (the sending organisation) about the specifics, I warned him that my financial situation was at its usual low. He told me that all the costs together would amount to 120€. A hundred and twenty. I was shocked.
-“What’s the catch?” I thought I was being clever. “What’s the cost of participation?” -“None. We’ve decided not to have one. Our current budget allows us to handle all the costs; it will be better and more convenient than passing them down to the travellers.”
That was it. 120€ would be cheaper even than staying in Athens for the same amount of time. Dafni wasn’t too happy with the suddenness of it all (we had made various plans for August already) but she was a sweet little understanding raccoon in the end and anyway had her own plans.
So there was us: 10 Greeks, and another 15 French people in it for the three weeks of the exchange. Together we visited five different locations and stayed some days in each, did wildcamping in every place, took part and volunteered for local festivals, picked organic vegetables from the community gardens and patches, learned how to build and use dry toilets (it’s not as bad as it sounds actually), participated in workshops on eco-building and local seed trading, there even was a Greek night dedicated to the Crisis. Our flag”ship” motor vehicle was the Vagabond Sage, a retrofit ’70s coach complete with dry toilet, wind generator and solar panels. We did not use all of its features but it was the symbol of our Trip in the French Heterotopias, the utopias that really exist.
The Vagabond SageInside the Vagabond SageSelf-organisingLautrecNettle salad. Guess who helped pick it… It was delicious and the numb fingers somehow made it better.Lots of camping was had.
All pictures by Marina, Myrto and Caro (I apologise for the terrible formatting of the pictures above. The gallery couldn’t come out right. I think it’s time for a new theme anyway...)
The experience from those three weeks is hard for me to put into words, not unlike much of the rest of my life. The trip was very practical: we had to pack stuff, unpack stuff, cook most meals from scratch (and cater for close to 30 people at times), deal with stuff changing places and having to ask about their whereabouts (looking at you, coffee and coffeejugs!), set up tents, build dry toilets and showers, empty said toilets, and many more things I’m generally not good at, the cerebral rather than practical, abstract rather than present, clumsy and unwieldy person that I generally am. I was much happier sitting somewhere writing my morning pages (more on those in the near future) or enjoying the sun than really helping to prepare dinner, for example, but not being really useful filled me with guilt. I felt that this separated me from the rest of the group and made it harder for me to contribute to our common goals and tasks. Sure, learning about eco-friendly and transitional practices was heaps of fun and super-interesting; connecting with the French and the Greeks was exciting and fun and there was all this adventure and thrill of moving from place to place and exploring rural Southern France, but I always had this nagging feeling that alone I could not do this, that somehow I wasn’t the right person for it. Once again, as I have too many times before to count, I felt like the black sheep. Or rather a sophisticated, colourful goat among a herd of sheep that has none of the definite deviant prestige that black sheep usually have but instead has a certain, perhaps misplaced, idea of superiority. When that idea is threatened and attacked by no-one in particular but, at the same time, everyone at once, I can be very reclusive and pensive. I was the city kid in a group of people who lived and breathed nature, it seemed. Thankfully, there were other people in the Greek group with whom I could share the feeling.
(Video I made with Phoenix for Daphne. Phoenix is the little fox she got for me while we were in Finland. The video is in Standard Definition, unfortunately.)
At the same time, I know that what we did in that trip is important and is the future. Anything that could make me and others more self-sufficient, make us able to take our own situations into our hands, free to lead our lives as we please, is important in this age of destroyed opportunities, slave wages and fear-mongering. We had some discussions on self-reliance around our almost daily nightly fire, watched a couple of movies that inspired me to take action one way or another (more specifically Να Μην Ζήσουμε Σαν Δούλοι), but most of all it was the people who took part, with their lifestyle and their choices, that made me think and feel.
Departure day
To cut a long story short, by the time we had got back to Greece I didn’t really want to leave immediately to find a job abroad. I had this feeling that staying here in Athens might not be so futile if I can find a way to use my time actively and creatively. Additionally, I felt and still feel that there’s lots of shit I have to figure out, reconcile, get over or leave behind before I can start something new. Putting some order to my digital belongings, selling or giving away stuff, giving time and energy to learn from everything that has happened in my life recently is really what I need but keep postponing due to distractions. Part of me tells me it’s all still being lazy and that purposefully skipping the opportunity to work abroad when I had it is regrettable, not to say of suspicious motivation on my part.
What appeared instead, however, is an excellent testament to the power of serendipity and letting the flow guide your path. Even if I missed the teaching abroad deadlines, there’s a very good possibility I will still be leaving the country after all to do my EVS (European Voluntary Service). Since there’s nothing urgent to do, might as well take advantage of my extended gap years while at the same time being independent for a change.
The real big questions in my head right now have to do with what path I should follow: one focused on living in the moment, taking advantage of opportunities as they come (the EVS and YIA side), discovering the Heterotopias that exist right under our noses and applying myself to that, or the other, in which I’ll make myself more qualified for actual work (which could be in the form of a MA in Prolonged Indecisiveness) or, yes, getting money and building the foundation for future survival? Certificates or Heterotopias? Playing it by ear as I’ve done a lot lately, or gearing up for the mystical tomorrow-never-comes “adult life”, which some would argue can’t include working as an English teacher abroad? /s
I have the EU and the YIA program to thank for giving me time and time again the opportunity to flourish!
From where I’m standing at the moment, the hopefully upcoming EVS looks like it might be able to combine the best of both worlds for me: independence, creativity, new experiences as well as involving myself with things that might benefit my future options of getting by. Still, it’s too fresh to announce anything concrete. If I’m finally doing it (my application’s in the notorious EVS red tape maze right now), which I should know by December, I’ll be leaving for Bulgaria in January 2014 and will be living there for close to a year working for Sofia City Library. That will involve updating their volunteer-run blog, creating promotional media for the library and, from what I can tell, having relatively lots of freedom to pursue my own projects.
What will happen next and whether or not I’ll manage to take advantage of the months ahead will depend entirely on my own ability to balance, prioritise and purge, while at the same time not leaving the flow. OK, maybe not entirely: the current monumental instability of the world will provide us all with some interesting distractions, surprises, dangers and wild card paradigm shifts. One thing’s for sure: we already have absolutely no excuses to feel bored.
To ξέθαψα από τη βιβλιοθήκη μου. Ούτε που έχω ιδέα πώς έπεσε στα χέρια μου αρχικά. Το όλο εγχείρημα πρόκειται για μια παρουσίαση του πώς λειτουργεί το Ευρωπαϊκό Κοινοβούλιο και η ΕΕ σε θεσμικό επίπεδο μέ πρωταγωνιστές ευρωβουλευτές, βοηθούς τους, εταιρείες κτλ.
Το σχέδιο δεν είναι άσχημο αλλά η ιστορία (ακόμα κι αν όλο μαζί είναι άντε 32 σελίδες!) είναι τελείως αδιάφορη και δεν εκπληρώνει τον σκοπό της, δηλαδή να κάνει τους ευρωπαϊκούς θεσμούς να φαίνονται λιγότερο ανούσια περίπλοκοι ή τρομερά βαρετοί και γραφειοκρατικοί.
Βρήκα ενδιαφέρον πώς, τόσο το 2003 που εκδόθηκε το Λαβωμένο Νερό όσο και μια δεκαετία μετά, το 2013, η ιδιωτικοποίηση του νερού και η εκμετάλλευση του από διάφορες επιτήδειες εταιρείες παραμένει κεντρικό πολιτικό ζήτημα. Επίσης ενδιαφέρον για μένα προσωπικά η απεικόνιση των διάφορων αιθουσών του κτιρίου του κοινοβουλίου στις Βρυξέλλες (υπάρχει και δεύτερο, στο Στρασβούργο, στο οποίο μεταβαίνουν με έξοδα της ΕΕ όλοι οι ευρωβουλευτές για τις συνεδριάσεις τους τακτικότατα — ουδέν σχόλιον), τις οποίες επισκέφτηκα πρόσφατα και έτσι μπορούσαν να φανταστώ πιο ζωντανά την εξέλιξη της δράσης που διάβαζα.
Ειρωνικό και τραγικό μαζί πόσο έχουν αλλάξει οι φιλοδοξίες και η κατάσταση της Ένωσης 10 χρόνια μετά. Όλα προσχεδιασμένα από μια μεγάλη συνωμοσία; Μια ένωση η οποία ποτέ δεν είχε δημοκρατικές βλέψεις αλλά οι θεσμοί που προέκυψαν ήταν ένα ευτυχές ατύχημα (looking at you, Υοuth In Action, Erasmus κτλ); Μια ελίτ που καπηλέυεται μια «δημοκρατία» που από την υπερβολική της αδράνεια δεν μπορεί να κάνει τίποτα για να αποτρέψει την πρώτη; Μεγάλες ερωτήσεις για τις οποίες οι απαντήσεις μου είναι απλά ανεπαρκείς.
“Sir James Michael “Jimmy” Goldsmith was an Anglo-French billionaire financier. Towards the end of his life, he became a magazine publisher and a politician. In 1994, he was elected to represent France as a Member of the European Parliament and he subsequently founded the short-lived eurosceptic Referendum Party in Britain. He was known for his polyamorous romantic relationships and for the various children he fathered with his wives and girlfriends.”
This was the author of this book written in 1993-4. He clearly can’t have been a leftist, marxist or “liberal”; at least that’s how our presumption would go. I for one was confused about Mr. Goldsmith’s political identity after reading his book. He goes over what the potential dangers of globalisation looked like 20 years ago, after the fall of the USSR when Fukuyama’s End Of History seemed like it might have been rather spot-on. Now of course we know that history didn’t end and that globalisation was a real phantom menace, but back it wasn’t yet the concrete everyday reality of 2013. And you most certainly wouldn’t have expected a “billionaire financier” to lean that way.
Basically, this rich guy predicted: the crisis of the European South 8 years before even the introduction of the Euro; the inevitability of unemployment, recession and austerity when the world had to competing with the ocean of cheap labour that is Asia; the dangers of monocultures and GMO mega-corporations like Monsanto; even the dead-end that is nuclear power, among other things. Unexpectedly, for me at least, he doesn’t even touch neoliberalist ideas in the book and uses very lucid and clearly-constructed arguments to demonstrate that the path humanity, or at least its more powerful chunk, has chosen, is basically wrong.
His predictions were logic-driven. They were there in 1993, just like they are there today. If no-one listened back then they might be excused. But there is no excuse today for not listening. Following a strategy doomed to obvious failure is either extremely stupid or criminal -and I’m not buying that anyone making this much money off of the world can be that stupid…
The Trap showed me just how little the discussion has changed, how old false dilemmas have reared their ugly heads again and again, never failing to fool the masses anew and always succeeding to make the world a little bit of a worse place to live in. James Goldsmith wrote this book as a warning. Everything he was warning against has come true. Why should I think that the unseen rest of this huge trap hasn’t already been long prepared or perhaps even sprung?
Time will tell. Fortunately, my pessimistic side doesn’t usually get the best of me.
Kudos go to Dan Carlin for bringing this book to my attention (listen to this episode for a much better review and comparison of The Trap to the present situation than I could ever write) and my father who actually bought it when it first came out. I found it in his bookshelf; it’s apparently rather hard/expensive to find now.
“The youth exchange “I SEE GREEN” is a 10 days youth exchange aiming at raising awareness of 30 youngsters, youth leaders and volunteers of 6 countries (Netherlands, Croatia,Romania,Greece,Latvia and Poland) on environmental education with the use of audiovisual media as a tool.”
So I went to the Netherlands, took part in I See Green and I had a fantastic time. So good was it that not only do I want to participate in as many similar programs as possible in the future, I regret having missed opportunities to do so in the past.
It is very hard to convey in words what happened in Ommen. Those 10+2 days were very “experiential” and a big part of what made them special was the bonding that was powerfully, creatively and disruptively (but in a good way) built up between us by the team leaders, the inside jokes that quickly emerged among us and countless other things that really mean little to anyone but us roughly 30 people that took part. It felt like we were all apprentices in this cult’s ceremonies, cut-off from the rest of the world, staying in that old house in the middle of nowhere for the Netherlands’ standards. That closeness was what made it special.
For example, I will never listen to this song the same way:
(trust me, use loud music if you want people to be in a room on time)
I feel I met people that I’d make good friends with, but once again, just like the ones I made in Denmark, these are relationships that are destined to be long-distance from the get-go. Still, all is well. Matija, Karla, Agita, Marian, Vaggelis, Elisavet, Panagiotis, Dimitra, Sofia (it was a more or less Greek-dominated team), they stood out for me. I don’t want to exclude the rest of the participants of course; everyone has their own special place in my mind for their own reason, be it Stephanie for teaching me dance moves, Jakob for his perfect impersonation of Rose from Titanic (we remade one of the scenes from the movie as part of one of our assignments), Darius for his humour, wit and very special accent, Dede for reimagining what milking a cow can mean, Ioanna for her special Uno rules and one of the heaviest but loveable Greek accents EVER, Edgars for his remarkably bad English but him being even more likeable because of it, Ola for her studying Japanese late into every evening with remarkable dilligence, even when everyone was in altered states around her dancing around her or jumping on the trampoline outside…
Of course, this (try to spot me in both scenes):
After we had to unlearn part of what we had been learning a whole lifetime, our final assignment was to make a video that would promote awareness on an enviornmental issue of our choice. My group had a struggle with the concept (like always in I See Green, we were purposefully given very short deadlines in which we had to come up with our ideas in order to think less and do more); we scrapped two ideas in the process and for good reason: the stage for one of them could easily pass off as the backdrop for an amateur porn movie to the unsuspected passer-by. Panic crept to us slowly but surely in the few hours we had to have something prepared — and it wasn’t the first time we were caught unprepared in the program; in fact most assignments in I See Green we had to have ready in timespans measured in half-hour increments. What we ended up doing though we’re really proud of. We created 5 funny social awareness shorts and then combined them into one for easier presentation and shaing. Enjoy.
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership by John Hilary
