Another Steven Wilson song from Hand. Cannot. Erase. that’s playing in my head. I played this one in my car a few days ago to friendly company and they seemed to agree that it wasn’t the right time to play it and that they “didn’t go crazy for Steven Wilson”. Something twitched inside of me as I blurted back something between “I didn’t expect you to” and “my car, my rules”, which I immediately regretted. It’s okay, though, because playing that song then and there was what made it become my new earworm of the week and what eventually led to this post.
3 years ago was my first day at my first youth exchange, I See Green at Olde Vechte. Sofia gave me a little cupcake with a candle on it after that first lunch in Zeesse. I felt far away from home, celebrating my birthday in the company of strangers, but that gesture warmed my heart.
Today, 3 years older, there’s little hope the strangers in the army camp will become the special people the strangers from that youth exchange in the Netherlands soon became. But the candle from back then is still burning. It’s one of those special trick candles that don’t go out when you blow them.
PS: Wilson’s coming to Athens on May 5th. You can tell I won’t let many things stop me from being there to see him play.
Once again, I feel so relieved someone else did the more descriptive, general write-up for me. *dons sunglasses, throws self in hammock set up between chestnut trees*
The youth exchange we were preparing and waiting so much took place in Rijeka on 6-17 October. 30 young curious and talented people from Croatia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Greece, and Spain came to learn, act and have fun. And they did it!
The aim of Grow Creative is to empower young people to be successful and creative, to find their dream jobs. The participants went deep inside to discover their inspirations and values, and they flew high to share their dreams and plans for the future. They worked hard morning through evening to enhance their problem-solving and communication skills, and even tried themselves as entrepreneurs.
Many things were happening every day. We learned some NLP and coaching tools, and had many interactive presentations and discussions.We played different roles,and had new exercises and energizers every day.Many activities were created and led by the participants. Thank you for sharing your experiences with us!
We used many different ways of communication, mingling and cooperation. Our mutual understanding and unity reached ones of its highest peaks during the cultural evening. Each country presented the best of its culture: artistic performances, traditional dances, national habits,and delicious cuisine. And we saw creativity boosting! Altogether it made the event so intense, exciting and remarkable.
All these 11 days Dharma Hostel was our home, sweet home. It provided us with beautiful Adriatic Sea view, comfortable rooms, vegetarian food, yoga classes in the morning, and very friendly and hospitable staff.
We also went out to explore Rijeka, and it was a lot of fun with some unexpected discoveries and surprises.
Sometimes the things were not easy, and we needed support of each other. Sometimes we went out of our comfort zones, but always came back to our Cozy Area. And eventually team work proved that everything is possible, we got impressive results and had a great time together!
Thank you to all the participants for making this exchange so special and inspirational. We hope to see you again and wish you beautiful adventures ahead.
And here we go, ready to take off with new projects and ideas!
My remarks:
Everybody set challenges for themselves during the training. Mine was “move and function from love, not fear”, inspired/taken/stolen from the phenomenal book I read a few months ago already, Conversations With God
All in all, I found this exchange very motivating and inspirational. I had the distinct feeling it was just what I needed, the right thing at the right moment together with the right people etc. The Greek team, the Spanish guys, the Czechs, the Croatians and the EVSers working with them, българите…There was a lot of synergy in the group and we bonded faster and stronger than I expected—though this feeling is a typical high you get during youth exchanges and one that unfortunately doesn’t last that long once they’re over. I’m still trying to figure out whether that feeling is artificial compared to “normal” intimacy with people. Maybe it’s just our society and way of life that have taken so much out of plain old human connection.
Anyway, I felt great clarity when I was envisioning my future and describing my present situation, my place in life and where I wanted to be. I felt amazingly relaxed letting out the words but not caring whether they would come to pass, or even if anybody would understand; I realised that whatever happens will be right, if only I focus on what I want my life’s meaning to be, so to myself as to the people I meet on the way. No, scratch that actually. No matter what you do, no matter what happens, everything will be alright. Including, I don’t know, the destruction of the Earth itself.
One such moment of touching core meaning was was when I gave a half-hour workshop on the Enneagramto the group and it went super smoothly. Almost nobody had heard of it before, and it resonated with a greater part of the group than I had expected. It felt right and in fact I received positive reinforcement in everything I attempted to do differently, as related to coaching (a big point of focus of Grow Creative in general) and working with people.
The feedback I get during exchanges is so different from what I’m used to hearing in “everyday life” that I must admit I find it addictive, scary and thought-provoking in equal degrees. Many people in Grow Creative found me and what I had to bring to the team—the Enneagram, the games, my honest sharing, my attempts to be an active listener and competent talker—“inspiring.” I was just making a point to be moving from love, not fear. And it made everything so much easier, so much prettier. Opening up and, as cliché as it sounds, letting go—that is, letting go of who you want others to think you are—felt good in a very pure sense.
That said, I can’t recall the last time anybody in Greece called me inspiring. Apparently, I project quite different personalities to the people I’ve known for a long time, who have certain expectations of me, and to those I’ve just met. Quite contrary to what used to be the case, I’ve become much more eager to meet and get to know new people, and find it increasingly harder keeping up with older friends, acquaintances, relatives… I like to think it’s because of expectations and that it’s impossible to make everyone happy, in other words, “best just to avoid having to deal with expectations entirely”... But could it be another sign of my underlying need for infinite novelty? Well, in Grow Creative, for the first time in a long while, I felt as if I took the first step in getting over that too. But maybe not, either, and it’s not very important, really.
A big thanks to the Life Potential team who scored big with their first exchange.
Made by Agnese with the glasses. We didn’t talk almost at all but this doesn’t change the fact that she made something pretty.
This picture is a little token and memento of what took place in Olde Vechte in The Netherlands the past few weeks. That Olde Vechte. It’s become out of the blue a significant part of my life and if all goes well it’s going to become more important still in the months to come.
I’m posting this here because somehow everything I put on here gets reinforced in my head, it becomes more tangible. It works. Synapses and shit (I haven’t taken advantage of this enough, by the way—never too late to start).
People and how we work are weird… no no no. Sorry. I do this a lot: I talk about the general we when I mean to talk about myself and what I do. Let’s try this again: I’m weird. Remember, gotta accept accountability.
So I’m writing this post purely for my own benefit and not because I think it might be interesting to anybody apart from those with whom I shared the experience—kinda similar to how you post songs on Facebook and the only people who like your post are the people who already know and like the song and very few others actually listen to it, usually people who have a crush on you. That’s how talking and writing about youth exchanges and trainings is, including EVS, including Erasmus, all those sexy international things that have been taking a great deal of my time and energy the past few years. The feelings they have created in me are difficult to convey, offline as well as online, so I’m not going to go into the boring details of a purely experiential thing that’s as useful and interesting to read about as listening to people talk about the dreams they had last night. What I am going to say is do yourself a favour and participate in such programs. If you want to learn how, I can help you and direct you, and, who knows, one day even train you.
Sudden spontaneous insightful realisation time. The above paragraph starts with “So I’m writing this post purely for my own benefit” and ends with me urging you dear reader to give it a shot. What can I say, contradicting myself seems to be my new favourite hobby.
Scratch that, it’s not new at all.
Since I’m writing this, have a look at some of my older, more thorough posts about these experiences. Are you intrigued by what you read? Honest question. I’m really curious, because in real life most people express indifference when I talk about these projects. This might explain why I felt the need to write the way I wrote this post.
Part of every EVSer’s life is the on-arrival training, a get-together with all the fresh volunteers in the country and a familiarisation with everything he or she needs to know about his or her voluntary service: the personal project, his or her rights and obligations (and those of all involved), how the health insurance works, etc etc. But it’s not just that; if it was, the on-arrival probably wouldn’t be etched on every volunteer’s mind as a definite highlight of the EVS project and some of the best days in his or her life in general.
Some people thought we were actually trainers!
Who else was provided with t-shirts by their
awesome hosting organisation, eh? 🙂
Picture by Petar Markov.
Posing with the library shirts.
Picture by Petar Markov.
Agne, the volunteer who was working in the library before us, had this to say about their on-arrival last year:
All EVS volunteers have to undergo training. On 19-24 July we had our ‘on-arrival’ at the Black Sea resort of Albena, organised by the Bulgarian national agency.There
have been nearly sixty trainees in total – EVS volunteers from projects all over Bulgaria – some of them ‘on-arrival’ like us, others ‘mid-term’.
Four trainers were giving us workshops, supported by several other people from the national agency.
The training, of course, is not just about partying. A typical day included a couple of three-hour sessions, separated by a two-hour lunch break – the latter typically spent at the beach.
I was not the only one thinking the sessions were fun but intense. We did: ice-breaking games in order to get to know each others, our projects & countries of origin; psychology workshops (personality types, negotiations, conflict management); classes about practicalities of
doing an EVS (volunteerism, AXA insurance); plus creative tasks such as designing posters, shooting short films & running for quests all over Albena. […] (full post here)
Presenting Sofia City Library and our project to the group.
Picture by Petar Markov.
Everything’s better with posters and sketches!
Picture by Petar Markov.
In our case, the place was Hisarya, (warning: musical link!), an old town well-known in Bulgaria for its hot springs. It took place from March 7th to March 13th, making it one of the longest trainings ever – lucky us! Our accommodation was Augusta Hotel, a renovated communist era hotel built close to one of those springs and using the water to fill its swimming pool, spas and saunas. Apart from the food, the experience of staying in that place was quite… interesting. Hotels always give me the impression that they exist sort of independently from the rest of civilisation, like places that belong nowhere specific. But that’s another topic entirely.
That’s us. Kuba and Ula from Poland; Anna from Austria; Florian from France; Anna, Christina and Dimitris (that’s me) from Greece; Bojan from Serbia; Miro from Slovakia; Veronika from Czech Republic; Corinne from the UK; Niina from Finland; Elena, Paula and Vicente from Spain; Rian from the Netherlands; Zanda from Latvia; Maria from Denmark; Gabriele and Rasa from Lithuania; Hilal from Turkey; Susanna from Armenia and our two trainers Nasko and Maya from Bulgaria! A truly multicultural, European group!
Our trainer Nasko and the EVS project cycle.
A session on intercultural communication, they said…
Picture by Petar Markov.
Meanwhile, there were another 40 or so EVSers having their mid-term training in the hall next door. The “evening activities”, in which we could all mingle together after the tough sessions of the day, were pure pandaemonium. Let’s just say that by the end, our socialising limits had been tested.
Shot from the Uglies Party the mid-terms
prepared for the on-arrivals.
Guess what the dress code was.
All bowed to the superiority of the post-it game!
I’d love to be able to convey at least part of what makes these kinds of things like youth exchanges, and in turn this training, so special, but I find it very difficult to do so: while I was thinking about writing this post, I realised that I have actually avoided writing about such experiences in the past. Being stuck together with complete strangers for a week and by the end feeling you’ve known them forever, doing things that an outsider would probably find silly or weird but you’re greatly enjoying, is not an easy feeling to explain. A friend of mine says its false intimacy. Maybe in the case of youth exchanges it mostly is: after the exchanges, I’m sad to say, it’s impossible to keep contact with everyone. Even the people with whom you thought you could be great friends, the people you would genuinely love to keep in touch with, are in time forgotten…
This training, however, was happily different in this respect. After the final day of the training, after all the parties were had, all the games were played, all the informal education was, erm, unleashed, all the projects were presented and all the friendships made, we all knew that we would see eachother soon, or at the very least had the possibility to do so; we were all volunteers in the same country, after all…
Indeed, on the weekend after the training, more than half of the group almost magically ended up in Sofia (most of them don’t live here) and what followed was a crazy couple of days. It was also Zanda’s birthday then and everyone was invited to the party. That night we hosted 5 people in our tiny little flat! But for every person that wasn’t in Sofia for these moments, a promise to visit had already been made. A promise we can’t wait to keep.
We all had a secret mission assigned to us
by the trainers in the on-arrival, which we
had to work on throught our days in Hisarya
and presented to the group on the last day.
Zanda’s was to create a collage of everyone’s
national flags. After the training we took theposter
home and this is a picture of it with Florian
in our kitchen. Proof of the impact Hisarya
had on us and our relationships in Bulgaria…
So what did we all take away with us from this experience? Personally, I had the chance to come closer to my own personal goals for the EVS as a whole, got many ideas for improving my own experience and work in the library and of course met great new people. I’d really like my friends and colleagues to include their own versions and impressions of the on-arrival, so the following space is for them.
(SPACE!)
This one is the product of Corinne’s secret mission.
It, too, is hanging on our kitchen wall.
