Walentynkowy bal dla seniorów 

One day during my on-arrival training our Warsaw guide, EVS volunteer in the past, opened before us the beauty of Old Town. The Wedding Palace, the one of the most beautiful and historical building, were rebuilt after the World War II and everybody plighted lovers want to have a registration of marriage and weddings here. At this time the old couple went out of the Palace. “Never too late”, said our guide smiling. 

 “Never too late” can say seniors of Pultusk who celebrated St. Valentines Day on 14^th of February in Dom Polonii. Never too late to remember about simple gladness – love. Our organization FIYE was invited to Valentines ball in Dom Polonii to help seniors spend this day joyfully and interesting. 

During whole week before this holiday we start to prepare different thing needed for this ball. First of all we created two beautiful crowns for king and queen from gold paper, then – 12 cotillions for special dance competition and two photo buds – big heart and golden carnival frame with masks. Now we can hold different master-class and workshops from paper :-)

On 14^th of February in some hall of Dom Polonii we prepared the place for photo making – light, photo buds, chairs. Our local volunteer Sylwia made  photos of happy couples whole day. Yes, we cann't show you photo of main participants with our frames, but you can enjoy this photo: 

Ball started from a song that was devoted to Pultusk as a part of town contest “How inhabitians of Pultusk love their town”, then one of pani read her own poem.

 

In generally seniors spent their time very funny and happy: had a lot of food, dance a lot, smiling and laughing. In the end we held our dance competition. We chose 12 women and 12 men who took cotillions and found each other who had the same numbers. And 12 couples start to dance during 4 different songs. At that time other seniors tried to choose the best pair. 

12th couple became the winners and king and queen of ball. They was presented our handmade crowns and champagne.

Another participants aren't left without presents. 

           Our FIYE organization take active part in this kind of meeting for seniors. So read our blog and be informed.

All the best,

Elena.

Winter holidays

           Wonderful time came! Time we all expected! Winter holidays!

         Poland is an interesting country… This year children had an incredibly long rest from 24 of December to 7 of January (Christmas time) and from 19 of January to 2 of February (Winter holidays or “Ferie zimowe”). “Oh, lucky” I would say to myself 6 or more years ago.

      Our main task as a EVS volunteers was organizing children’s leisure time as funny and interesting as possible. Actually our work was concentrated in day care centre or “Swietlica” but we had to realize a lot of other ideas.

Hugo tell children from Gzy about Spain

   We started our holidays in village Gzy which we visited during European Language Day in September. Children in Gzy are amazing: the calmest and modest in the world. They are shy, smile a little, hide their eyes – regime “wildness” is off. As usual me and Hugo shared time, this time me as a gentlemen let Hugo start first. In one hour everyone presented their country and taught words and basic phrases in Spanish and Russian: “My name is…” or name of animals, numbers and colours. As usual a lot of photo of Hugo working, only one or two of mine :-(

Kids learn Spanish numbers and play

     Beside this work we showed them a Russian cartoon that Polish children like very much, made postcards from paper Russian Matrioshki and gave them old Russian woman names. At the same time Hugo created different competitions as armwrestling.

      I think children and teachers liked this beginning of winter holidays because they invited us for another visit. They gave us beautiful handmade flowers from paper and fed us tasty pizza for lunch. Hope to come back here one more time :-) Special thanks to Alicja Krawczynska for translation and positive energy :-)

     

      Next time of our holidays we devoted to our favourite day care centre and children we have known for a long time and too good - regime “wildness” is on. In the first week we welcomed our friends and EVS volunteers from our mother organization SPW office in Warsaw – Dominik from Czech Republic and Judita from Slovakia. They are very positive and open minded persons from beautiful Slavic countries. Dominik works in Jedrus as a volunteer helping teachers and Judita – in SPW office helping promote this organisation. Read their blog and new post about experience of work with Pultusk children. (http://siedzisobiejez.blogspot.com/2015/01/spw-volunteers-in-putusk.html) Everyone speaks Polish very well – our children help everybody learn it very fast. 

Judyta tell about Slovakia

      They showed a presentation about their countries – short video or pictures, cartoons, taught children some words in their language. In the end one of the children saw a movie “Harry Potter” in Judita’s pendrive and asked us to watch it. So as a part of our English club we tried to understand what main characters were talking about in English.

       Beside the work in Swietlica we created two extra meetings for inhabitants of Pultusk. First was tandem language meeting or “podwieczorek jezykowy”. This kind of meeting help students to overcome their level of foreign language, meet interesting people from different country and have a good time. Dominik headed English table and helped my English group with whom we have meetings every Wednesday. Hugo – Spanish table with a teacher from Pultusk Academia. Elena and Sasha – Russian with our local volunteer Weronika and our project coordinator Sylwia. I prepared different funny questions in Russian for example about favourite superpower or times you want to visit if you have time machine :-) This kind of meeting – in different form (tandem, picnic) – are very popular and productive.

Dominik and our loval volunteer play  "Catan"

     Second meeting – board games. We started from simple but funny game – Dobble. We had a lot of cards with pictures and everyone have to find similarities in their cards and the main one. Actually there are more different ways to play this game. The funniest moment was when everyone named pictures in their language – Polish, Russian, Czech, Slovak, English. It is the one of the best way to learn other language. And continued with “Jungle Speed”, “Wieża” and one of my favourite right now - “Dixit”. Our fantasy is the most important in this game. Everyone have three cards with different unusual and strange pictures. Our task is to choose a picture and say the word or sentence from books, movies and songs with which you have an association. “Dixit” has a side effects as remembering of different associations in our life, a lot of laugh and positive energy till the end of meeting.

     I want to say thank you for this interesting week to our EVS friend Dominik for optimism and fun and Judita for stories about Iceland and teaching me Slovak, Weronika and Alicja for translation and helping in day care centre :-) Sylwia for painting posters for grandparents day and Sasha for organizing our free time with watching Russian movies.

Fatima tell about Portugal

    Last week of winter holidays we were visited by another two volunteers from Warsaw – Fatima from Portugal and Alisa from Germany. Girls work in Helenow and the helping Hand Foundation with disabled people and they were very happy to change place and kind of work for one week. It was a good opportunity to start speak a lot in Polish, to find new friends among our children and realized all ideas they had. We had more advantage. First step – Portuguese day. Fatima created a presentation about her country, show different songs in her language, made language games with postcards and of course face painting. Second step – German day with videos and language games: you have to show animal and name it in German or jump as many times as need and call every number. 

Alisa tell about Germany

     Third step – Russian day – was opened by flood in Swietlica. Don’t worry, that just mean that our time didn’t come, we had to wait. Fourth step – last day of our winter holidays. We decided to realize idea with carnival. At 10 o’clock we started to make funny masks for children: flower queen, Spiderman, Indian, cat, Venice masks. Teachers decorated our room with colour paper. After – games with chairs, mummies from toilette paper, figure game with music and of course face painting and x box dance! There were not so much children that we expected in the beginning. Despite of this everybody was very happy, tired and with good memories I hope.

Carnival meeting

Our tandem meeting

      Fatima and Alisa also helped us with our second tandem meeting and board games. Fatima headed Portuguese table (yes, in Pultusk we have a people who speak Portuguesse, Fatima was happy :-)) and Alisa – English table with my English students. Special thanks to them for coming and jokes about German, Russian and Polish :-) 

     We were very tired during this two weeks but happy and proud for ourselves. Thanks to everybody who participated, special thanks to Fatima and Alisa for their enthusiasm and great dancing ideas, lessons of Portuguese (Sou linda e fantasica :-)) and German (now I know what is the song “Moscow” about). 

     Of course to be a group leader (or I prefer boss, as Fatima said ;-)) is not so easy, I hope I made everything possible so that they felt good and comfortable in Pultusk. Hope to see you, dear volunteers, one more time :-)

     All the best,
         Elena.

Promoting Russian Culture and Language!

This year we will continue different activities about Russian culture and language we started last year. Russian is one of the most popular language to study in Poland. The main aim of our meetings is to know more about history, culture and traditions of my country, to help students speak more free and to be fond of language they study. Modern system of education focused on exam success. But it’s not enough. Feelings, freedom of communication, using knowledges in the future, spacious mind are very important too.

Every Thursday I visit Russian lessons in Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. Piotra Skargi and help students to learn my language (not so easy).  There are two aims of this work: 1) to prepare for exams (grammatical part) and 2) communication skills. Always first part prevails. Everybody are too shy, can’t feel comfortable speaking foreign language.  So we decided to organized extra meetings for those who want to overcome communication barriers.
29 of December took place opening of «Russian Club for students». The aim is communication. This sunny day before holidays we started from different language games. For example, «Sahara». The participants presented themselves as survivors of the crash in the Sahara desert. Under the debris of the plane they have found fifteen items that remained intact after the crash. Their task was to rank these items according to their relevance to your rescue. At first everybody worked alone, then in pairs, and finally in a large group. The discussion was very interesting and fun, but not always using Russian.

17, 20 and 26 of November Zespół Szkół im. B. Prusa  invited me for opening Russian lessons. This meeting was more about Russian culture: we talked about Russian holidays – why New  Year are the most popular in my country and Christmas is not, what is Maslenitca, Matryoshka, bliny; famous people, differences and common features between Russian and Polish languages.

19 of November  me and  Volunteers Club from Gymnasium nr. 1 went to kindergarten to present a verse of Polish poet Julian Tuwim «Rzepka» based on Russian  fairy tale. My task was to tell this story on Russian. Children laugh a lot. For them Russian was very funny as for me Polish for the first time. I was surprised because Polish version are longer – 10 characters vs 6. Children was playing main characters who tried to pull out turnip in original story. This performance makes everybody smile .

SUPPORT IN LEARNING ENGLISH
Except Russian we helped to learn English. Every Tuesday  we have English lessons in Swietlica for children. It’s not usual lessons with blackboard and pointer. We sing songs, dance, play different games, make a performance  and do everything funny what can help us to learn English.
During 2 last month every Wednesday I spent with a group of ladies studying English. They want to study English for their job. Our main aim is to start speak basic English easy and fast. On the preparatory meeting we talked about motivation and visual images which help us to open another world. Only one hour in a week with teacher isn’t enough but everybody try to do the best. I hope tht very soon we will speak English very well.
That what kind of regular meeting and activities we have. There isn’t too many photo. But it’s important part of our job that we like and will continue during new year. Do zobaczenia, Elena.

The Christmas Dinner!

Hello,

We were invite for a Christmas dinner, in a school, so we decided to prepare some food for them, as well as bring some songs from Russia and Spain, so the first day we started to look for some songs as well as for the lyrics, once we had the songs we started to prepare our food. Huevos Rellenos, from the Spanish side, and Blini from the Russian side, the organization also prepared some present for them.

Well it was mmmh Wednesday, and everything was ready, so we to the school, we put our food in the table along with all the other food, for me was something new, this kind of thing, as we don't do something similar in Spain, we have christmas dinner and so on, but we do in a different way than they did here, at least from the part I come from and from my school I never had something like this.

We were all sitting around the table, the lights were low and there was a nun in the room, first the teachers started to talk to say thanks to the people and so on, and after that the nun started a speech, I didn't understand it but I guess it was related with the christmas festivity, I'm not a religious person so I didn't understand that thing pretty well, but everyone were silent and paying attention, after that she give us Opłatek that we had to share with people, and wish them something good at the time you break a piece and share with them, you can wish also something bad! but it's Christmas so lets everyone enjoy :D

After that we started for me the best party! eating and singing songs in different languages, the was also pierogi, some cake, fruits, some kind of fish, I don't like fish at all so I didn't even bother to ask for the name of that dish, well... actually I like fish, but I prefer beef, there were a lot of sweets and the decoration was really nice, with small lights under the tablecloth was giving it a beautiful view

We were there for about two hours,  and after everything was over and everything cleaned we started to pack back our things, to take some rests of the food, ( never throw food! ) and to head back home after spending a nice evening with people and with a big smile and a full stomach!

Have a nice day!

The good deeds of Christmas time!

Hello ! We were thinking what to do, we wanted to do something nice to other people, so there we go!, Let's make cookies for seniors and spend a christmas day with childrens in the day care center

So there we started with the cookies! sweet isn't it? we bought the things needed to make around 200-300 cookies and actually it was the first time for us to make those kind of cookies, so the day before we practice a bit with the recipe, we burnt the first ten cookies tho, but well, thats how you improve.

On Friday we started to prepare the mass, early in the morning to let it rest for an hour in the fridge

We started after that to look for some box to put the cookies inside, it was quite funny us going from shop to shop asking for that, in the end it wasn't needed, well the main point.

We started to prepare the cookies, we gave them shape and we start to bake them after that the fun part started, decorate the cookies with children!

It was funny, and in the end we had more cookies than expected we even made some custom cookies or rabbit face cookies, children and some seniors were working and eating together during the work, good thing we had enough to save for the next Friday!

Enjoy watching and don't eat too much sugar! 

Then on Tuesday we went to the day care center, dressed as fat santa and slim santa, to spend some time with those children who helped us with the cookies as well to give them some presents, yes always candys!

First we ask for some Santa costumes as the real one was too fat to leave lapland and join us, christmas was close so he asked me the personal favor of replacing him, we didn't have a grinch so things went good, still I like the grinch a bit.

So we went there, and we started to sing songs with children and to play with them, yeah we also took photos so we can send to the big Santa there in lapland, we want our presents also you know? so we have to be nice, though in my country the ones who give us the presents are the three wise men, and not this fatty candy eater

Actually first photo looks like a pyjama, but I can't help it, working in that belly right now...

Well we gave them some sweet as a presents for saying songs and good wishes for the others, and we were talking and playing with them, also we prepared some spanish dessert for them, rice with milk, but it seems that not many of them enjoyed it, when you have food on the plate you have to eat! but for children it can be tough to try new tastes and flavors, still there was one kid who ate almost everyone else plate!

Well then with these Santa apprentices we left today! they have to eat more still! :)

HO HO HO

Cooking in Pultusk

Hello!

Today I went to Zespól Szkól im. B. Prusa to talk about different dishes I could cook to teach them, we were talking about the dishes Me (Hugo), Sylwia and one of the teachers of the school "name" and about the different possibilities I could teach to the students, we were discussing about different kind of meals, like starters ( Tapas ) main dishes, desserts, salads, etc. the options were the following:

For tapas we had: Pincho de anchoas, Cebolla caramelizada con queso de cabra, Tomate con oregano and Huevos rellenos

As starter we had Gazpacho, that is a tradicional cold soup made of vegetables, with the main ingredient tomatoes

as a main dishes we had Paella and tortilla de patatas

and torrijas for dessert.

After the talking with the teacher they agreed on the idea and we arrange the meeting for the next Tuesday where I should go to buy the food with one of the teachers to Lidl on Monday, to prepare everything for the next day, and so we went to Lidl and bought everything, maybe a bit more than expected, but its better to have an excess than to have a lack of ingredients.

Everything was ready and set for the next day, I had to wake up at 7 in the morning! yeah! even if don't believe it, for me it was a crazy time to start cooking or teaching how to cook the different dishes! but is something that I like so it wasn't that much problem, I was just a bit sleepy at the beggining

We arrived to the school at around 8, Elena and me, and we meet with the teacher so we went to the kitchen, quite amazing kitchen, really big and a place for everyone with a lot of things for cooking, the mood of the people was nice and they were ready to start cooking, and they were quite interested in that, also they were funny and talkative, so it's always a pleasure to work with people who likes to talk and are not like robots

We started making 6 groups of people and each group were going to cook a recipe, aditionally 2 groups were cooking two more dishes and everyone else who choosed could cook a small paella

to decide what group will cook everything we wrote the names of the recipes in pappers and then they took a papper, we had 6 groups and 8 dishes, they started to cook, while I was explaining the what to do and how to do it, and oving around the kitchen helping the in what I could, I also had the help of the teachers from the school and from the own students,

After around 3 hours of cooking the food were ready, and we all started to try the different dishes, also the director from the school were there with us eating the different dishes.

They asked us to go there again so I supposed that they really liked it, I was really happy as people seems that they were having a good time, some dishes were better, some needed a bit of salt maybe, or the rice a bit more done, but for the first time, the general taste was really good, so we had a good meal all together

Thanks for reading! now time to eat!


P.S All photos belong to  Zespól Szkól im. B. Prusa

Christmas meeting for Volunteers and habitants of Pultusk

Hello!

For saturday 6th we decided to organize some kind of meeting, call it party, for volunteers from Pultusk and Warsaw as well as anyone from Pultusk who would like to come for it, the idea came as the day before was the international volunteer day, so we wanted to do something related to it plus a christmas like dinner.

Firstly we started to think in how to do it so after a few talks we decided that everyone, or a group of a few people should cook something and bring the meeting that was held in the office, thanks to that we had different kind of food, there will be a photo of the menu later, but in general we had some cakes, food for a few countries and the force to eat it all! that was the most important thing there

Sylwia, our coordinator, has the great idea to give special Badges to every person who went to that meeting, so we lined up together and she started to do an amazing speech about things I barely remember, but that were imprinted in my mind, and after she gave a badge to everyone, we also made one for her as she deserve it for the hard work she is doing!

We started then with the karaoke, at the beggining people were a bit shy to sing, but as the night was passing more and more people started to sing, there we were talking, eating, singing, around
 25-30 people for the international volunteer day meeting, we started that meeting at around 6pm and it ended at 5 am, so it means that people were having fun and enjoying the time with all of us

In general was a great experience that we would like to repeat again, the worst part was the cleaning before going to sleep ;)

Oh I almost forgot! the present thing! We were exchanging presents with each others.

Take care!