Intercultural Easter meeting

Dear people,

Last Tuesday we had an intercultural Easter meeting at the language café. The event was quite a success since surprisingly many people showed up and the atmosphere was cozy. Also the variety of the countries where people came from was wide: besides our volunteers from Spain, Greece and Finland, there were students from Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and obviously from Poland. Moreover, the boss of the language school is from Moldova and she also knows the Romanian culture really well. The composition of the group was ideal for the topic of the day, I learnt more about Easter traditions in different countries than I would have ever expected!

International Easter fact sheet

People brought lots of food to the meeting, which made me really happy. We had Polish soups and sweets, some Romanian sweets and a plenty of eggs. We started the meeting by learning something about Greek, Finnish, Spanish, Moldovan and Romanian Easter in pictures. Especially in Spain they have some traditions that seem weird for a foreigner, such as dressing up as Nazarenos who awkwardly resemble the members of KKK. But when you think about it, it's actually great that they haven't let the horrors of another continent suppress their own beautiful traditions! In Greece Easter includes flying kites, eating a lot of food and tapping red-colored eggs onto each other to see who manages to crack the other person's egg first. In Finland, at least for me and my family, Easter is just a celebration of chocolate eggs, bunnies and witches without any religious aspects, but some people celebrate Easter also for religious reasons.

After having learnt about the traditions, we put them into practise and played the Greek egg-cracking game and spouted water on each other, following the Polish Wet Monday tradition.

Yours,

Petja

Ps. Follow us on Instagram too: @obcywpultusku

The International Easter Egg is arising

The Egg Fight

The best part: Easter sweets!

La Fiesta Española

¡Hola!

On Saturday the 27th of February I gave a presentation on the topic Spanish Fiesta at the Children’s University of Pułtusk.  Now I’m going to tell you how it was and what we did.

During the second week of my stay in Poland, me and the other two volunteers organized a language café in the Bar Restaurant Magdalenka. There I met the director of the Children’s University of Pułtusk, we talked about our EVS projects and she asked me if I’d like to give a presentation about Spain at the Children’s University. I agreed and my EVS coordinator Sylwia organized the meeting.

On Saturday I woke up at 8:30 am, I was a bit tired but motivated for the event. I prepared a Power Point presentation with pictures of Spanish landscapes and celebrations, cooked a tortilla de patatas (Spanish omelette) and prepared some games for the kids. After having prepared everything I walked out of the house to the meeting place. I arrived ten minutes late, because I didn't know how to get there, but Google Maps helped me! The place was a big university library and at first I didn't find the right room, but eventually Joana came to the main door and took me to the right place.

In the room there were ten kids and other people waiting for my presentation. I started talking about Spain and Joana translated everything, I gave my Power Point presentation quite quickly as I know that kids don´t want to see Power Point presentations, but they want to play games and dance (who doesn’t?).

After the presentation I played them the Spanish song La Macarena and the kids started to dance. I don't know why, but everybody loves that song and they love to dance to it, the kids danced it really well, better than me for sure! After the dance I gave people tortilla de patatas, and they liked it, some people even asked for another piece. I think it was the best tortilla I’ve ever made, I was so happy to see that the kids loved my tortilla.

Another activity I did after the tortilla was teaching some very simple Spanish words, like buenos días, good morning and buenas noches, good night. They said the words aloud and Joana translated them into Polish. 

Teaching some Spanish

Following the Spanish lesson, I showed the kids another power point presentation, this time about Spanish fauna, and we played an animal sound game. Everyone said his/her own name and made an animal sound. Almost everybody chose the wildcat for their sound, which is a good reason the say that cats are the best animals!

After the presentations and dances came the funniest part: the moment of the BULL! I went out of the room and dressed as a Spanish bull. For my dress, I only wore a big black trash bag. I forgot to paint my face with black to make it more realistic, but the kids enjoyed the game anyway. I came back to the room and chased the kids as a bull: it was a lot of fun for me and for them. They were trying to run away and hide behind the chairs while I was chasing them. We spent a very good time playing that game. After the whole presentation I had a very good sensation, it was a lot of fun and entertaining for the kids and for me. I hope I'll have the opportunity to go there again, make another presentation for more people and dress as a bull again to chase everybody! I also hope that people will like my next tortilla de patatas as much as they liked this one. Thanks to Joana for inviting me to the presentation and thanks to Sylwia for organizing the meeting. See you in the next Spanish Fiesta!
 

- Pedro Pedronka.

The famous BULL

On-Arrival Training in Warsaw

Dear people,

Yesterday morning I arrived back to Pułtusk after an unforgettable week in Warsaw. Last week, all the new EVS-volunteers in Poland gathered in Warsaw for the on-arrival training. The atmosphere was highly international as the participants were from many different countries, i.g. from Finland, Spain, Italy, Greece, Germany, Portugal, Hungary, Czech Republic, Turkey, France and Austria. It's usually quite easy to get to know people in this kind of group, because the wide variety of cultural backgrounds is pretty much an eternal source of conversation. 

The goal of the training was to prepare the new volunteers for EVS, teaching them how to face challenges and accept the reality; not all of the stay is going to be a bed of roses. Besides, we learned a lot about the Polish culture. Not only did we discuss how it looks like to a foreigner, but also were explained the historical reasons behind the intriguing cultural aspects. For me the most interesting task was to go to the city to interview real Polish people and find out their views on various topics.

We worked on the topics in many different ways, also by doing handicrafts

The trainers had also organized us two nice surprises. On Tuesday evening, a local guy took the volunteers for a walk and told the stories behind certain Varsovian monuments. Unfortunately I couldn't join the walk, but I heard it was truly fascinating. On Thursday evening an excellent traditional Polish dance group entertained us for a couple of hours, and we even got the chance to try some simple Polish dance moves ourselves.

The whole training was well-organized and the discussed topics were certainly important for the new volunteers, most of which had never spent a longer period abroad. I personally enjoyed the explanation of the Polish culture the most. The things about the challenges of living abroad were nothing too new to me, since this is already my fourth time abroad for a longer period, but hopefully I could contribute to the conversations somehow. Another great thing about the training was that we had quite a lot of free time to get to know the city, meet Polish people and eat Polish food.

The dance group made us dance

My personal view of EVS,  I was glad that the trainers let us visualize our feelings about EVS in our own way

After the week we all felt more motivated to do our best in our projects, so I'd say that the training was succesful.

Yours,

Petja

Language café

Last Thrusday we organized a language café in the Magdalenka Restaurant, so that local people could practise their English and get to know something about our cultures. It was a perfect day for the first language café, because that day pretty much everyone was happy due to Fat Thursday, or as we foreigners called it, the National Pączki Day, when everyone eats lots of tasty Polish Pączki. Before the event I was a bit worried if anybody would show up, but my worries proved unnecessary as a nice bunch of people eventually strolled in.

Pedro's Game

There were three tables, each of them hosted by a volunteer leading the discussion. We had some truly pleasant conversations, and the topics varied from our homelands to disco polo, trains and pączeks. After having talked for about an hour, we united the tables and played some games in order to encourage also the shyer people to use English. Everyone got a sticky note with a name of a renowned person on their foreheads. Then they had to figure out their identity by asking questions that can be answered with a yes or no only. The game was a lot of fun and everyone got a chance to speak. Time flew, and suddenly the clock was already 6 pm and it was time for the linguistic after-party.




What's more, next week it's happening again, so don't miss it!

Yours,

Petja

The arrival of the new volunteers

Dear people,

On the first of February 2016, three new faces appeared in the beautiful medieval town of Pułtusk, when me, Petja, and other two new volunteers, Pedro and Vassia, arrived for seven-month EVS projects here. Other volunteers and organization staff welcomed us in Warsaw, after which we headed for the final destination, Pułtusk, 'The Venice of Masovia'. There a bunch of lovely local young people had organized a small welcome party, and it was indeed great to wind down a bit after a long trip.

We spent the first days in Pułtusk getting acquainted with each other and the town, as well as familiarizing ourselves with the projects. We visited the office, where I’ll be working, and Pedro's and Vassia's workplaces, two local nursery schools. Dawid, a local young man going to Serbia for EVS, spent some time with us before his departure. 

When it comes to every day life, our new residence is nice and well located. Moreover, I have already fallen in love with this cute little town and its inhabitants, as well as with cozy cukiernias and other small shops. Thus, based on the first days here in Pułtusk, I am quite convinced that this is the start of something beautiful.

The new volunteers from left to right: Vassia from Greece, Dawid from Pułtusk, Pedro from Spain, and me, Petja, from Finland

Pedro and Vassia getting to know their workplace

Stay tuned for some more experiences of the first weeks! :)

Yours, 

Petja

Warsztaty kulinarne kuchni rosyjskiej

Cześć ! W piątek 14 sierpnia odbyły się warsztaty kulinarne w ramach projektu "Skosztuj świata", które poprowadziła Elena. W menu zagościła m.in. sałatka Winegret, Solyanka, Ikra kabaczkowa i Oladi.
Pełną relację z tego spotkania możecie przeczytać na www.skosztujswiata.blogspot.com.  Miłej lektury! :)

V Przegląd Twórczości Abstynenckiej ŚWIT

 
                                      August was announced the month of sobriety in Pultusk.
     On Saturday, the 1-st of August, we participated in retrospective of creation organized by the Association of Pułtusk Sobriety "Dawn". Some of our local volunteers - Sylwia and Alicja -  were helping me to orgаnize space for children. 

     From 14 p.m. to 18 p.m. Sylwia was painting faces, cats, dogs, butterflies, spiderman and zombi were the most popular among children. Elena was making dogs, giraffes, rabbits, swans from baloons and Russian dools from napkins. 
     During the afternoon every child had a chance to participate in painting competition, in the end everybody have got their prizes. 

      The atmosphere was a picnic, the territory near landing stage was full of people. There were a lot of attractions for children and adults. During whole day we were listening a live music, have got free soup and sausages and were swiming in the gandolla :-)

Take care and remember, that August is the month of sobriety,

Elena.