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 Oscar, fot. Luca Valentini The city where I have been doing my EVS project is Wrocław. After traveling through Poland during the nine months I can say that it is one of the most beautiful and developed cities in Poland. The Polish winter has been also a new experience for me. I usually like going to the mountain and I have some kind of experience with snow and low temperatures but not living for four months in a row. Learning Polish language has been also a challenge for me. I have tried to learn as much as I could. But because the main part of my project is English, I have spent most of my time with people who are able to speak in English and because Polish language is not easy to learn, finally I have not been able to learn it properly in a communicative level. Anyway I have met a lot of Polish people and I have learnt about its culture talking with them in English and a bit of Polish in comparison. I have also been interested in learning Polish history and during my project I have visited several historical places like Kraków, Oświęcim and Zamek Książ. It was also nice visiting Trójmiasto and seeing the Baltic frozen sea. It has been also nice meeting people from different countries and learning about their respective cultures and customs. My project has been also good in the way I have the chance to visit a lot of schools where I have been conducting workshops about human rights, global education and presenting my country – Spain. Preparing and doing activities with kids has been also very charming and I am glad to know that there are a lot of Polish people interested in knowing about my mother tongue language and my culture in general. I realized about this during the sessions I have spent with the participants of my language café in Mediateka and in the Spanish cultural evening that was performed in the Ethnographic Museum of Wrocław.
Oscar Pastor Pèrez from Spain (Madrid) |
Portugal Cultural Evening and the evaluation of the cultural evenings
Preparing a cultural evening was something completly knew to me, as I guess was for all the volunteers. A lot of things to think about, a lot of things to prepare and help was never too much!
My cultural evening was the last one, so I had the opportunity to be present in all the other cultural evenings and learn with their experience. The week that preceded my cultural evening was a stressful week, it seemed like the preparations never ended. My initial plans were many, as were the number of Portuguese volunteers whom offered their help. But nothing ever goes according to planning and if there is something that I keep learning in life is that you should never expect too much cause you will probably be disappointed. Some of those whom in words offered their help did not offered it in actions. But in times of need I was surprised by the good friends I have and true volunteer spirit of some of them, without their help I would not have been able to succeed in my cultural evening. Everything was ready in the last minute and it would not have been if it weren't for them. I consider my cultural evening a success not because it was great or anything, but because apart from it not being what I expected, apart from some mistakes, I can honestly say I did my best.
All of us did our best in trying to present our countries (Armenia, Spain, Germany, Romania, Belarus and Portugal). This was a very big responsibility on all of us but we all succeeded. Each cultural evening was different (dancing, games, cooking, quiz, music playing), not always with the same number of participants but all none the less with effort and commitment. I was happy and grateful with the positive feedback I received but did not expect. And what a relief it was to me when the night was finished! I hope that everyone had the opportunity to know a bit more about Portugal.
I can say that for sure learned some things about countries which I knew so little about. And that's what EVS is all about: learning and understanding other cultures, diminishing our ignorance towards a more pacific coexistence of cultures! None the less, it is important to make a general evaluation about the cultural evenings in order to recognise flaws and potentialities, to learn from these experiences so that we can improve ourselves, improve communication, improve the background support so that the next volunteers may succeed where we have failed!
Jana Tyra Roose
Photos by Tomek Hasik
