May arrived on a weekend this time. There was a big music festival happening in Sad Janka Kráľa and it was so enjoyable to be there and spend time dancing with my friends. The next day, which was a Saturday, my mentor Anny invited me and the girls for another festival happening in Rača. For me, it was even better than the first one. It had so many handcrafted things you could buy delicious burgers. We sat all together and enjoyed listening to the performers while drinking Kofola. It was so nice because we were laughing all together and I felt so comfortable around these people even though I don’t have time to go out with my mentor a lot during my free time.
On the first week of work, we were preparing for a big event that was happening on the weekend for mother’s day, mile for mum! We were all working on doing some workshops for the children that were about to come. Personally, I prepared a flipchart to explain to kids the story of Persephone and the seasons, and I also prepared cards so the kids could learn how to write their mom’s name in Greek with some pretty decorations on top. There was a lot of buzz in the office while everyone was trying to prepare, particularly one day before the event.
The activity itself happened in a really nice garden and it was wholesome to interact with the kids that came and guide them through everything. There were also Slovak volunteers helping us with the translation otherwise it would be hard to talk to the younger kids.
Then on the second week, there was another event organized by the National Agency because they wanted to promote European Solidarity Corps 30th anniversary. We had our own stand as INEX and we were individually talking to young adults to get them to join our activities and workcamps in the summer.
What’s more this month, there was supposed to be my name day for the Slovak calendar. We celebrated in the office together with Monikas and Mirka’s name day. The people from the office bought me lots of chocolate and sweets since I always ask for sweets after lunch. And the most important, lots of gum. It was simple but considerate.
Something else we completed this month was the health and safety training online in the office. It took a lot of time to complete because it had many questions but we learned important things like how to protect ourselves from a fire or how to help someone in need of first aid help.
One more small activity,“Týždeň dobrovoľníctva”, we had for half a day was cleaning the windows of the office and the garden to prepare for the summer workcamp season. These windows hadn’t been cleaned since last year so there was lots of dust to clean.
The tea meeting this month was about Japan. We did the usual preparations for it and we had 2 girls named Mizuki and Erumasu from Japan talking from their point of view and a woman from Slovakia, Katarina, that did her workcamp in Japan explaining her experience. The food that the Japanese girls cooked was delicious and in very generous portions. The place was packed with people since lots of them were interested in attending. It was actually very educational to see how people live and experience life in the rural places of Japan.
On the third weekend, the ‘Step up and lead’ training was taking place in our office. It was a training about preparing leaders for the upcoming workcamps in the summer. I am going to be a lead a camp at the start of August and help with the excavation of a historic castle. In this particular training, my co-leaders could not attend but I had an online call with them so I could meet them. The trainers helped a lot with their valuable information and we prepared a lot of things like the infosheet, part of the schedule, first email to volunteers and communication with the local partner. One thing that was useful as well was the first aid training that was provided for free where we practiced doing CPR and learned all about how to deal with burns, cuts, bites etc.
Even before the training, Monika had an individual meeting with all the leaders in order to inform us about the details of each workcamp and go through the contract together.
On the last weekend, me and the girls were participating in a workcamp in Svätý Jur. I was excited to go back to the place because it was so beautiful last time. Berra was the leader this time. We were supposed to help with the preparations for the wine festival so it was chill work. We attended workshops with kids and saw a small concert and theater play. My favorite part was in the evenings where me and the girls were enjoying a glass of wine while listening to the locals playing guitar and singing. It was an alive weekend full of activities!
I didn’t travel a lot this month like the past months. I just went on a one-day trip to Vienna. It was a beautiful city but very expensive, for a volunteer especially. It was the last month for Slovak lessons as well. It was a slow process in general and life got in the way so I did not reach the desired level of Slovak but still was glad to attend the lessons.
Let´s see what the month of June will bring, also now that the weather is better!
