Saturday, November 24th, 2012

My adventure as a volunteer

 Almost 9 months have passed since I arrived in a country new to me, alone, with only my suitcase and a fear of the unknown. I landed in the city of Vilnius. At that time I had no idea how much stuff I would experience. The trip was long, too many buses, trains, planes and bitter cold, my destination was a small town Viekšniai in Lithuania. There I waited for my mentor and my fellow volunteer. I do not know why I had a huge desire to mourn; everything was a bit gray and so different from other countries where I had previously been. The first few weeks, I must admit, were not easy, bad weather and little work made my nostalgia for Spain increasing every day, but soon that feeling gradually changed. We started working with Ventos Regioninis Parkas i.e. my project as an environmental educator in schools, participation in the organic farm, organizing various events in the area etc ... In addition, I attended various traditional festivals via which I get immersed into Lithuanian culture, at which point I realised that Lithuania has its own spirit, a very different culture from the rest of Europe, full of pagan traditions and legends that make you involve in a magical atmosphere. Then came the meeting with the other volunteers in the country, travelling, meeting new people ... Little by little I was adapting to a new environment, and whatever I liked. Soon came the summer, swimming in the river, picnics, bike outings, trips and countless hitchhiking ... hard to explain. Never until then had I lived in an atmosphere so quiet, I remember my friends were jealous that a people had to spend the summer with his old friends, but now I know what it is to live from the basics and not waste on things in the city seemingly so essential.

Right now, I am in my final weeks of volunteering over 8 months experience having been living here. I have experienced all kinds of sensations: first, distrust of adjusting to a different location, then euphoria and desire to know everything, then nostalgia for native memories of friends in Spain and finally mix of sadness and joy, because I know that it is end of another chapter in my life. But I want to turn back to see my family and start something new. Now it begins to stalk a bittersweet feeling of nostalgia, melancholy, the feeling of closing a new stage, this will end soon, and I will always remember the good times only because even the bad ones, are remembered with some affection.

At this time I have become much more tolerant and learned to deal better in a new environment, to lose the fear of public speaking, to bring new ideas, new projects, and all thanks to EVS.

Despite the difficult times that I have lived here, it became hard to have much free time and sometimes in a hostile environment. I can only point out the good things, because with all this I am taking a suitcase full of memories and wisdom. Here I leave some photos capturing part my volunteering.

   

Santiago-Pérez Berta Juárez

Viva la Venta!

Berta, Tomaš and me

I have wrote about my experience to Augštaitja national park and Žagares regional park, but there is one more park I have been seeing many times and I would like to tell about.

And it is the one who is left behind, no one went there for exchange and also this years volunteers mostly had some troubles there. So I want to talk about Ventos regioninis parkas. :)

I got to know closer this park in Easter time when I went for my first visit to meet my good EVS friends and volunteers Berta from Spain and Tomaš from Slovakia. 

This park is protecting river Venta and its banks. This river starts in Lithuania and go trough Latvia, and in the Ventspils city it reaches the Baltic sea. In Latvia, Kurzeme region, this river is the bigest and also name Venta influenced the name of the city Ventspils (meaning is Castle of Venta). 

Ventas Rumba in Kuldīga, Latvija

The local manner of speaking is named ventiņu valoda (so called ventini language). And above all - in Kuldīga city in Latvia - Venta have very natural waterfall called Ventas rumba - widest in all Europe. I remember that one friend didn't believe me that we can have our own natural and so wide waterfall, but we do have :) On average it is 100 — 110 m, on spring when is running a lot of water 270 m, and height 1,6 — 2,2 m.

So I am not sure how important this river is for Lithuanians in general but for Kurzeme region in Latvia it is very important historically, culturally and naturally and so we are glad that in Lithuania they have even regional park dedicated to this river.

But if we talk about my experience in the Venta park then I can say that all fun is because of Berta and Tomaš. They are smart young people with lot of ideas but somehow they were not so lucky with support from the park but despite of all bad sides, I still can say that it was interesting time what I spent in Viekšniai or Mažeikiai, where they lived.Mostly because they are now my very good friends.

At Easter time I was shown around the Viekšniai and nature sites near the Venta. It was still cold and very grey time of spring. We saw summer camp place for children, forest and river banks, many traces of beavers, who live near the river.

I can show some pictures of this walk: 

Virvite summer camp near Venta.

Tomaš

Venta

River banks of Venta

Open air concert place in the forest.

Job of beavers.

Investigating.

Later on we went to the village Viekšniai which is also located along the river banks and is very old, many houses is from wood and shows to us last century architecture, also there is traces from soviet time style but I think it is almost everywhere like that in ex Soviet country's. 

In Viekšniai there is worth visit some places: water mill (Viekšnių malūnas), Museum of the Pharmacy in Viekšniai and Museum of the Aviation Pioneer Aleksandras Griškevičius. In summertime there is also chances to swim, do water tourism and visit another nature objects and tourist paths. 

For myself I enjoyed a lot excursion to eco farm of Jadvyga Balvočiūtė, she is pharmacist and specialist in ecological tea farming and she owns quite big tea farm. I was shown around by Tomaš and I could see how the process is done by workers - tea drying, weighting, packing. Also Jadvyga herself was there but busy with clients - she makes special receipts for patients with illnesses if general mixtures of tea for different problems cant help. There was also specialist from office who talk with us and offer some tea from nice clay pots and told story of this place and Jadvyga. When we left I had a chance to see this lovely lady and she left very bright feeling to me. When I write this I still can remember the nice smell of the teas...

Viekšniai

We also visited neighbor village Pievenai (Pievėnai) where in local church  was going on some very special night event for Easter time - it is very unique tradition in Lithuania and in Europe which is happening only in Easters. It seems to me that this procession in church is mix of pagan traditions with catholic believes. There is full church of people of all age, singing and praying, but this all looks like a carnival to me, because there is also Jesus Christs guard. There is group of people dressed in to the uniforms and they are standing and protecting the cross all night, who is placed in the middle of the church by their swords against devils (also group of people wearing wooden masks of devil). In the end all this procession is very funny and loud, kids are running around, screaming and trying to hide from devils with big scissors. Some people singing, some going after the saint water, some tourists like us just standing and trying to get the point :)

From left: Berta, Tomaš, me, Lorenzo and Espen

Summer time came and we could spend time a bit more outside. I went to visit them when they were working in the children camp and they were busy all day. Berta was working with children and participating in art classes but Tomaš was helping to reconstruct some wooden building. I just spend some time with kids who were eager to try speak in English with foreigners. Also we went to monitoring orchids one day with the people from some nature protecting institution (not sure which one). Then I had access to strictly forbidden places and saw a lot orchids and also very rare ones. Sadly that I have no pictures from this time. One more project I participate was when Tomaš arrange with art school children to paint the old garbage bins. We did a great and artistic work with the teachers and pupils, and it was fun. 

 

 

Life in Mažeikiai is very different from village life - it is city with not so much old houses or green areas, mostly grey building and very soviet architecture, built for workers from nearby factories. There is not really much to do for young people even the city was once built for them. But even there we could find some activities to do - bowling and skating was the most funniest. Tomaš and Berta are also great at cooking and so we have some fiesta time when we are together :)

 

We also made travel together with another volunteers Pierre (Žagare regional park) and Olga (Kursiu Nerija national park) to Norway and they also have been visiting my place when we had some free time in our EVS project. Visiting each other on our spare time made our time in Lithuania more fun and we could deal with our problems better than alone. Also sharing knowledge and ideas can help in daily life to understand more the culture differences which are around and you have to live trough.

Espen, me, Berta, Olga, Pierre in Norway

Me, Olga, Berta and Tomaš in Stavanger, Norway

Berta likes animals

Me, Marlen (Germany) and Berta visiting Ona, lady in Vievis

Barstyčiai village festival

Me and Tomaš in Rīga, Latvija

Tomaš being a volunteer in my Poetry Day project in Riga

 Me, Berta and Tomaš in Plateliai

 

All I want to wish for next volunteers is - the value of EVS and your life in EVS you can find trough process of learning, understanding, receiving and sharing. If you can find some new perspective of yourself trough good times and bad times then you can be very happy, you are doing some life changing process. If you find some friends for life - then I think this is best gift you can have being here :)

Lapkričio devintoji

Last week I held a "German Day" in Plateliai in order to show the variety of traditions and custom in Germany's regions and its history. It took place on November 9 as this day is an important day in German history.


First, I baked a cake which I know from my family together with the 10th form of Plateliai's secondary school.


Preparing the dough ...



... and the crumbles



Creating German mini-flags



The bakers proudly present: Apricot jam crumble!



The next day I presented in the school. I sang a German song, after that everyone repeated it.



But the most important part was to taste the cake.


The audience is fascinated.



In the evening I presented in front of people from Plateliai. I told about German history in the last 200 years, showed typical clothes, food and celebrations from German regions and prepared a slideshow about Germany's architectural and natural heritage.







I received very positive reactions. Some people were happy to hear some German words wich they were able to understand. So it was a successful evening.