Ecocompartimos and my first few weeks of volunteering

After all the introductions and first impressions, I think it’s time I write about what exactly I do here. The organization where I work is called Ecocompartimos and it’s basically a huge second-hand shop where you can literally find everything: books, kitchen equipment, hand-made things, clothes, furniture, pictures, and many more.

Ecocompartimos: the ground floor

The basement: furniture/storage

It works in a very great way: people can either donate (this happens mostly with books and clothes) or leave their items for sale. In case it is sold within the given timeframe, they get the half of the price; the other half goes to the organization to maintain our projects. Besides the shop, there are many activities going on: there is free legal and mediation service for families (or anyone) who needs it; then we have a “Charla Café” (informal roundtable discussion) organized each month - mostly for women, but basically anyone who is interested can join. We also have a project called “Banco del tiempo” where people can offer their skills and time for others and in return they can ask for the skills or help of others too. I think it’s a great initiative (I subscribed too :)), though it is not very active yet – I hope we can find a way to make it more popular. From October a professional artist will hold different workshops in the shop: we’ll have painting, mosaic and restoration of furniture, I’m curious about these too.

In the first few weeks, I mostly took the time to get to know the shop better and we started to work on easier things: we helped with sorting the clothes (which was actually great fun :)) and started doing a database of the books in the shop (as there are lots of them this seems like a never-ending story for now :)). I also helped Helena (our boss/mentor/guardian angel :)) in putting together a presentation in Spanish about the organization that she can present to companies in order to find some partners. And we held our first Charla Café (as the guy who’s normally facilitating it could not come this month): it was very hard as it was in Spanish, so we couldn’t really lead the conversation since it took a lot of effort to follow what everyone was saying. But overall it went well, the people who came gave a lot of good feedback and also some ideas, so next time we will definitely do better.

The clothes "department"

Decoration I made for the Charla Café

The room we decorated with Dilya for the café (it was a storage room before)

We are also starting an “international meeting” series next week to talk about intercultural differences, I’m really excited about it (as we’ll run it together with Dilya), and I hope many people will be interested. Later on we are planning to cooperate with elementary and high schools, to have different events for children and also to promote European opportunities for high school students. Helena has many ideas and luckily she’s also very open to our suggestions, so I think we will learn many things from her and we’ll be able to do our own projects too. I already told her that I’d like to organize a quilling workshop and she liked it, so now I only need to find a place where I can buy the materials and set a date for it. :)

My first impressions of Illescas

Arriving to Spain was like going back to summer. The weather at home got unusually cold by the beginning of September, so when I arrived to Barajas with all my luggage and all dressed up - because of course it’s when one’s traveling with a low cost airline you consider yourself a living luggage too :P - it was a pleasant surprise to see the sun shining and the infinite blue sky.

Luckily we found each other easily at the airport with Helena, who is the owner of Ecocompartimos and the person who helps me the most here. :) Not much later we were already enjoying a nice Spanish lunch in Illescas (I won't really get into details of what I ate, as I'm planning to write later about food ;)). After this we went to the flat so I could pack and settle down a bit. The flat where I live is really-really nice, it has 2 floors. All the common places are downstairs: the kitchen, the living room and a small terrace; then there are 2 rooms with 2 bathrooms upstairs (as I'm not here alone, I have a fellow volunteer, Dilya from Russia - you can check out her blog too :)).

Our kitchen

Our living room

The view from the terrace

My room

Illescas itself is a very nice town, it is quite small (with ~25 thousand inhabitants), but this makes it is very cozy and I constantly have the impression that everybody knows everybody here. :) Also people are very nice and friendly: I spent my first afternoon in the Ecocompartimos shop already and everyone was very welcoming - although I have to add that if I didn't speak any Spanish, for sure it would have been much harder to find my way around. Ah yes, because it turned out that I spoke Spanish approx. 10 minutes after my arrival (no matter how much I tried to hide it :)), so since then I speak in Spanish most of the time here. This is actually great for many reasons, first of all because like this for sure I will learn the language perfectly very soon, but it also makes my life a lot easier to be able to ask for things/directions and actually understand the responses. Of course on the other side it is very tiring too, as it requires a lot of concentration, but I hope this will change.

The other thing I like in Illescas is the rhythm of the days: shops normally open around 9-10am and then everything closes around 2pm for the siesta (yes, they take this seriously! :)) and then from 5-6pm everything is open again till late in the evening. To be honest I was a little afraid when I first thought of moving here, as I was always a "city girl" and I got used to all aspects of the "big city life" (shops open till late, lot of activities, etc.), but I have to say the way of life here corresponds with my lifestyle more than I thought. There is always life on the streets till late in the evening, as there are many bars and places where people can go out (and they actually do, even families with small kids). And there are quite some activities and courses during the day as well, so for sure I will be able to find some interesting ones. :)

The main square

The old town hall building

 

Some random streets :)

Santuario de Nuestra Señora de la Caridad (where there are a few famous El Greco paintings)

Why I decided to volunteer

Here we go with the first post – welcome everyone to my blog! :)

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to start this, as I’ve already got a lot of thoughts and impressions since I arrived here... (and I'm not very experienced in blog writing :)). So in the end I decided to start at the very beginning: to explain a little why I decided to become a volunteer and how did I end up in Spain.

It is actually quite a long story connected to the struggle I had with my jobs last year - but I promise I’ll try to keep it simple :). I studied international relations and worked mostly in business/economics since I graduated. Last summer I decided to finally leave the job I didn’t like for quite a while, for a (seemingly) better offer. This turned out to be even worse, so last October I found myself unemployed for the first time in my life. It was kind of scary; although what scared me even more is that I wasn’t able to find a job I’d really like: all the available options seemed very inhuman, without any meaningful purpose. Luckily, right before I became unemployed I started a 9 month long self-discovery course and this helped me realize, that I want to start over and find something I like to do, somewhere further away. I had already the desire to go abroad for years, as I lived in Belgium before and I knew how much such an experience could give. So as a new year’s resolution I promised myself: this year I will make this happen, I will turn my life upside down. :)

As I was wondering about where and how to start, I came across an EVS presentation organized by Messzelátó and I went to see it simply out of curiosity. I liked the idea straight away; it somehow reminded me to the years I spent in AIESEC, passionately working many-many hours on things I really enjoyed doing and meeting lots of great people along the way. Since I wanted a change in my career direction and learn new things, this seemed like the perfect opportunity, so I started looking for a project. I was searching specifically in Spain: as I was taking Spanish classes for a while, I thought moving there could help me learn the language perfectly and discover the culture and everything along with it (and yeah, who wouldn’t want to live in a cool place like Spain :)). Luckily I came across an opportunity that seemed ideal for me: an organization was looking for a volunteer for their second-hand shop; to get help with running the shop, but also to participate in the social projects they have and come up with new ideas. I immediately applied, not much later got selected and after this all I had to do was to wait 3 (torturing) months for the good news: my project got approved! :)

So last week I moved here to Illescas to start my new adventure at Ecocompartimos - and along with it this blog with my experiences, thoughts and whatever else that will come to my mind. :)