And again another month passed. Even though January was a quite slow and quiet month (at least the beginning) it went by quite fast.
The first week of the month was quite interesting as here there was still a Christmas atmosphere until the 6th, when the Three Wise Men (Los Reyes Magos) came and brought gifts just like Santa Claus in December. :) This was even a bigger holiday then Christmas itself, so everyone was very excited about it. For me this was a little unusual as normally holidays end with New Year's Eve so after I'm not very much in a Christmas mood anymore, but it was nice to experience something different. We also ate some roscón which is the traditional sweet cake with whipped cream to eat on this day. :)
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| Roscón |
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| The Ecocompartimos team enjoying the roscón :) |
After Reyes life kind of slowed down, so there were not so many happenings: I finished the translation of our new website to English, we were planning our activities for February and also used this quiet time to finish our YouthPass wall, tadaaaaa:
Now we have the first 5 months of our project nicely documented on the wall. :)
In January both our English groups got very active, we had a debate event together with the English reading club of the library and people enjoyed it so much, that now they are even more motivated to learn with us. Not to mention we have some new people in both our morning and afternoon groups now. And we are all looking forward to the next joint event together. :)
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| My group at the event of the library |
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| The whole group :) |
We also had another intercultural chat about childhood experiences, it was a very nice one, 5 people came with quite different backgrounds and ages so we could all share a lot and had a nice diverse and funny discussion. :)
During the last few weeks of the month we got quite busy with Erasmus+ things (as the last deadline for presenting projects was the 4th of February); we helped Helena with selecting the new volunteers. It was so weird to think about this, as September is so far away (and also July when our project ends) and to be honest I don't really like this feeling of "getting replaced" hehe. :P But I think we managed to find some great people in the end, a Serbian guy and a Slovenian girl. :)
We had also a chat about volunteering and Erasmus+ in the Youth Center. It was quite nice, around 12-15 people came. This was the first time I had talk in front of people in Spanish, so I felt a little nervous about it in the beginning, but when I started talking and people started to ask questions, then I actually got to enjoy it. :)
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| Helena explaining to the crowd :) |
Aside from work the month was a bit more active, though also not that much. At Reyes I went to Toledo with Sandra and her boyfriend Cesar to see the Belén (nativity scene) of the year and a parade. The Belén was very impressive, it took up an entire room and every single detail was very worked out. On the other hand the parade was quite disappointing we had to wait a lot and it was quite small. Nevertheless I had a good time. :)
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| The Belén of the year |
Also we met with Filiz and Emmi (the other volunteer girls from the neighboring village Numancia) and Amber (an American girl we met here in Illescas) to go the El Escorial together for a day. It was very nice, though we arrived very late so we couldn't enter the monastery. Instead we walked around, enjoyed the view and had some pastry. :)
Last but not least I had my birthday in January, that helped me to move on from my "winter coma". :) I usually celebrate it with my best friends and my family, but this year unfortunately I didn't have the chance. However I feel very grateful because I got a lot of messages and good wishes. Dilya and Helena were super nice and thought of me with some nice gifts too. And my family also surprised me a beautiful bunch of flowers, which was a huge surprise and made me very happy. :)
