My Spanish EVS Adventure: Santiago de Compostela

Last week I had a 5 days long “on arrival” training in Santiago de Compostela. The aim of the training was basically to help the volunteers who arrived recently to Spain to integrate a little easier: we had some sessions about the culture of Spain, practical information about EVS and the EU, some time to discover Santiago and A Coruña and of course many games to get to know each other better. :) We were altogether 26 people from many countries and it was really great; it reminded me a lot the AIESEC conferences we used to have. We had a very intense schedule, most of the sessions were in Spanish (though by the end of the week we spoke more of a mixture language of everything) and of course we didn’t get much sleep as we went out for some drinks almost every day. :)

I have to say I enjoyed this training more than I thought: at first I was a little worried, as most of the other volunteers are much younger than me (many of them are 18-19-20 years old), so I had no idea whether I was going to get on well with them, but of course this was an obstacle only in my head: everyone was very open-minded, mature and fun, so the age really didn’t matter. :) We had great discussions and I have to say it was very inspiring to see so much enthusiasm and curiosity for the world (which I haven’t seen much lately in the corporate world unfortunately).

I don’t want to describe each session we had in details, but only the ones I liked the most: we had a game to discover Santiago, where we were divided into 4 groups. Each group got a list of things we needed to accomplish: we needed to take group pictures in funny/hidden places in different parts of the city. We had a lot of fun: in the beginning everyone was a little lost, but after the first few obstacles we became braver and also felt more like a team.

We had also a trip to A Coruña: first we had an official presentation of one organization there and a panel discussion with different people who talked about their EVS experience. After this we had some free time, so we could go and see the city. The weather was amazing, so we decided to go to the beach (not to swim, but just to enjoy the view), it was great to “meet” the Atlantic Ocean for the first time not from a plane. :)

There was one more thing I liked a lot: we got a little book where we can define and then track our own EVS experience and learning. Goal setting is also something I had earlier in AIESEC (and even later in my life), but I still very much enjoyed re-learning the importance of this, as I haven't really thought it through regarding my EVS specifically. So now here is the time. :)

Here are a few more pictures of this amazing week: