June activites part 2 - Sun & Fun

As I promised, here we go with the non-work part of June! :)

I started the month with the Barcelona trip, which was practically the last trip of my volunteering time. The rest of the weekends I spent relatively calmly (meaning I didn't travel further than Madrid), but not any less exciting.

The second Saturday I went to Matadero Madrid to see some short movies. Normally I'm not a big fan, but a friend of mine convinced me, so I gave in... they were much better than I expected. We saw like 5-6 movies, and except for one very weird one, I liked the rest. They were all made by Spanish directors, however the topics were very diverse, from food to strange love stories and gay rights in Russia.

The following Thursday I went out to have lunch with Vanessa and Ana (with whom I had the quilling sessions in May) here in Illescas. We went to an Asian all-you-can-eat kind of restaurant to celebrate Ana's graduation, it was very nice. The place was very good, but they had a strange ordering system. I imagined that they'll have all the food there and we can just go and pick whatever we want, but no. They gave us a menu and an extra sheet where we could tick the dishes we wanted and indicate the quantities. The only rule was that we could "only" order 15 dishes per person... :) We ordered 15 altogether for 4 of us (plus desserts ;)) and it was more than enough, so I wonder how can one person eat 15 dishes... :)

Then on the 19th, Marta (one of our English students) invited us for a dance show, where both her and her daughter were performing. It was the annual show of the dance school, so we had all age groups and all kinds of dances. I really enjoyed it, especially the second part, because that had mostly Spanish dances (sevillanas, flamenco) and for the flamenco they even had a live guitarist and a singer. It was amazingly nice, and since I haven't been to any Spanish dance show before I was totally impressed. Both Marta and her daughter danced really really well, so I'm very happy I got invited. :)

Also June was a farewell month not only for my volunteering project, but for two friends of mine who decided to take up a new adventure in Canada. :) We had their farewell picnic in Retiro last Monday with a bunch of cool people, it was a lot of fun, I actually almost missed my last bus, since I didn't really feel like leaving... :)

The mandatory group picture of the picnic participants :)

Then this weekend I went to a walking tour called "Urban Safari": it is about street art in Madrid. I found this initiative randomly a couple of months ago and got very curious, but till now they haven't had any suitable dates... so when I saw that they finally have a tour on a Saturday, I signed up. Normally they have these in Malasaña (which is the most artsy district of Madrid), but now they had this one in Lavapiés. I was a bit disappointed, because I would have wanted to get to know Malasaña better, but since I had absolutely no clue about street art in general, it was very interesting, regardless of the district. :)

Our guide explaining about the signatures of each street artist: some have small figures, some have special ways of signing their names and some have their specific colors.

An abandoned shop decorated by street artists

Random masterpieces :)

Some "ordered" street art: the fence of a cultural center is decorated by different street artists.

June activities part 1 - Ecocompartimos

It's hard to believe, but my volunteering experience is coming to an end... as such, June was a very active month (and full of goodbye events), so I decided I'll dedicate 2 posts to it: one about my last month at Ecocompartimos and one about my free time activities.

The month started with the Toledo excursion I already wrote about, which was a very good start.
Not as much the English playground with the kids that week... I think that was the toughest time we had with them ever. There were many of them and for some reason most of them were noisy and kept fighting with each other. We couldn't get them to focus and play normally, in the end we had to shout at one point to get their attention... it was quite bad, because this way even the ones who wanted to play couldn't. But then the next time most of them didn't show up anymore, so the last 2 sessions we had were calm. At the last one we had a small farewell party kind of thing with food and drinks, and we did some handicrafts with Félix, Amelia, Paula and Daniela, it was very nice. :)

Félix and Amelia gave me the cards they made as a present :)

The second week we had our Spanish exam at UNED... The organization was quite strange, we had to go the assigned center based on our family names and they signed us in by reading off the barcode of our student cards and printed the exam right there... I wonder why we needed to go to specific centers for this. Anyhow the exam was quite easy, I think both the written and oral part went well, but of course nobody could tell us when we'll have the results... so we'll eventually find out if we passed. Or not. :)

That week Helena organized a little surprise party for us too. Sandra invited us out for Friday night for a drink, then all of a sudden Helena, Mabel, Olga and Mari Cruz (from our English class) showed up and we had a very nice evening together. I had some suspicions earlier that something's going on, but I wasn't sure... I really appreciated the gesture. :)

Smily faces :)

We also had our usual English classes in June, though the fact that summer is here is very visible: from the once 10-12 people group we had, now we usually have maximum 4-5 people showing up (and they arrive late too)... Well, last week we actually had only 1 person. :P So I guess everyone is already in vacation mode, nobody wants to be tortured with English anymore hehe. Anyways we have a farewell party in the next class, I hope at least for that I'll get to see them again. :)

There were the usual 2 intercultural chats as well, one about the future and the last one to say goodbye to that group too. We were not many, but the "hard core" was there, so we got to enjoy their company for these last times and we could say goodbye to them.

The last intercultural chat

I'm also about to finish my mosaic classes, but of course not my latest work... I guess it'll take another few months, but now that I know the technique I can finish it by myself. :)

And last but not least, this week was our last week with Helena and Mabel, since they will not be here next week when we leave... so on Friday we had our goodbyes with them (or better say "see you soon" as we'll see each other again very soon), it was very intense and emotional. We got a surprise: a textile bag with our names and a book made personally for us, with everyone writing/drawing something personal in it. It is a great gift, I honestly don't think we could have received anything nicer than this.

The cool bag and some pages of the book :)

A collage of photos I made as the cover of a small photo book I prepared for Dilya, Helena and Mabel as a little gift. :)

December activities

Happy New Year to everyone! :)

Another busy month passed and also a great year ended. I have to say time flies really fast, but I'm happy for so many good things happening.

As December was mostly about Christmas preparations most events were associated with food. :) (And in my opinion this also has to do something with the fact that Spanish like to eat - and I don't blame them, their food is exquisite!)

I already wrote about the Christmas decoration workshop and my workshop with the kids, these continued in December too and I enjoyed them even more than before! :) Here are a few things I made:

We had another session of the intercultural chat series: this one about Christmas food. Unfortunately it was not such a success as the first we had about food, but we still enjoyed it and ate well. :)

Migas and puches, both typical in Spain

Russian salad of several delicious layers :)

Hungarian bejgli (or something similar ;))

We also have now double English classes on Mondays (both morning and afternoon), which are quite intense and tiring as they require now double concentration, but I still enjoy them. And the groups seem to enjoy the classes too. :) Also it's nice to see how they are developing and each time they talk more and more.

The biggest event in December we had was the charity dinner. The preparations were a little chaotic to me (or I'm still not used to the Spanish way of organizing things :)), but in the end it was a big success. 

Getting ready to welcome the guests

The super delicious meal we had :)

Marina and Helena on stage announcing the winners of the raffle

The Ecocompartimos team :)

We had a great time and Helena also liked the surprise gift we prepared for her: it is a board with "Ecocompartimos" on it, "written" by nails and thread. Now it's already on the wall in the shop and it fits there perfectly. :)

The day after the dinner I went back home to Hungary for Christmas as I already wrote it in my previous post, but for New Year's Eve I came back. I was curious to see how Spanish celebrate here, so with some friends we went to Puerta del Sol in Madrid to eat the 12 grapes at midnight in order to have good luck in the next 12 months. The square was packed with people, but the mood was great, we had a lot of fun (and I also didn't choke on the grapes, though it was hard to eat them so fast as I felt like laughing most of the time :)). After the "ceremony" we went to party and ended up dancing till 7 in the morning, so it's safe to say that I had a very good start of the new year. :)

Merry Christmas! :)

Christmas time has always been my favorite holiday of the year. I'm not religious, but there is something about the smell, the Christmas lights, the food and decorating the tree together with my family that makes this season special. This year it has been especially nice, because I've taken part in the Christmas preparations in Spain, but I got to spend Christmas at home with my friends and family in Hungary. (And as a bonus I passed by Brussels too to see a friend and the Christmas tree on Grand Place :))

So with these photos below I wish you all a very merry Christmas! :)

Christmas "tree" in Puerta del Sol, Madrid

Christmas market in Plaza Mayor 

Christmas tree in Grand Place, Brussels

Lights in Grand Place 

Christmas lights in Budapest

Christmas market in Vörösmarty tér, Budapest

The family Christmas tree at home :)

Activities in October

I think there are 2 basic criteria to measure if you’re “at home” in a new place:

• You bump into people you know on the street randomly.
• People ask for directions from you. (For me this actually means that I look “local enough”. :))

Well this is of course nothing scientific or very serious, just something I “measure” for myself for fun, and I’m proud to say, that after 2 months here I managed to fulfill both. Okay, it was not so hard as this is a small town, but still. :)

All kidding aside, I started to feel more at home now here in Illescas. I enrolled to a zumba class (those of you who don’t know me, I started zumba 4 years ago and still love it, so this was an important step :)) and I also joined a mosaic class. The latter was quite an impulse decision, but as I have a curiosity for creative things (and this year is about trying new things), I thought why not. And so far I like it a lot, though I haven’t finished my first piece yet.

In October I had quite some other activities: last Friday I went to an open Latin dance class (already for the second time). This was something I wanted to try for a long time and I’m happy I finally did, because it was really great. :) We were taught bachata: first the basic steps and then we got into couples and did some turns too besides just stepping from left to right. As we were rotating, everyone got to dance with everyone, which was really good, because we had a mixed level of knowledge, so like this I felt less embarrassed of messing up the moves from time to time. :)

I also participated in a “pasacalle” (parade) a couple of weeks ago: a group of actors dressed up in traditional costumes and told us legends from Toledo as a part of the El Greco year (in 2014 there are all kinds of festivities for El Greco here). They played music too and showed us some dances as we went around the town with them; it was very nice (and easy to understand :)).

And for the first time in my life I went to a fashion show to the neighboring town with some friends, it was really good. :)

At Ecocompartimos we have also a lot of activities going on: in October we started English conversation classes on Mondays (after a month we have more and more people coming :)) and we organized 2 more sessions of the “intercultural meeting” series I mentioned earlier: one of them was about typical food of different countries and the other was about typical dresses.

Both were really good, for the gastronomical one we all prepared something, so we had a bite of many countries: Spain, Morocco, Russia, Romania and of course Hungary.

Learning things about Morocco

And about Spain too :)

The feast

Then for the one with the dresses unfortunately I didn’t have anything Hungarian to put on, but I showed some pictures and 2 of the participants dressed up in typical Spanish dresses. We had a great time. :)

With the Spanish ladies :)

I enjoy these talks a lot as we always learn many new things about each country and have great discussions. In November we'll have 2 more sessions: one about music and another is about things in our countries that we are proud of or ashamed of. I'm looking forward to them. :)