March activities

Finally spring has arrived! :) And our activities continue as usual. :) 

We had an English event again together with the reading club in the library on Friday 13th which was not as successful as the previous one, yet we had a lot of fun. We talked about superstitions from all over the world and then went to the teahouse together for a drink. :)

Our small but enthusiastic group :)

We also keep doing the English games for kids, though it is also getting challenging - in the first week we had again a nice big group, so we played a "human-sized board game" about favorites and a memory game, but then when we prepared a quiz only 3 kids came... so it's a bit unpredictable. Though last time we had again the whole group so we could play the quiz in the end. :)

Of course we had the usual 2 intercultural chats, the first about famous people (that somehow went into the direction of politics as well at one point :P) and the second about Easter - as it is a big celebration here and quite different from other countries. As usual we had some food too, for the first chat Dilya brought some nice Russian goodies and for the second we prepared some Easter-food from our countries. :)

I made some kaszinótojás ("casino-eggs") and potato salad (and I couldn't miss out piros arany - it's pepper cream, very Hungarian :))

Super delicious sweet potato soufflé by Amber :)

As for non-work activities I had a quite active month too: the first weekend of March was almost like summer, so I spent most of it outside. That Sunday I got invited to a brunch and got to know some new people, it was a lot of fun. :)

11 people from 10 different countries :)

The 11th was a local holiday here in Illescas - as I was sick that week I didn't really participate at any activities, but I went to a concert where a violinist with Armenian origin played together with  Spanish guitarist. Everybody was excited about them so I was curious too - and yes, they were amazing, I'm glad I had the chance to go and see them.

The weekend after I went to a free workshop of natural cosmetics here in Illescas, which was interesting and useful. We made a soap, a body lotion, a hand cream and a lip balm. They were all surprisingly easy to make and we got the recipes too, so from now on I can make my own things. :)

The week after we arranged a trip from Ecocompartimos to Carranque to finally see the Archeological Park and have a guided tour about the Roman ruins and mosaics there. It was very nice, the group we "recruited" and the sights as well. :)

Ruins of a temple

Ruins of a room where we could observe the heating system they had back then

Amazing mosaics made of very small pieces

Speaking of mosaics: I'm done with my second "masterpiece" and now I'm working on a Picasso picture... I think this one will take a lifetime to finish haha, it's quite big and with challenging shapes... but let's see. ;)

My newest piece of art :)

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. :)