Ups and downs of being a volunteer abroad

Inspired by Dilya's post about her adventures with visa, this post is dedicated mainly for those who are planning to go on EVS/abroad or preparing to leave already. It’s not very much about practicalities (as your organization will prepare you for these), but more about emotional ups and downs.

Volunteering abroad is great, meaningful and rewarding in many ways. Most of the time I love being here and I am very grateful for this opportunity and if I could go back I’d definitely not choose any differently. But there are some rough times when I feel that nothing goes well and I miss a bit my “old and easy life”. And I know this is normal, yet knowing it does not make this any easier.

As in the beginning of January I just got through such a period, I have been thinking a lot about this topic lately and about my experience as a volunteer in general. So here is a list of the good and bad things I experienced so far, I hope you will find it interesting and/or useful:

1. Freedom: This might sound like a cliché, but living far away from everything and everyone I know gave me an enormous amount of freedom. I have been always very independent, but here I really feel that I have full control over my life. This is something I find scaring and deliberating at the same time.

2. The people who are the closest to me are far away: I think this is the hardest for me to handle. Even though I can talk to my family and friends almost every day, it is not the same as seeing them in person regularly. On the bright side though I’m not so far away from home and I know that strong relationships don’t depend on the distance.

3. Start everything from zero: This is actually something I enjoy. Building up new habits (or re-building old ones), new ways of working, new relationships, new hobbies. And balancing this out with everything I already have. It takes a lot of time and effort. And patience – especially with myself. :)

4. Language barriers: No matter how well I speak Spanish or English, there are just days when nobody understands me no matter which language I speak and this is frustrating. Also some people always look at me as if I were an alien. But I learnt here some expressions that I’m pretty sure no language school would ever teach me. :)

5. Losing fear (or handling it better): As I’m in a completely new environment, most of the time I have to step out of my comfort zone to do things: working in Spanish, making new friends, sometimes even shopping for a small thing. :) Doing new things are always somewhat scary, but when you have so many of them at the same time you just stop being afraid, because you realize that so much fear would stop you from actually living your daily life.

6. Value of money: Well yes, from a volunteer’s salary it’s sometimes hard to make ends meet, especially because I had full-time jobs before, so I'm used to a different way of life. Although I’m much more creative now in finding alternative solutions for practically everything and I am happy with it. I think this somewhat brought me to a new level of consciousness with money.

7. “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”: I didn’t decide to go abroad to find myself or get to know myself better in the first place (as I’m continuously working on this for quite some years now :)), yet it is still fascinating to notice how the things I thought were my strengths and weaknesses transform. Also some days I feel completely lost.

8. Intensity: I'm not really sure why, but I feel that the days here are more intense. I enjoy more the good things, suffer more from the worse ones and my mood changes more often than it did. But this means that I also value time more, move on faster from the bad and take chances I wouldn't have taken before.

9. Small town life: This was something I was a bit afraid of when moving here, as I lived always in a city. Well, in winter there is not much to do here in the town and sometimes I feel bored or paralyzed. On the bright side going to Madrid is always an option and I also hope that spring and warmer weather will bring back life to Illescas too.

10. Cultural differences: Again a cliché, but as I love diversity this is something I consciously observe and enjoy. Though here I didn't have any big cultural shocks, sometimes the lack of organization and postponing things to the last minute set me on edge. But the fact that people are nice, helpful and easy-going usually compensates for this. Oh and the food (as an essential part of diversity) as well. :)

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 :)

November activities

November has been the busiest month since I'm here! Don't take me wrong, this is not a complaint - on the contrary, I enjoyed it a lot. :) I already wrote about our "fame" and about my travel to Lisbon, but many other things happened too.

We had 2 more of the intercultural chat series: one about music and dances, the other about what makes us ashamed and proud of our countries. Unfortunately not so many people came as for the previous occasions, but we still had a great time.

Besides we started to make a "YouthPass wall" in the shop, where we put photos and adverts of all the events we organized since we're here. It will make the place look better and also will help us remember more the activities in the end when we will have to write the YouthPass, hehe. :)

I also started a Christmas decoration workshop: we have been promoting it for a while already, but there wasn't much interest, so I was very happy when someone finally signed up. :) We began by making Christmas decoration with quilling and already finished the first piece. Furthermore the lady attending liked very much this technique, so next week we'll create some more things. :)

Speaking of creativity, I started workshops with Helena's and Mabel's children too once a week. I have to say this is a big challenge, as I'm usually not good with kids - or well, at least I haven't worked with them yet that much. So far we did origami stars (which turned into flowers in the end as the girls were really creative :) and this week I showed them some quilling; they enjoyed that too. Next week I want to do some Christmas stuff already, let's see where their creativity brings us! :)

And last but not least last weekend I had another trip: this time to Valladolid. Helena and her family planned to go there and they offered a seat in the car, so I thought why not. :) I found a cool host, Alberto, on CouchSurfing who showed me around a bit, took me to eat some local tapas and even introduced me to some of his friends, with whom we ended up going out on Saturday night, so I had a great time. :) The trip to Valladolid and back was fun too, we played games in the car, which were super entertaining, although I was the weakest link who constantly broke the fluency of the game, as my Spanish vocabulary is not that extensive yet. :)

Plaza Mayor

Autumn colors in Campo Grande 

Royal peacocks in the park :)

Enjoying the sunshine after a day of constant rain

San Pablo church

Beautiful interior in Museo Nacional de Escultura 

Christmas lights in Plaza Mayor

Lisbon

Last weekend I finally had my first international trip since I’m here: I visited Lisbon! :) It has been on my “bucket list” for quite a while, but from Hungary tickets were always too expensive; so when I saw last month that from here I could get cheap train tickets I decided that it’s time to go. :) The original idea was to visit a friend of mine who lives there, but unfortunately he had to go on a business trip, so in the end I couldn’t meet him. :(

Nevertheless I had a great time, thanks to my CouchSurfing host Bruno. He not only took me around the city, but we went to Sintra, Cabo da Roca and Cascais too. I also had the chance to have lunch with his family which was a really great experience; I could literally get a taste of the local culture. :)

Torre de Belém

Praca de Comercio

View of Lisbon from the castle 

The same view an hour later :)

The castle

Street art 

Sintra 

Quinta da Regaleira in Sintra

Amazing view on the ocean from Cabo da Roca, the Westernmost point of Europe

On my last day I took a free walking tour as well in Lisbon (this is something I do in almost every city I visit). It was really cool, our guide Cuco was very funny and the group was also so nice that in the end we decided to have lunch together. Speaking of food, the "national fish" in Portugal is the codfish - they have around 1000 different ways of preparing it. I tried only 3, but they were all delicious. :)

Rossio square with typical Portuguese pavement

The famous tram 28 :)

Cuco explaining how lazy people were to remove decorations after the last festival. :)

Random street - down and up :)

Sunset view from one of Lisbon's viewpoints