Farewell

Today my project is officially ending and tomorrow I'm heading home. I leave Illescas with mixed feelings: I'm sad that my EVS went so fast and is already over, but on the other hand I'm looking forward to seeing my family and friends back home and start my new adventures.

This is definitely not a goodbye forever, as I plan to come back to Spain. But of course it will be not the same without going each morning to Ecocompartimos and see those familiar faces there. Since we were such a small team, this place and these people really became my home and family for these 10 months and I hope to keep these relationships even longer. :) I feel very grateful and lucky that I found such a great project, it gave me a lot both professionally and personally.

Also obviously I can't wait to be with my family and friends back in Hungary, there is no place like home. :)

I'll write another post a bit later about what I learnt from being a volunteer (it still needs to sink in) and that will be my official goodbye-post of this blog as well (however I will keep the page open even after the last post). 

SEE YOU SOON! :)

Radio Illescas again

Today we got invited to the radio again! :) This time not only to give an interview, but also to help with interpreting an interview with 2 Dutch musicians. Since they couldn't find anyone available who speaks English, Raquel the interviewer asked us to help out and we thought why not. :) It was a lot of fun, though I had some difficulties translating the specific musical vocabulary, but I think it went fine in the end.

With the musicians

Of course after the interview we also had our own, about how our experience was here in Illescas, what are we going to do next and so on... I liked it, I felt much better than the first time, more relaxed and I'm pretty sure my Spanish was also much better hehe. :)

Here are the links to the interviews:

The one with the musicians

Our interview

Oh and speaking of Spanish... Yesterday we found out that we both passed the Spanish exam of UNED! :)

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. :)

Corpus Christi afternoon in Toledo

In the beginning of June we organized a quite spontaneous trip to Toledo. As it was Corpus Christi, the whole city was decorated for processions and there was also a contest of the inner gardens (patios) that are usually not open for the public, but that week they were, so we could visit them. We were quite a big group of people in the end (over 20) moving quite slowly, so we didn't get to see all the gardens, we saw around 12-15. They were very interesting and all quite different.

After the visit we had a guided tour about the legends of Toledo, which was really cool. The guide was very interesting and entertaining, which helped a lot to focus, because we were already quite dead from all the walking before (not to mention it was a very hot day). :P

Here are some pictures of the trip:

Some very green gardens 

And a very artistic one with a blue horse :))

Decorations

A part of our group in the first garden we entered

My favorite garden: the flowers are recycled: made of the paper bags of bread

One of the decorated streets: with flowers and shades against the heat  

Our cool guide explaining the (legendary) history of the expression "menuda noche toledana" to our half-dead group :))

With our friend Charo, who participates in every single activity we organize :))

Barcelona

My brother turned 18 this year and as a present from our parents he received a trip to Barcelona. As a nice addition I got to go with him, so last Thursday I took off. With a lucky coincidence Filiz had her flight to Germany on the same day, so we got to go to the airport together, which was pretty cool. :)

I've been to Barcelona before, but it was 6 years ago, so I didn't remember the city much. Though I had some places in mind that I couldn't visit the last time, so now they were on the top of the list.
Also since my brother is a huge Barca fan, we had to go to Camp Nou and take a tour there, get him a T-shirt and of course we had to watch the Champion's League final on Saturday. :) In the beginning I had my doubts on how I will handle these (since I like football but not that much), but in the end I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Also in return I dragged him to Sagrada Familia, Parc Güell and other sights to see, so we both had our fair share of fun.

Here is our trip in pictures:

Inside Camp Nou - the picture doesn't show it that much, but the stadium is very impressive, it's enormous

There is even a museum inside with the history of Barca - these are some of the trophies they won

Sagrada Familia - always under construction

The amazing arches and colors inside

View from the high above - in the 75m high tower of Sagrada Familia

The obligatory "beach and palm tree" photo

Delicious paella

Parc Güell

Arc de triomf

Huge fountain in Parc de Ciutadella

Activities in May

It's very hard to believe that May already passed by and I'm almost at the end of my project already... anyhow, let's see what happened! :)

At Ecocompartimos I'd say things go "business as usual": we had English and the kids (this time I finally have a pic with them thanks to Dilya :)) and had the 2 monthly intercultural chats as well: the first one about life after death which was not a very intercultural topic, yet it was really interesting. A lot of people came, so we had a lot of controversial opinions and points of view. The second one was about movies: it went like the one with the books, everyone recommended a movie (or two) from his/her country. I'm looking forward to watching them. :)

Our group of kids

Talking about life after death

Besides these, we had a fashion photo shoot: Dilya, Mabel and I dressed up in some of the clothes we have at the shop to promote a bit our "spring collection". It was a lot of fun and the photos look like they are from some kind of magazine. ;) Also now I know how painful models must feel in those shoes that don't quite fit but look nice on the photos.... :P

Here are some of the final pics:

And some from behind the scenes:

I also helped Charo (our Spanish teacher) in taking over the Banco del Tiempo tasks. She already started to coordinate some things and I'm happy to see that she likes it (and the task suits her too). 

I was asked to continue with the quilling/creative classes for May within the Banco del Tiempo, so I had 3 more sessions. At the last one the girl was so nice, she gave me some of the pictures we made together as a present. And we also agreed with her and her mom that we'll get together some time in June before I finish my project to have lunch together. :)

From personal perspective May was again an active month: the weather felt like summer already, so everyone got active. :) 

At the second weekend we went to a Soul Food picnic in Retiro with Dilya and Amber: there were around 50 people mostly from the USA, bringing typical food from the Southern region: banana pudding, fried chicken, mac and cheese, stuffed eggs and many more.

The day after I went again to eat: this time to a street food festival called MadrEAT. It was very nice: there were trucks all over the place with all kinds of food and drinks. The only bad thing was that we had to queue for everything, as there were many people. However the location was perfect, because it was shady and there was a lot of space to sit down in the grass. :)

Cool food trucks

After the festival enjoying some pancakes with milkshakes :)

The third weekend of May was a huge celebration in Madrid: it was a holiday of San Isidro, so there were all kinds of festivities all over the city. We went with Michaela and Filiz to walk around a bit and ended up in a concert at Plaza Mayor. A famous singer called Ainhoa Arteta was singing first some opera songs and then zarzuela (which is similar style to opera), it was very nice.

Plaza Mayor packed with people

And finally at the last weekend of May we had 2 farewell parties: first for Amber on Friday, as she left to enjoy the summer in Italy in a summer camp. And then on Saturday for Filiz, who'll go home to Germany in a few days, because she finished her project. I'm sad that we already had to start this "farewell process", but on the other hand most probably in a few months I'll see the girls again.