Last sunday Pascale became 21!! So saturday night we had a nice birtday party in Prespa.

At the end of the night:

I tried to make a chocolate cake for Pascale but it was a little bit to long in the oven.....

The Prespa pelicans:

Life of a EVS volunteer is great and only getting better!! The last weekend we (Pascale and me) spent again in Larissa and i was great. Sunday we had a surprise from a Greek friend of the volunteers and went all together to Pilios a village at the sea. It was a beautiful day; we made a long walk to another village through the mountains. It was the first time I saw more the Greece how it always is on postcards with a lot of olive trees, blue see, little villages with white houses and donkeys in the street. So you can imagine it felt like holiday especially after coming from Florina where it was snowing last week and was -5.

The bad thing about being volunteer is saying goodbye to the new friends you make and don’t know if you ever see them again. Last week we had to say goodbye to Maria from Prespa and this weekend from Vanessa I hope I will see them again in Spain. But on the other hand it is also a good excuse to make a visit to Spain to see them again.

So I will tell some more about my “integration” in the Greek culture. At the moment we have a busy schedule because we are participating in a Greek course for immigrants and have 3 x 3 hours lessons in the week at Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. The lessons are really nice but also difficult because everything is in Greek because the most of the other people live already 5 years in Greek.

Next to the lessons we have every Wednesday 2 different Greek dancing lessons. It is the traditional Greek dancing in a circle with great Greek music.

So next to all the lessons we try to make some more Greek friends but is sometimes difficult because you can’t speak good the language. In Florina you have a lot of bars and the Greek young people spent most of their free time in the bar.

Last Friday our first radio was show broadcasted and it was really funny to hear yourself on the radio. It was great because after the show a colleague (from the television) from the woman from the radio called and said she really liked the show and when they come to shoot sometime in Florina she want to interview us. So maybe we will be famous in Greece!! At the moment we are preparing the next show it will be about Holland. So now I’m downloading some Dutch music to play in the radio.

What we do more on the Youth Center:

Another action from the Youth Program is a Youth Exchange. Pascale and I have made an application for a youth exchange in Florina with Albania, FYROM (Macedonie), France and Greece. The title is “Crossing Borders through Art” and this is what the youth exchange is about:

The aim of this project is to reflect about what borders mean for the European youngster focusing on: inside the border : stereotypes, on the border : borders themselves and crossing the border : immigration. Through guided discussions, debates, meeting people, and creative art workshops participants have the opportunity to express themselves and finally create an exhibition open for the local community.

In December we will hear if the youth exchange is approved by the national agency in Greece and we will receive money for it. Then it will take place in April for 10 days.

The youth exchange is a great action the only difficult thing is you have to make a application with a lot of details about the program but you don’t know if it will be approved.

Furthermore we had a presentation last week at the university to tell some more about EVS and our experiences. I like the work at the Youth Center but sometimes it is difficult because there are not so much activities and so not lot work to do.