28. January: Holy Labyrinth! ⤴➡↘⤵➡↖⬇↔

It's me again, Tanja  😊

Of course, we didn't make "holy" labyrinths in the religious sense. But we made labyrinths that are holy, because they have holes! 😉

It's a game that I used to love when I was a kid. It affords concentration, good reflexes and a steady hand. The aim of the game is to follow the track with a ball without falling into one of the holes. 

The kids were free to create their own track, designing their individual difficulty level.

And this is how you make it:

1. Find an old box or piece of cardboard.

2. Cut out two squares (20x20cm) and four rectangles (5x20cm) 

3. Cut a few square holes (2x2cm) in one of the big square pieces.

4. Paint all of the pieces.

5. Draw the track of the labyrinth.

6. Glue first the bottom and the four sides together with hot glue.

7. Then carefully stick in the top layer.

8. Attach some small walls in the labyrinth.

9. Finished 

21. January : Animals gone wild!🐘

(Post from Tanja 😊)

This Saturday, we made cute little animals out of toilet paper rolls.

Every kid was allowed to create as many as they wanted to using their own imagination. I only showed them two examples,  a fox and a mouse and was truly surprised what they came up with ☺

This is how you do it:

1. Fold in the top of the paper roll, to make it look like ears.

2. Paint it and glue cardboard, wool, eyes or other material on to make it look perfect.

3. Finished  😊

The reason, why we used the paper rolls, is because waste is a huge problem in the whole world affecting the ecosystem everywhere.

Waste often lands on gigantic landfills where it takes ages to rott.

Sometimes it is burned, producing a lot of CO2 at the same time, which is one of the main reasons for environment change and an increase of nature catastrophes.

So you should always try to reduce your waste. The waste, you can't prevent, you should try to use in a clever or nice way ☺

13. January : Speed dating with volunteers 🍵

This is me, Tanja and I must admit we didn't do any speed dating.

But it was sort of like it 😁

Karo, another EVS volunteer from Poland, invited several volunteers, including me, to join her event. She works in a huge youth center in Rezekne with Camilla (Italien volunteer)  and Melyne (French volunteer). 

This Friday, we, a total of nine volunteers from Poland, Italy, France, Spain, Holland, Turkey, Czech Republic and Germany gave locals the opportunity to get direct information about EVS.  The event was called CreativiTea and took part in the youth center. Each of the locals was allowed to talk to one volunteer for three minutes, before switching to the next. Therefore we secretly referred to event as "speed dating". They asked us questions about our motivation, our work,  free days, travels, money, applications etc.

Funnily, the most common question was: "Why Latvia?" 😁

Of course, we had tea and biscuits during the event😉

In my opinion, CreativiTea was a success, because many of the attendees were thankful and very interested. They gave us positive feedback and are thinking about doing an EVS, too. 😊

Creative Christmas Celebrations ❤

Dear everyone, this is me, Tanja 😀

My Christmas was very special for me and completely different to all the previous years. Therefore I would like to share this experience with you and add a report about the EVS Christmas event for seniors I helped out at. 😊

Most volunteers go home for christmas to reunite with their friends and family for the fest of love.
I, however, decided to stay here in Latvia and experience something completely new.
And I don't regret it at all!☺
So Thursday evening (22.12.) I arrived in Ruijena with another German volunteer, Moritz.
Why Ruijena? - because that's where the big party was going to be.
Actually, I only knew one of the hosts, Abdu from Italy. Therefore we started with a welcoming introduction round and I got to know Abdus flatmates Clemence, Yassin (both French) and Luca (Italien) and  Ani (Armenian) and Monika ( Tschech) working in Daugavpils. After we had traditional Latvian potato pancakes for dinner, we went to bed quite early because we had work to do the next morning.

Event in the senior center
Friday morning we made some cakes before Victoria (Russian) arrived. It was here nameday, therefore, of course, we all gratulated her.
As soon as Abdu and Luca's coordinator (another Victoria, but from Latvia) arrived, we set off to go to the senior center. Abdu works there as a volunteer.
After we had collected approximately 15 seniors, we introduced ourselves and thought them how to make tiramisu, a typical Italian dish.😊

One of the seniors had an accordion, on which he played happy Christmas songs. While we were waiting for the tiramisu to cool in the fridge, we ate the other cakes and biscuits and tried chatting with the patients. 

After we had eaten up the tiramisu and drunk tea, we brought them back again and tidied everything up. By the time we had finished, it was already quite late, but we were happy and satisfied about the event. 😌

That evening we went to the only bar, to chat about Christmas traditions, our work experiences, politics, especially the Russian politics, which was 

interesting for me, because I had never talked about

that with an actual Russian. 

That night we continued talking and playing games in their flat, which meant going to bed very late.😉

Christmas!

Christmas morning we started decorating the house. Monika and I made pretty snowflakes and Christmas crackers while Victoria created a beautiful Christmas tree out of paper. At noon, finally the others arrived and I must admit, that I was totally utterly surprised. Of course, I knew that we would be quite a few volunteers, but I honestly hadn't expected that many to come 😀

So we decided to devide in three groups, a pizza group, a salad group and a soup+desert group and prepare the Christmas dinner that way. Furthermore, Lam (German) introduced us to "Weihnachtswichteln" or "secret santa" , which is common in many European countries. It acquires you to pick one of the participant's names and sectrely buy a gift for them. 

Approximately at 9 pm we could finally enjoy our dinner! 

Afterwards,  we opened our presents, went for a walk, danced around the town Christmas tree, played a lot of funny games and got tipsy on mulled wine.
All in all it was just an amazing Christmas! ❤🎄
For me, the highlight was when Angelika (Georgian) took the guitar and started singing with her beautiful voice. It didn't take long until everybody chimed in.
Just imagine young people from 10 different nations singing together at Christmas in the middle of the night. 🎶
I will never forget that evening - it was just as loving, peaceful, harmonic and happy as the perfect christmas should be.