Luís is discovering - and loving - Sicily!!!

Projeto SVE

Nome: Alveare - TO Bee Safe 

Entidade de acolhimento: Fondazione Mondoaltro

Local: Agrigento, Italy

Voluntário: Luís Pereira

 

Bem, é difícil saber como começar a recontar a minha experiência em Itália e do Serviço Voluntario Europeu.

Cheguei cá a Agrigento dia 4 de Outubro 2016, o principio como sempre é um bocado difícil habituar-se a uma nova cidade, cultura e habituar-se ao dia a dia da associação mas foi um processo fácil e passado 1 ou 2 semanas já estava habituado a tudo a minha volta. Conheci na minha primeira semana cá, muitos sítios interessantes como a Scala dei Turqui (A escada dos turcos), este deve ser o meu sitio preferido que conheci até hoje.

A minha experiência cá está a ser fantástica desde tudo que aprendi, pessoas que conheci e claro, conhecer a Sicília. Já tive as 2 formações do meu SVE a primeira em Nola, Napoli foi fantástico conhecer pessoas de outras nacionalidades a fazer o mesmo que eu em Itália. Eramos 60 pessoas e passamos 1 semana ao pé de Napoli a conhecer mais sobre o Serviço Voluntariado Europeu a conhecer novas culturas e a fazer novas amizades para o futuro!

Depois dessa semana de voluntariado passei um fim de semana em Catania uma das maiores cidades da Sicília para a festa de Sant’Agata com pessoas que tinha conhecido na formação em Napoli! Basicamente, nesta festa toda a cidade pára durante 3 dias para uma tradição de 1700 anos! Nunca vi tantas pessoas juntas na minha vida como vi nesta festa era simplesmente caótico.

Mais recentemente estive em Nicolosi na minha segunda formação, ao pé de Catania e do vulcão Etna! Tivemos “sorte” nessa altura porque houve uma pequena erupção do vulcão no nosso primeiro dia em Nicolosi, foi uma experiência única ver um vulcão em erupção bastante perto de nós e como era a tranquilidade das pessoas que viviam em Nicolosi e dos nossos Trainers que reagiam como se fosse uma coisa normal!

É impossível contar tudo o que vivi e experimentei estes (quase) 7 meses que estou cá, mas posso dizer que sinto-me Siciliano e sinto-me em casa cá. Faltam-me cerca de 3 meses e veremos como serão!

Luís Pereira

25/04/2017

 

19 weeks, 131 days, 3144 hours, 188640 seconds.

19 weeks now. Today, I feel I got in Lisbon yesterday. Yesterday, I felt it was the day before. Maybe this is the feeling you have when you like where you are; you don't even think about the time. In thirteen weeks, as I usually do, I tried to adapt, to discover and to learn. Now, the Spring is here. It is February 17th, and it is sunny and warm already. Everywhere I wanted to travel, I can go now. I used these 13 weeks to walk around Lisbon and get to know this city and its surroundings. I still have a lot to discover, and I’m excited about that. But everytime I wanted to travel elsewhere, I thought it would be better to wait for a while, as it would be more pleasant with a bright and warm friend. So, in the meantime, I am enjoying the music of this city, which is close to constant, and everwhere. Fado, Samba, Forro, Cumbia, Jazz, you name it. Everywhere you go, a saxophone or a cajón awaits. 

Two of my best friends are coming to visit next week. We will go together in Açores for a few days, to enjoy a little bit of nature. Because even though Lisbon is an easy-going city, calm, quiet, it is still a great feeling to leave it for a few days and go to the beach, hike or just enjoy the sun with friends. So i really am looking forward to it, but probably not as much as my friends who are both incredibly excited J We will still have a few days in Lisbon so I can show them the city, Sintra, maybe go to the beach too. I have the feeling my friends won’t want to go back !

Everything is also good work-wise. We applied to a whole lot of different projects, all more interesting as the other, and I hope most of them will be approved. We’ll have the answers in the beginning of April, so until then, fingers remain crossed. But not only that, we decided with the whole team to become more involved in local activities and we want to start developing them. Therefore, I am trying right now to find a place to start a monthly screening of a documentary, followed by a debate and Q&A. I think it would be a good way to sensibilize people to a lot of different subjects.  And since we are advocating for alternative education, this is the topic I want to dig. Just the simple and plain fact that there is not only one way of learning, but several. One is not inferior, or less regarded, but different. We will try to screen features approaching this issue in a historical and sociological  way. I already have a few ideas, so let’s get to it J  

time flies!

Time flies!

February has begun and it means that already 4 months passed from the beginning of this adventure.

I’m very happy to stay here and with every passing day, I’m always more and more convinced I’ve made the right choice and, who knows, maybe Lisbon could even become my home city when my Evs will end!!!

From the last time I wrote in this blog, a lot of things happened J

My parents came here for the Christmas holiday and it was amazing have them here, I guided them to discover every hidden corner of Lisbon and at the same time we visited a lot of places out of the traditional tourist’s routes outside the city.

Lisbon and its surrounding always continue to surprise me with beautiful miradouros, natural landscapes and amazing sunsets.  

 

At work, 2017 started with a lot inspiring ideas, good purposes and, last but not least, also new members of the team have come!

Last week we also have an amazing staying in Estoril, a really nice place about 20 km far from Lisbon, in the Atlantic coast. It was our Check- OUT: all the Check-In team met up for two days and we plan the activities coming up the next months, present how and in which sectors Check-in works to the “newcomers”, share our ideas and proposals to improve the impact of the association in our area; it was a really good experience, so inspiring  and at the same time it was a moment to build new relationships with new volunteers and reinforce our team spirit!

Happy new year :)

It now has been 3 months since I started this journey here in Lisbon. Time flies, I feel I just got there. This city keeps getting more and more interesting. Although I haven’t got the chance to travel all around Portugal yet, since I am waiting the perfect opportunity, (friends and great weather both hopefully coming soon!), I got to know more and more beautiful Lisbon. There is something quite fascinating about it, but I don’t really how to explain it. The hills, the music, the people all create this particular kind of atmosphere, and a little poetry you can feel in the air. But not only the city, I am surrounded by colleagues who, I am lucky to say, became my friends. We have been sharing great moments and conversations for a while now, and I think the bonding time has just begun ! Apart from that, the work itself is fulfilling since I can write and speak with people from all around Europe, and this sort of international interaction is actually what I was looking for when I decided to do an EVS.

I went back to France for the holidays, enjoyed quality time with my family and spent the new year's eve with my friends, in the mountains in the middle of nowhere. Even though I enjoy life very much in Lisbon, walking up and down the streets of this magnificent city, everybody needs break from the sound and the fury of such an entertaining environment. I came back a few days ago, without nostalgia and eager to see all the friends I made here. A few friends frm France are going to come visit me soon, and we will travel a bit in Portugal here and there. A great year awaits! Thank you to everybody who made this journey possible :)

Dezembro is here, but the summer too :)

Yesterday it was two months I am in Lisbon.

I feel like I have been here for quite a long time: I already have my friends, my routine, many goals set for the months to come. The weather is still treating us well - it reaches 20 degrees out quite often on the sunny days!

And Christmas is coming up; my family will visit me here, so I won’t get to go back home - which is a little strange - I was kind of hoping to get to see my friends again, but they will eventually be here soon.

Work at Check-in is also going well; I am working on making a new website together with Virgilio, who is doing the writing and coding - which is something I had never undertaken before and that I really hope will work out how we want. The whole re-branding of the association’s image needs to be done and we are working on it, but it’s a process that needs some time: with Flavio, a volunteer who is studying marketing we are going to re-think the whole image and concept and try to draw new designs on it. It’s a big process and very challenging.

Also, we are thinking of new activities for the year to come, on a local level. We have a whole lot of ideas for what could happen in Checkin - also aced the question on Facebook to our “likers” and are hoping to get some feedback we can base the programming for 2017 on.

On Nov 26th we also had our first open day, which went pretty well: we had organised an afternoon of games and sharing of experiences by the people who took part to projects all over Europe through checkin, and we finished with a german aperitif and an italian dinner! Many new and old people showed up and it was a good chance for me and Antoine and Federica to meet the extended Checkin-crew and understand better what the association does.

Lisbon's Pastelarias in Christmas attire

Lisbon still has many good things to offer; the last month I visited the Oriente Foundation Museum, which displays a big collection of artefacts from Asia (mainly from ex - portuguese - colonies and the countries Portugal used to have commercial relationships during the big Navigator’s times) and has now an exhibition up about Chinese Opera; I also visited the Museu National do Azulejo, which is a good one. The building in which the museum is situated is already worth the visit itself; an old monastery with beautiful gardens and rooms covered in baroque azulejos, it displays a collection of azulejos that goes from their first appearance in Portugal - about 1000 years ago - until nowadays. I heard live fado for the first time, in a small Tasca in Bairro alto - Tasca do Chico - which i was not crazy about though; there was mainly tourists coming in and out of the place and everything seemed quite staged; really like the singers were tang the same turns every night; which took a bit of the charm out of the place. 

Garden of the Museu do Azulejo

Festival Imigrarte also took place a couple of weeks ago, which was amazing: 3 days of workshops and shows of all types, run by the different migrant communities present in Lisbon: I took part to an african dances workshop and a salsa one, a drawing class, a forum theater representation by a feminist group, and listened to amazing concerts by musicians who were playing music from Sao Tomé, Nepal, Portugal, Brasil; Argentina…there was such a good energy! The location where the festival took place was also very beautiful; it’s in an old school in the city center of Lisbon, a neoclassical run-down building on 4 floors, very charming.. it was also super moon that weekend so from the top you could see the most amazing moon. The location is going to be turned in a luxury hotel though very soon; it is very sad to see how mass tourism is transforming the city at such a quick pass, not in a good way to me.

 performance-watching at Imigrarte festival

Talking of that, tonight there will be the screening of a documentary, “Terramoturism”, that i am going to watch, in order to have some more insight on what is happening in Lisbon, when it comes to gentrification and un-sustainable tourism. I guess a small part of me is already thinking of staying in Lisbon after EVS and I already feel weirdly involved - like if I was in an actual relationship with this city :) ; I’d like to understand her and contribute to the discussion that is taking place, here and now, to contribute to making a positive change and minimalize as much as we can the damage they mass tourism might bring to this capital.

It’s lunch break now! time to catch some sun outside of the office… beijinos!

One Week up in the North: On Arrival Training in Braga

Here i am, writing from my way back home from Braga that actually as u know  is not our basis, but my companheiros Emma and Antoine and I, were there for our on arrival training organized by the portuguese national agency.

It was a big “ training event” that brought together volunteers from all over europe who are at the beginning of their evs experience in different cities in all portugal.

This training had in fact basically the aim to support volunteers in the adaptation process during the evs experience giving them tools and causes of reflection to be able to face in a better way difficulties and potential problems during their own project.

During those days we have been working a lot supported by trainers, doing so many different activities mainly in groups but at the same time giving us the opportunity to express our opinion and personal contribution about different issues related with everything goes around our own evs experience. We explored and we became more aware about our role within an evs project, we reflected on ourselves and all the trainers give us tips and tools to manage and take the best from our experience abroad, increase our “baggage of competence and knowledge” to be carried on the back during our own personal growth paths.

Generally it was a really full immersion in a melting pot of people, cultures, thoughts, acts. I met really a lot of great people with different stories and background but finally all connected and linked by the same wish to volunteer abroad and  grow up personally and  why not, professionally from this experience. There were moments that I really loved cause I had the chance to know a lot of nice people with whom we shared this crazy week, and sure, others nei quali I felt already saudade de Lisboa!!!

But  at the end of this intense week, that’s the important, come back home richer than before :)))

Até a próxima cold Braga!!

Federica

About Life in Lisboa

Hello again! It's now been a few weeks since we all got here. So we decided to keep you informed about our journey in Lisboa :)

The work keeps getting more and more exciting. I, on my side, started to work on new projects in other countries, in Eastern Europe and Balkans. The international environment makes it really awesome, especially when you start interacting with other organizations and participants.

About life in Lisboa, well, I don't know where to start. Back in Paris, everybody was telling me how great it is, and I got sick of those comments. “This can't be that great”, I was thinking. Lower my expectations, so I don't get disappointed. But actually, everybody was right. It is that amazing.

Everything is, the concerts, the restaurants, the bars, but also the people, and the basic atmosphere in this city. First off, it's really hard to not hear music anywhere. You could walk wherever, you always hear music. When you listen to a saxophonist playing on top of a mirador, with the sunlight in your eyes, it's a pretty cool feeling. The general ambiance of the city is filled with music and great encounters come from it.

Something else that was a great discovery for me is the alternative style of living here. Associations flourish by the hundreds in every neighborhood, wether it's social centers or cultural spots, cafés or bars. It is a vibrant place to be when you're interested in culture overall, but also when you are attracted to alternative lifestyles.

Therefore, the stories you hear are really different and inspiring. I met travellers, musicians, artists or students who went all over the world, telling me where I should go, or what I should do, and they all agree about one thing: Lisboa is really amazing.

The sun is always here, the food is delicious, the people are the friendliest, and the city itself is beautiful. I feel like I belong here, so we are doing pretty good :)

Antoine Girault