Monday, December 9, 2013

Athens 

By: Danáe

 - 5 days with 38 volunteers, coming from 16 countries, working in 15 different non-profit organizations. Somewhere in between there was us, the 4 EVS volunteers who arrived to Kalamata in October and now got to go to the on-arrival seminar. The seminar took place in a hotel in Omonia, which first scared me a little bit, since I’ve heard the stories of the other volunteers who went there in September already. Surprisingly I didn’t see anything threatening just a lot of policeman, which also made sense, since we were living right next to a police station. The hotel was nice, especially since we had 5 days without cooking or cleaning ahead of us ;). At 6:30 pm the seminar started off with a short welcoming and we got to see the other volunteers, as well as our 4 trainers for the first time. We also played some games to get to know all the names, which was impossible in only one hour.  Everyone seemed very nice and you could feel everybody’s excitement for the upcoming days. After dinner we went out to Eksarxeia for one or two drinks.
The next day’s motto was “My EVS”. We all took a closer look at our own project in creating a poster about it. Later on everyone introduced the project to the other volunteers. It was very interesting to see and to hear what the other volunteers are doing and also nice to exchange our experiences concerning our projects. The second night we climbed up on a little hill close to the acropolis, where we had an amazing view not only at the lit up acropolis but also at huge Athens. Greece also won the important soccer game against Rumania that evening so there were fireworks, which made everything even more beautiful.
On Wednesday it was time to learn some Greek. Our challenge was to create a TV commercial for a gadget that would be useful for the everyday life of an EVS volunteer… in GREEK! We came up with the idea pretty fast but spent a loooong time to translate everything into Greek. My group for example invented the EVS volunteer GPS -“Συσκευη Ευρεση Εθελοντων”, an application for your mobile phone, which helps you to find other EVS volunteers in Greece. The same day we also found out about the origin and the background of the EVS program and we learned more about the rights and the responsibilities of an EVS volunteer. After dinner we had a little pyjama party at the hotel and after watching two movies most of us went straight to bed.
The next morning we got up with a lot of motivation, since we were going to explore Athens. We were divided into 5 groups with different themes (1. gastronomy and cuisine 2. crisis 3. tourism, sports and entertainment 4. social movements and NGOs 5. interpersonal relations) in order to learn more about city, culture, language and people. Every group had to do tasks around the city interacting also many times with people from the street. In the end of the day we presented the results of our rallies to the others. It was a very fun and interesting day but also stressful, since we only had a certain amount of time to finish everything. The evening most of us went out -even though it was raining cats and dogs- again to enjoy the colorful nightlife of Athens.

Soon it already was Friday and also the last day of the seminar. So for a last time we gathered together in the big seminar room to learn about the youth pass we will create ourselves in the end of the project to have a summary about our development and our achievements during the program. Afterwards we did an evaluation of the whole seminar. Everyone was very happy with the days we spend together in Athens and also a little bit sad that it was already over. During those days we made new friends and now know other volunteers all over Greece. The seminar did not only motivate us for our projects, inform us about important things connected with our EVS but also helped us to create a big network. So in the following months we hope to visit each other and see other nice places of Greece. Since most of us only left the hotel the next day after breakfast we had another night together and we planned our farewell party in a club in Kerameikos. Even two of our trainers joined us. The party was the perfect ending to 5 Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious days!




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