A Year In Greece

Yeap!

I will leave soon,
And I prepared this video for every sweeties to remember,
........ those "shit lots of things" we have done!

Credits (as appearances, in my life)

Godparents of this experience:
K.A.NE, Filaretos, Jelena, Fotini and Vyron, and our beauty Greek Teacher Nantiana

The Psychologist μου, Magda
The Grandchild, Oskar
My "Mentor for Life" mentor, Vassiliki
"Found a Job In Greece Now" Group, especially Armaggedon μου, Armağan

The Bitchouse Community:
First Roomie, Rosa
Sweet Dory, Sara
Green Haired, Tea
Sexy Make-up Artist, Martyna
Orusbuçucuuu, Aroa

Whole French community with their usual names in Fhhheehnnchh accent:
Looking like Japanese but Spanish French Laura,
Our adventurist Trauma, Arthur
The Original, Marjolene

The Evil Queen, Renee
Hippi Mippi Indie, Molly
LookingLikeAWhore, EEEEeeespeanish OH, Oka
The Voice, Arora

And new guys joined us recently (wish we had more moments!)
Yanni, Anna, Joanna, Tunisian Couple Mariam - Sofiene, Mehdi

My all friends visited me (Budim, Gogo, Aycan, Ablağğğm)

Trainers who furnished us with inspirational ideas:
All Konstantinos' Spatiotis/Stergiou, Eva, Argyris

All lifetime friends I have gained here and during my visits:
Kalamata crew: Mirto, Penuşka Penny, Olga, Eirini, Sofie, Sofia, Evi, Fouli, Panagiota, Xara, All Nikos' , Kostas' , and Dimitris' (Many of them :D), Vladmir, Spiros, Croatian Jelena, Vy
During visits and trainings, shown appearance in this video,
Alex, Natalia, Ahmet, Burcu, Burhan, Athina

And many more,

Lav ya.

Summer is coming!

Brace yourself, summer is coming!

I love Greece for many reasons, but one of them is of course the weather!

In the first week of March we visited a small city, placed very close to Kalamata – it’s called Kyparrisia. That was the first sunny Sunday (over 20^oC!) and we decided to take advantage of this! Together with Molly, Laura, Rosie and Giorgo we spent lovely day in the seaside, eating lunch, walking around the city and drinking coffee.

From the left: Molly, Martyna, Rosa, Laura

From the left: Molly, Giorgos, Laura, Rosa

Written by

Spare time in Kalamata - hiking club!

 Wanna chalenge your mind and your body on your free time ? The hiking club of Kalamata may be for you !

The hiking club ok Kalamata (called: "ΟΡΕΙΒΑΤΙΚΟΣ ΣΥΛΛΟΓΟΣ ΚΑΛΑΜΑΤΑΣ")  organizes one day trips (sometimes week-end trips) every week-end around Kalamata (Kardamylie, Ancient Messinie, Taegetos Mountain). The different trips are cathegorized according to difficulty level (from 1 to 5).

I participated to some "easy" trip (level 1), and it is a verry nice opportunity o meet local people and sometimes other foreigners. This club is run by enthousiastic people who are used to hike, cycle, run or climb so they are the good person to be advised about physical activities in Kalamata or around.

Yesterday for example, I've been hiking with them to a monastry in a top of a mountain (ΜΑΡΔΑΚΙΟΥ) to feist the Revolution of Greece which means: an official speech, traditional costumes, free food and drink. Isn't convincing enough? :D

Here is the website : http://www.eoskal.gr

Written by

Meet Mehdi from France!

There is at least as many things to know as there is humans and countries. EVS enable the possibility to know much more our World. 

Καλημερα, Hello, my name is Mehdi, I am 24 and I come from France. Passionate by Life and Natural, my best motivation is to learn from other culture, from peoples, from life. I decided to quit my job too, therewith I could catch the opportunity to live something unique in Greece, in Kalamata, and in all the Greek cities I will have the chance to see. I will bring you all I have, and I will learn from everyone all I can.

Written by

our new vounteer

Short visit in Athens!

Last week I was in Athens with Aroa and her family. I've been there before, but this time it helped me to get to know the city better. I was in many new places and I had a great time! What I liked most was the guard change - I like it a lot, I fell in love with the outfit of the guards! I also love the pigeons, as you can see at the picture, they were on top of you, which was very funny! It made me laught to see people frightened by that. This sunny version of Athens I really like a lot and I hope that in my next visit I will like it even more!

Written by

International Women's Day

I have to admit, that Women’s Day is my favorite holiday! Sometimes I think I like it even more then my own birthday! This day is always happy for me – all women are smiling, every man is standing in the line in the flower shop, just to pick the most beautiful rose for his girlfriend. This is also an opportunity to say thank you, I love you, I’m glad you’re here. All women know, it’s enough to makes us feel better!

This year, Women’s Day had a theme Be bold for change, which has a special meaning for many women and men in whole world. I am glad and happy that initiatives like this exists and they are bigger every year. We still have to face with an issues about violence and broadly defined sexism. Event promoters said: help forge a better working world - a more inclusive, gender equal world. Last year, organizations and individuals around the world supported the #PledgeForParity campaign and committed to help women and girls achieve their ambitions; challenge conscious and unconscious bias; call for gender-balanced leadership; value women and men's contributions equally; and create inclusive flexible cultures. From awareness raising to concrete action, organizations rallied their people to pledge support to help forge gender parity on International Women’s Day (IWD) and beyond. But the World Economic Forum predicts the gender gap won't close entirely until 2186. This is too long to wait. Around the world, IWD can be an important catalyst and vehicle for driving greater change for women and moving closer to gender parity. Page: IWD 2017.

As a KANE volunteers we decided to celebrate Women’s Day. With Aroa we prepared 70 paper flowers (which took as almost 3 weeks!) and yesterday we went out to give all of them to local women! That was amazing experience! We all tried to speak Greek, so it was a little bit funny, also all women were very happy. Few times even men’s asked us to take a flowers for their wife’s! We went back to the office with smile on our faces and full of positive energy!

Pictures: Joana.

Martyna

Martyna

From the left: Laura, Molly, Martyna, Ania, Yana

Yana

Laura with Yana in the background

Laura, Ania and Molly

Martyna, Molly and Laura in the background

Molly

Molly

Laura

Written by

Intercultural party Vol.2

Constant rushing around, kitchen enveloped in a variety of smells, digital invitations were being spread like wild fire – the time had come for another so called „intercultural party“. As our group of international volunteers recently grew, we decided that it was time to test their cooking capabilities and challenge their knowledge of traditional dances. 

The date was 3rd March, 2017., the sun was setting and pots were cautiously being carried to the old heart of Kalamata. Inside, tables were being set up and a collection of songs from different countries morphed into our evening playlist. On one side there was a big table intended for the local, greek cuisine (why was it so isolated form the others, no one knows, maybe for those skeptical about foreign cooking); on the other, a line of smaller tables presenting different countries. We learned our lesson last time and when our multinational buffet was ready, we decided to keep all the food covered until the very start of the meal. The room was getting noisier by the minute and smiling faces filled up the space of the Youth Center. 

These kind of events always create nice opportunities to talk to all those people you usually just pass by during the week, those who you know because you do see them around but never strike an actual decent conversation with. Soon enough laughter was overpowering the music.

 

Not so long after that, the crowd grew restless and we had to start. We introduced ourselves and tried to keep it as short as possible because some stomacks started to growl already. Our repertoire of countries ranged from Portugal in the east to Ukraine in the west. This time our reach streched even outside of Europe further south to Tunisia. Soon, plates were being filled with the craziest mixtures of greek pies and beans, colorful slavic spreads and dips with a dash of tunisian cuisine. When it came to deserts, Portugal and England shined. The music could be heard more clearly again as everyone was munching away on their catch.

More and more pots and boxes were empty and ready to be taken away. All the cooks that made an effort that evening should feel proud of their work. Splendid job! And yes, they truly deserve an applause because these events do pose a challenge since the food served is quite often a first attempt at making the particular dish. The comforting part is that the guests usually don't know what the dish should taste like so that works to our advantage.

Once a dining space, now became a dance floor. We had to make sure that all of that newly acquired energy from food is being put into good use. At some point a clearing in the middle of the dance floor was made for our dear ukranian colleague to present one of their traditional dances. At first the onlookers were a bit shy but soon enough try decided to give it a try. After an intermezzo of various songs, we had the opportunity to try out another traditional dance, this time – polish. However unwilling they may be at first, in the end you could see smiles everywhere around. Later in the evening, we decided to test our footwork with different greek dances. We were more or less successful, depending on the dance but it looked as though everyone was having a great time. The evening was slowly reaching its end and though some decided to continue the party elsewhere, most wanted their well-deserved beauty sleep. 

New food, new friendships, new experiences. 

It was another successful event at the Youth Center.