Velosipēds!

On 16th of May we had a great day. The weather was beautiful and we went to a bicycle tour with a lot of children, Sanda, Edmunds, Alīna, Inese etc. The destination was a Latvian poet's house, which is working like a museum now.

The way to reach the destination wasn't so long and difficult, we just went less than 2 hours, and finally we arrived.

We had a quite big team. Oh no, the dog didn't belong to us, he is living in this garden. But the Latvian flag is really important on this picture (in the left side).

In the end everybody left a sign in the house of the dead poet. So now you can check who participated on the tour.

Eiropas diena

On the 9th of May we celebrate the Europe day. For us this wasn't just another marked day in the calendar, because we participated on the event organised in Jelgava, where we (and other volunteers) made some presentations and we also learnt about the Ukrainian culture.

Volunteers in and near Jelgava. From left to right: Sara, she is Italian, she's working in Dobele, in a Youth Centre; Enikő from Romania; Annija from Poland who is working in Jelgava in Junda; Damien :); Beqa, he is Georgian and he is also working in Junda.

We presented ourselves, have we became a volunteer, our country and we also made a game. To be sure we wanted to speak also about our project, but finally we didn't because of some technical problems.

On this picture you can see a modern-traditional Ukrainian dance made by nice small girls.

Brīvdienas :)

In the end of April and the beginning of May we had few free days, so we decizded to do something interesting. This time Damien and Enikő had different plans, but we both had a really good time.

Tallinn with the bet church

In the end of the April Damien made a trip in Warsaw with another ex-volunteer, after he came back to work, but only for two days because after he went to Tallinn with other volunteers and finally he participated in Stiproskrejiens. This last one is totally crazy: a lot of people are running in the mud, they are dirty and freezing, but everybody is happy. Finally their team achieved the 361. position of 918 participating teams, which is really great!

The team with costumes for Stiproskrejien

During the race

The host family in Helsinki

In the same time Enikő made a 10 days trip to Tallinn-Helsinki-Turku-Stockholm to visit all this cities and to meet a lot of people and new situations. She went alone to this trip, but it wasn't a problem, because she succeed to find hosts by Couchsurfing, so finally she had friends and guide in every cities.

A cute Viking in Stockholm

Photo competition

In April we organised a small photo competition for the children with three teams. Here you can see the best pictures by topic!

Pavasaris:

Dzīvnieki:

Staļģene:

Bērni: 

Ūdens:

Lieldienu aktivitātes

The preparations for Easter was started two weeks before the festivity in Kraujas. On the handicraft activities we made special egg cups and postcards. The children were pretty good to make that postcard,  even if it wasn't so easy. For the drawing competition we just get few works from the smallest children. But the most exiting was the festival in Staļģene on the Easter Sunday. The weather was just amazing, all the children where happy and we made different kind of activities with them. Damien prepared a competition (and he also participated in) and Enikő painted eggs with onion and with wax.

Moments in Platone

On 9th or April we visited Platone to speak about the EVS and about our experiences here, in Latvia.

We went to the Youth Centre, where we met few motivated young people as you see on the image above.

We spoke also about our countries: we decided to make a game with photos of France and Romania, so the audience had to guess which image is from Romania, which is from France. Before I thought it is pretty easy, but finally it was easy only for us.

We also played few games with them, but the place wasn't enough big to have great games; whatever the "Knee game" is always interesting for the youth and also for us.

And finally here you can see few interested and really serious people from Platone!

Training and nice people from UK

On 2nd and on 3rd of April we participated on a training with the topic how to involve young people in society. There were people also from Poland, United Kingdom and Romania. It was pretty interesting because some of the participants was 16 years old, but the others was middle-aged.

Wednesday all the group visited Staļģene, and we made a presentation about our volunteering project. It was the first time for us to speak in the front of native English speakers, but they were really interested in our life here and after the presentation they also offer us to make something together in Northern Ireland. So we had a positive feedback. :)

Thursday we went to Jelgava for the training. There everybody made a presentation about his/her work with youth people and we made a great collage in the trainings topic. As volunteers, we have been in a group with Latvian people (maybe we belong here). In the end of the day we visited the rock school in Jelgava, where we listened music and played a great game with rythmical signs.