Zavod O site — my main task has been done and successfully released 13th of September. For the last 5 years the organization had an idea of having a web-site, but there was no time and person to realize it. I started to do this site in the end of April and since that time my days were fulfilled with work and a thought that “I’m wasting my life uselessly” stopped bothered me for a while :). Unfortunately for the site, the time of realization coincided with spring and summer – time of vacation and traveling. Otherwise I spent around 12 hours per day working on the web pages. Zavod O site made on wordpress template, but anyway a lot of things in design and logic had to be changed and corrected. There are still some things to do and a lot of content to add.

If you know how to make the site better, please, feel free to tell me it. It would be nice if those of you who had experience with Zavod O could write a short testimonial for Zavod O international pages in your own language and in English to make the site alive and interesting.

I’d like to say thanks to Matej Zerovnik who gave me some nice ideas in right moment and answered my questions when I needed. Thanks to Matjaž Vouk for giving me a chance to make Zavod O site, all necessary information and place to work at his office. :-)

P.S. Poor Erhan, he is the only one among us who has sister, now he has to survive with us – egoistic and spoiled creatures :D

The event started at 17:00, for those who came on time we asked Matjaz to make a guided tour around Škofja Loka. Then we went to Ostriga where everyone enjoyed grilled vegetables, chevapchichi and some delicious Turkish sauces prepared by Erhan.

According to the plan we made a Jam session, more precisely, those who play musical instruments made it. :-) It was cool and nice, but too short for me, on the other side I can understand musicians who were already a bit tired. Then… a nice dancing night. For people who couldn’t stay until morning were arranged places for sleep in the local scout house.

I personally liked this event, also I heard positive responses about this party. A bit pity that not too many EVSes could come. There were 3 Portuguese girls, 2 German guys, 1 Lithuanian girl, 1 Ukrainian girl, 1 Bulgarian girl, 2 Slovenians (Bulgarian girl’s mentor and friend), 4 Latvian girls who do their Erasmus in Slovenia (invited by Janis) and 5 of us (Silvia, Erhan, Janis, Anastasia, me). And of course we had our mentors, coordinator and some local people who were curious about the party.

The second day was planned for Lubnik, but guys who were motivated to hike the day before were absolutely tired and lazy in the morning, so climbing the mountain was not accomplished. Maybe for the next time. ;)

Miha Ješe, mayor of Škofja Loka, appeared to be smiling, friendly and Russian-speaking (!) man, since he had been working for 5 years in Moscow.

We met accidentally at oppening evening of 38th Pokal Loka – alpine ski competition for children, which is each year hosted in Škofja Loka – a closed event with free-food. :) All EVSes have a scent for such things, if they don’t have a scent – they have a good EVS coordinator who has this scent! :D This time we also took one more EVS volunteer from Ljubljana – Ania from Russia, who came to visit me on that nice evening.

Next day I went with Gapi to ski on Stari Vrh, where I had a possibility to see alpine ski competition for children – Pokal Loka. Here is the video of Pokal Loka 2012.

Now I should learn how to organize myself, so today is my first day when I came to the office of Zavod O to work for a few hours at the evening. There is also one more reason why I went to the office – it’s extremely warm here unlike our flat. :)

People
Alenka Oblak and Henk Persyn were our trainers and also Jerneja Modic (EVS coordinator) presented there. We were 21 volunteers (just 4 boys among us): Belorussia, Bulgaria, Germany (2), Finland, France, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal (3), Spain (5), Turkey, Ukraine (2).

Games
I really liked one game for remembering names. First person has to write his/her name on a blank sheet of paper and says what the name means and how he/she got this name, then another person adds his name (trying to make crossword from names). I think it’s the only game which works, at least it was the first time when I remembered almost all names.

Food
The food was amazing, there is a saying that EVS eats only twice during the project: on arrival training and on mid-term training :) We could choose menu from 3-6 dishes, also we always had soup, salad and desert. Some people were laughing at me that I ate too much, but I couldn’t say No to delicious things, even if sometimes I thought that I could die of been overfed.

Common project
For one main task in this training we were divided into groups of 4-5 persons. Our team included Ana (Portugal), Cristina (Spain), Lucia (Spain) and me. The task was to make our team project, which had to have a Topic, Something Slovenian, plus we had to communicate with locals and to do something that neither of us has done before. We got this task in the evening and we had to realize it next day.

After 1 hour of discussion we decided to hitchhike to Bled + to eat famous Bled cake there + to see the lake, to sing Slovenian song and to dance traditional Slovenian dance. We needed someone to make a video but since nobody in our group knew how to make a video, I took responsibility on me.

During the evening everybody watched Slovenian movie – Kekec, and I was trying to understand how iMovie works. Honestly I wanted to do some short video many times but I always was lazy to find out how editing process works… but at this evening under the pressure of responsibility for the whole group and our project I did my best, and I got all things I was wondering about!

So here it is our project, and my first work as director, operator and post-editor. Enjoy and come to Bled one day! But please, come during spring or summer :)

Jokes
The cow came to the bakery to buy a bread. The salesgirl asked her if she wanted to have white or dark bread. The cow answered “Oh, it doesn’t matter! I have a pink bicycle”. :)

Goodbye party
We also organized some kind of Goodbye party “pajamas party”, which I liked only because of one thing – now I know how to dance Kuduru. One Lithuanian girl taught me this dance, a few years ago I really wanted to know how to dance it… and now I know.

The main idea
Well “training is training” :) sometimes we had a good time, sometimes it was a bit boring. Actually attending any kind of trainings is not the thing I like to do. But there are always some new ideas and sentences, which can help you in a future. From my pre-departure training in Ukraine I got one new wise expression for me – “Problems will appear, but I’ll handle them”.

The main sentence which I should remember from this training in Lesce is “Today is the first day of the rest of my life.”

Here are more pictures by Jerneja Modic.

So there were 8 persons: 3 organizers – Armenia, Germany, Macedonia; 5 guests – France, Italy, Serbia, Spain and Ukraine.

We had a nice German evening and a disco party in the hostel, also some locals joined us, the atmosphere was really nice and we were dancing half of the night like teenagers although all of us were 25-30 years old (except of one guy, he was under 20).

Next day we were walking around Krško – town with a nuclear power plant and one museum of the history of Krško. There is nothing special in Krško, I started to like Škofja Loka even more :). But local people in Krško are hiding even better than people from Škofja Loka, I must admit. :)

The story: Matjaž was invited for one presentation of National Agency in Ljubljana to present his summer EVS project. But he was so kind as took Silvia and me with him. We helped him a little bit with the presentation table and pictures. Then there was a performance in Slovenian (which I didn’t understand) and after that The Party has started, the food was delicious and for all kinds of tastes! We also met some EVS from Maribor and I even tried to teach some of them to juggle.

After this event we went to see Christmas decoration of Ljubljana, we met again Katarina and her friend + we went to Metlkova for a Rock concert. Now I really understood that before going to the concert I should listen to the band in advance %) to make sure if I like it or not. On the way back home we drove some guys from Ostriga, and at that evening I’ve clearly heard Slovenian curse word which starts from “P” and is exactly the same as Russian one… Now I hear it everywhere, but it’s strange that for 20 days of staying in Slovenia I didn’t notice this word at all.