On arrival training

On arrival training

Place
Our EVS on arrival training took place in Lesce (10 min from Bled), 20 – 24 January. We stayed in Hotel Krek.

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.