Moi,
Some time has passed since the last post but I’m here to change that.
Let me introduce myself. I am Alicia and I am the “new” volunteer here in this group. I arrived on the 25th of May, so it has actually been some time since I have been here. Nevertheless, I still have a lot to learn and catching up to do. As do you, so let’s get started!
The first to weeks were quite different for me than for the others. I arrived on Wednesday, got to meet the other volunteers and some people from the village. They also showed me around and introduced me to the most important places here. Then I got time to settle down and unpack my luggage. The next day was a national holiday, so I caught up to some sleep since I hadn’t really got a lot of sleep the two previous days due to the travel.
Then from Friday til Sunday, there was a training happening nearby called “Community Development happening”. It was a training to learn more about community and its ways of working. Our trainers were from Italy and the methods used are from “Clips”. The participants were from different ecovillages or generally communities in Finland. We were around twenty people taking part. These three days were quite intense but yet rewarding. It was wonderful to meet new people, get to know their experiences and ideas and connect with them. From 9 in the morning to 5 in the evening we spent our time together and we even had barbecue and sauna in the evening on the last day.
For us there was however no time to reset after this training since for the following week we had our on-arrival training in Kokkola, about 4 hours from here. So it was again time to meet new people and learning more about Finland and volunteering. It was a wonderful week in Villa Elba with a lot of fun activities, of course sauna and swimming and a lot of food. We met amazing people that had either already started or were about to start their project. The energy, passion and commitment these people showed were inspiring. There is no doubt that we will meet again, sooner or later.
As you can see, it was some quite intense time to start with and the following week I was also caretaker, so I got to learn even more. Nevertheless, this time was amazing and it was great to bond with the others. So for me the project officially started on the 7th of June which has been about a month. I’m not going into to much detail, but a lot has happened. We finished our herb garden, had our first summer cafeteria and a lot of different weather. About one or two weeks of 30 degrees and drought but also some days where it was raining cats and dogs.
Anyway, that was all for today and we will keep you updated.